"The Silver Eyed CEO and the Mafia Lost Wolf Prince
🐺 Chapter One: The Price of Silver and Shadow
The city of Vespera was built on three things: steel, shadow, and the carefully maintained illusion of peace. Beneath the glittering skyscrapers, the real currency was power, held tight in the claws of two dominant forces: the Vittori Syndicate, a human Mafia enterprise that controlled the docks and the financial district's darker investments, and the Lykos Clan, a secretive society of Lycanthropes—the wolves—whose ancestral ties gave them undisputed dominion over Vespera's underground networks and a surprising number of legitimate security firms.
Tonight, the line between these worlds was represented by Elara Vane, CEO of Argent Securities.
Elara stood before the panoramic window of the Vittori Tower penthouse, her silhouette sharp against the sprawling cityscape. Her suit was silk-lined obsidian, and her gaze, a startling, glacial silver, reflected the distant streetlights. She was only twenty-eight, but her reputation preceded her: ruthless, untouchable, and possessing a strategic mind that had tripled Argent's value in three years. No one knew how she'd amassed her power so quickly, only that challenging her was a fatal mistake.
"You look tense, Elara," Don Carlo Vittori, a man whose face was a road map of old grudges, rumbled from behind his mahogany desk.
"Tension is an asset, Don Carlo. It keeps me sharp," Elara replied, turning to face him. "We have a problem. Your new shipment from the southern routes was intercepted. Five million in unmarked bearer bonds, vanished. My security failed."
Don Carlo's hand clenched around the Murano glass ashtray. "Your security, or the Lykos Clan?"
The Lykos Clan. They were the city's apex predator, the old guard. Elara dealt with them constantly; their muscle often hired by Argent, their territories sometimes overlapping with her legitimate operations. But their new, unconfirmed leader, rumored to be far more brutal than his predecessor, had been aggressively pushing the boundaries.
"The attackers left a signature, Don Carlo. Not Lykos," Elara said, her voice smooth and steady. "They were professionals. Too clean for the wolves, too quiet for anyone else. They were led by a ghost."
Meanwhile, across the city, the ghost was anything but.
His name was Kael, and he wasn't a ghost, but a hunted man who carried the smell of rain-washed earth and burnt ambition. He moved through the shadows of the abandoned shipyard—a Lykos territory forgotten after a major clan dispute—with the fluid grace of a creature born to the night. His true identity was a closely guarded secret, known only to a handful of old, loyal retainers who were now scattered or dead: he was Kael Lykos, the rightful, abandoned Prince of the Lykos Clan.
Kael's father, the former Alpha, had been assassinated five years ago. Kael, a naive twenty-year-old at the time, had been framed for treason, stripped of his claim, and forced to flee the Lykos compound. He had spent the intervening years in exile, honing his mind, his fighting skills, and, critically, mastering the control of his unique wolf form, a magnificent creature of pure midnight fur.
He looked down at the briefcase on the oily metal table—the five million in bearer bonds. The Vittori shipment.
"It's enough," Kael murmured to Dorian, his only remaining lieutenant, a gruff, aging Beta wolf who had pledged his life to the exiled prince.
"It's a start, Prince Kael," Dorian corrected, his eyes heavy with worry. "But the Lykos Clan hunts you. And now the Vittori Mafia hunts you. You're poking the bear, cub."
Kael's jaw tightened. "The bear needs to be poked. The current Alpha, my uncle Volkov, is weak and corrupt. He's letting the clan be consumed by greed and infighting. He betrayed my father. I will take back what is mine."
"And the bonds?"
"They are collateral," Kael said, tapping the silver clasp. "I don't need money. I need information. The Vittori Syndicate is currently laundering money through Argent Securities. I need to know why the money disappeared, and who is capable of intercepting a Vittori shipment besides me."
He picked up a slim, laminated file Dorian had procured. The file contained an image of the woman in the obsidian suit.
Elara Vane. The Silver-Eyed CEO.
The moment Kael saw her picture, a strange, electric jolt, primal and undeniable, shot through him. He recognized the coldness in her silver gaze, but beneath it, he sensed a terrifying, caged intensity. His wolf instincts, dormant for years, twitched.
Mate, the instinct whispered, raw and insistent.
Kael slammed the file shut, disgusted by the vulnerability of the thought. He was a fugitive prince launching a revolution. He had no time for fated connections.
"She's the target," Kael announced, his voice regaining its hard edge. "She is the nexus between the Mafia and the new power structure. We go to her. We use the money to gain leverage, and we find out who betrayed us all."
Back in the pristine sterility of the Vittori Tower, Don Carlo was making a desperate move.
"Elara," the Don said, leaning forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "I have a problem far larger than five million. Volkov Lykos has been pressuring me to sell him my controlling interest in the docks. If I refuse, he'll start a war. He needs proof that the silver-eyed CEO—you—are loyal to me."
He slid a small, antique silver locket across the desk.
"This belonged to my mother. It contains the codes to my offshore assets. I want you to secure it personally. Take it to the vault at your headquarters, Argent House. If you can protect this from the wolves for twenty-four hours, Volkov will back down. If not... Vespera burns, and so does my investment in your firm."
Elara stared at the locket. It was a test. A high-stakes, lethal game of loyalty. Her silver eyes narrowed as she calculated the risks. If she refused, the Mafia war would destabilize her legitimate businesses. If she accepted, she would become the prime target of the Lykos Clan.
"I will secure your asset, Don Carlo," Elara agreed, her voice clear and without hesitation. "But the cost of my protection has just doubled."
She stood, clipping the locket carefully into her inner jacket pocket. As she walked toward the elevator, she pulled out her phone.
"Get me eyes on all abandoned Lykos territory," she commanded her Head of Security through the device. "I want to know who is desperate enough to steal from Vittori. And I want to know who they are working for."
She didn't know it yet, but the man she was hunting was the very prince the Lykos Clan had abandoned, and he was already on his way to her. The lost wolf was about to collide with the silver-eyed shield, and their inevitable union would be rooted in mutual suspicion and a shared need for truth—a truth that promised to ignite the very war they were trying to prevent.
That sets the stage for a tense romance and massive conflict! Kael, the abandoned wolf prince, is targeting Elara, the ruthless CEO, for leverage, believing her to be part of the corruption he seeks to dismantle.