Chiara
The apartment felt cold.
The sheets were wrapped around my legs, and it smells like cheap detergent combined with the faint trace of my own perfume.
I left Vincenzo's penthouse before dawn, slipped out of his king-sized bed while he was still asleep, the city lights streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
I came back to my shitty South Side studio apartment I keep well hidden like an escape hatch, it's the kind of place where the radiator clanks and the walls are so thin that you could hear the neighbors either fucking or fighting.
As I lay in my bed, my body still remembers him, my thighs bruised purple from his grip, lips swollen and stinging sensation from his teeth, the deep, pulsing ache between my legs from how he took me last night for the first time.
He was slow at first, his fingers traced my ribs like he was trying to memorize them, then he became hard, relentless, his hips slamming into mine until the headboard began to bump against the wall, until I started tasting blood from biting my own lip to keep from screaming his name.
As the memories from last night flood in, I should feel something soft.
Something hopeful.
But no, instead, I feel fire.
I open my eyes to my cracked ceiling, cobwebs hang like decorations.
Sunlight slices through the crooked blinds, painting gold bars across my naked skin and the chipped paint on the wall and floorboards.
It's 2018.
I'm twenty-one again.
My heart is slamming so hard I swear I could taste iron on my tongue.
I remember everything.
Memories of the next ten years crash into me all at once like a freight train, it's as though I was reliving it all in slow motion, metal screeching, sparks flying, the smell of burning oil and blood thick in my nose and all around me.
Every night Vincenzo fucked me like I was his forever, his lips on my throat, his hands bruising my hips, his cock diving so deep that I forgot how to breathe, then he left me alone in the dark with nothing but the echo of his footsteps and the cold spot on the mattress.
Every promise he made that were all lies, his voice low and velvet as he whispered to me "soon, cara" while his fingers traced every curve of my body.
The russian princess he left me for, Katerina Petrov smiling in black-and-white engagement photos, perfect diamond necklace catching the light, her arm linked with his at galas while I just watched from the shadows, my stomach was twisted in knots, bile rising in my throat.
The night he told me he was getting married to her.
The way he finished inside me for the very last time, hot, pulsing, and with a final whisper, he said to me "it's just business," and when he pushed me out of a moving armored SUV on a deserted Chicago road late at night.
The wind whipping through the open door, the feeling of gravel biting my skin as I hit the pavement.
The RPG bomb right in the car next to where I landed exploded in seconds after I was ejected, heat ripping through flesh, lungs filling with smoke and fire, my bones screaming as the world turned white and molten.
The kill order he issued as the flames swallowed the vehicle behind me, Vincenzo had made a kill order to ensure i stayed dead, he made the order with a calm and cold voice over the phone like he was simply ordering coffee.
I died at thirty-one.
I woke up at twenty-one.
The memories are razor-sharp and fresh.
I can still feel the blast searing through my skin, the way the metal twisted around me like teeth, the coppery taste of blood on my tongue as I crawled painfully through gravel and glass.
I can still see Katerina's cold, elegant smile in those picture perfect photos, she was my death sentence already written in black ink.
As the memories come to a halt, I don't scream.
I don't cry.
I just lay very still while the city wakes up outside my apartment, the sound of horns blaring, trains rattling on tracks, the neighbor's baby crying through the extremely thin wall, life just goes on like nothing changed.
But everything has changed.
I have changed.
I sit up slowly.
My vision is blury for a second, but then becomes clear.
My hands are vibrating.
I clench them into fists until my nails bite into my palms and my blood starts dripping onto the sheets
Good.
The pain is real.
The pain is now.
I swing my legs to the side of the bed.
My bare feet hits the cold floor.
I go over to my closet, pull out a certain duffel bag I haven't touched in years.
Stacks of cash in hundreds wrapped in bands, burner phones, three, still sealed in plastic and their screens dark.
I picked up one of the forged passport I made for myself two years ago, just in case. The picture on the passport, my own face staring back, younger, softer, the girl who once loved him.
I open it.
Chiara Rossi stares back at me, platinum hair, storm-grey eyes, the girl who believed all his false promises without a second thought.
I close it.
I burn it.
The flames lick up the edges, curl the photo until it's nothing but ash, the smell of burning plastic and paper engulf the room.
I watch until there's nothing left but smoke curling toward the ceiling like memories trying to escape the room.
Next, I go for the personal documents. Old IDs, letters, anything related to Chiara Rossi.
I fed them all to the fire one by one.
Each page curls and blackens.
The ashes are a memory of what was.
But the black book, his book, his secrets, names, dates, drop points, kill orders, I don't burn it.
I scan every page of the book, encrypt every file, hide the copies in different places.
The physical book goes into my duffel.
I don't keep the book because of sentiment or because I still have feelings for Vincenzo, it's one of my ammunitions against him.
Every secret in there is a bullet I will fire when the time is right.
By the time the sun is up, Chiara Rossi is nothing but ash.
I stand in front of the mirror.
Scissors in hand.
My platinum hair falls in soft clumps to the floor.
I cut it till it's jagged and really short.
I dyed it raven black.
The color of midnight.
The color of revenge.
I grabbed a pair of contacts next, I covered up my storm-grey eyes with a deep emerald.
I blinked at my own reflection, at the stranger staring back.
She looks like me, but colder.
Harder.
Deadlier.
And just like that, Bella Fiore is born.
I pack the duffel.
Cash. Phones. An already forged passport. A single knife, thin, sharp and deadly, the same knife Vincenzo gave me for my birthday, the handle is a little worn.
I slip it into my boot then I put my boots on.
I pull on a pair of black jeans and a black leather jacket.
I basically look like a shadow.
I walk out into the windy Chicago city.
My hair whips across my face like a flag being waved for war.
The air tastes of exhaust and lake water.
I don't look back at my apartment.
I've got a deadline of ten years.
Ten years to become untouchable.
Ten years to dismantle everything Vincenzo's ever built.
Ten years to make him kneel before me.
I hail a cab.
"O'Hare," I tell the driver.
He glances at me through the rearview.
I meet his eyes.
He looks away.
The airport is a chaos of people rushing around, announcements echoing through the place, the smell of coffee and jet fuel thick in the atmosphere.
I move through the chaos like a blade passing through silk.
I quickly buy a one-way ticket to Berlin.
No luggage on me, zero questions.
I sit at the gate, my duffel bag between my feet.
The plastic seat feels cold against my thighs.
I shut my eyes for a bit, but I see his face, Vincenzo Russo, the king of Chicago, the man who's going to spend the next ten years mourning me and soon he'll mourn his empire.
The man who will wake up alone in his penthouse, with the memory of me being dead.
I smile.
He has no idea I'm alive and gone.
No idea I've burned every trace of myself.
No idea I'm on a plane heading to Berlin.
No idea the von Brandt brothers are waiting for my arrival.
The boarding call comes.
I stand up and walk down the jetway.
I don't look back.
The plane takes off.
Chicago shrinks below me, towers, streets, the lake, everything becomes a blur.
I close my eyes a smile on my face.
The game is just beginning.
The plane touches down in Berlin at sundown.
A black SUV waits for me on the tarmac.
Three very handsome men step out.
They are no longer the boys I remember.
They are wolves, predators.
And they're all looking at me like I'm prey.
Like I'm theirs.