It started with rain.
Cold, merciless rain that drowned the streetlights and turned the night into a blur of silver and shadow. Isabella Leone ran through the alley, breath breaking, heart slamming against her ribs. She kept looking back, but the black sedan kept gaining on her.
They had found her.
She clutched a small metal drive inside her jacket—the evidence she should never have uncovered. Elena Carter had begged her not to follow the trail alone. "This isn't just corruption, Isa. This is blood. They kill for less."
But Isabella believed the truth mattered.
She believed she still had time.
She was wrong.
Tires screeched. A black sedan drifted to a stop, blocking her escape. The door opened and a man stepped out—smooth, controlled, smiling like he owned the night itself.
"Isabella," Senator Richard Harrington said gently. "You went somewhere you shouldn't."
Her grip tightened. "Stay away from me."
Behind him, a masked figure stepped from the darkness. Silent. Deadly.
The Shadow.
Harrington sighed with disappointment. "You should've stayed quiet."
Isabella turned to run—
A flash of metal.
A cry.
Her knees buckled.
She hit the pavement as rain mixed with her blood. The drive slipped from her grasp and skidded across the ground—straight toward a woman hiding behind a dumpster.
Elena Carter.
Friend. Confidant. The last person Isabella trusted.
Aria's mother.
Elena rushed forward, catching herself on the ground just as another shot fired. Pain tore through her side, dropping her beside Isabella.
"Elena…" Isabella whispered, voice fading.
"I'm here. I've got you," Elena breathed, gripping her hand even as her own blood soaked the ground.
Isabella's eyes fluttered. Rain slid down her cheeks like tears. "Don't… let them win."
Her fingers went still.
Elena froze.
Isabella was gone.
Harrington's men moved closer. Elena forced herself up, dragging the drive to her chest. Her vision blurred. Her breathing broke. She had seconds—maybe less.
Caspian.
He would come. He would see Isabella dead. He would see Elena's blood nearby.
And he would believe the only thing the scene suggested:
That Elena Carter murdered his sister.
Elena's heart broke at the thought, but she had no strength left to explain the truth.
Not tonight.
Not while Harrington's assassins closed in.
She pushed herself into the darkness, each step heavier than the last, leaving a trail of blood behind her. Rain washed away almost everything—everything except the one truth that would change two lives forever.
A girl named Aria was now a target.
A grieving billionaire was about to hunt the wrong woman's mother.
And the real killers walked away untouched.
The night Isabella died didn't just take a life.
It lit the fuse that would one day bring Aria Carter and Caspian Leone crashing into each other's worlds—
First as enemies.
Then as survivors.
And finally, as something far more dangerous.
But the rain didn't stop. It kept falling, relentless, like it wanted to wash the truth clean before anyone could see it. The alley emptied, the assassins melted back into the car, and the city swallowed their crime with practiced ease.
Minutes later, sirens wailed in the distance—late, too late.
A homeless man peeked out from beneath a torn blanket, saw the body, and disappeared before the sound reached him. Nobody wanted trouble. Nobody wanted to be the next name erased.
Isabella Leone's blood mixed with the gutter water, carried toward the drains, toward darkness.
And across the city, in a penthouse lined with glass and grief, Caspian Leone felt a shiver he couldn't explain. A pressure in his chest. A quiet wrongness in the air.
His sister always called him when she was scared.
But tonight, his phone stayed silent.
A storm was coming—one built from lies, revenge, and a tragedy he would misunderstand from the very first moment.
Aria Carter didn't know it yet, but the night claimed more than Isabella's life.
It claimed her own freedom.
Her future.
Her heart.
Because when fate decides to twist lives together, it does so with no mercy.
Rain fell.
A life ended.
And two destinies began.