The gunshot came at 11:47 PM.
Valentina Rosetti would remember the exact time for the rest of her life — not because she looked at the clock, but because the bullet that killed her father shattered the antique grandfather clock in his study. Its hands froze. Time froze. Everything froze.
Except the blood.
The blood didn't freeze. It moved like it had somewhere to be, spreading across the white marble floor in a slow, dark river that reached the tips of her bare feet before she could scream.
She had come downstairs for water. Just water. She'd been studying for her final law exam, highlighter still in her hand, hair piled in a messy bun, wearing an oversized t-shirt that hung to her knees. She looked like a college student. She was a college student.
But she was also the only daughter of Dominic Rosetti — the most powerful mafia boss on the Eastern seaboard.
And now she was watching him die.
"PAPA!"
The highlighter dropped. Her feet moved before her brain caught up, slipping on the blood, her knees cracking against the marble as she fell beside him. His body was crumpled behind his mahogany desk, one hand still reaching for the gun in his top drawer. He hadn't been fast enough. Dominic Rosetti, the man who had survived three assassination attempts, two federal investigations, and a car bomb — hadn't been fast enough.
"Papa, no, no, no — look at me." She pressed her hands against the wound in his chest. The blood was hot. It pulsed against her palms with each weakening beat of his heart. "MARCO! SOMEBODY HELP ME!"
Where were the guards? There were always guards. Twelve men on the property at all times, armed, trained, loyal. Where were they?
Her father's eyes found hers. Dark brown, just like hers. The same eyes that had watched her take her first steps, that had terrified senators and judges, that had softened every single time she walked into a room.
Those eyes were fading.
"Valentina." His voice was a wet rasp. Blood bubbled at the corner of his lips. "Listen to me."
"Don't talk. Save your energy. MARCO!" She screamed again, her voice tearing through the silent house. The silence was wrong. The house was never silent. Where was everyone?
"They're dead." Her father read her thoughts the way he always could. "Marco. The guards. They got them first."
The words hit her like a physical blow. Marco — her father's right hand, her unofficial uncle, the man who had taught her to ride a bike and also, secretly, to shoot a gun — was dead?
"Who?" She choked on the word. "Who did this?"
Her father's hand, slick with blood, grabbed her wrist with surprising strength. He pulled her closer. His breath was shallow, rattling, counted.
"Don't trust—" He coughed. Blood sprayed across her shirt. "The deal... the files... in the safe..."
"What files? Papa, what files?"
"The combination... your mother's birthday... backwards." His grip tightened. His eyes burned with something fierce and desperate. "Trust no one, Valentina. No one. Not even—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
His hand went slack. His eyes stayed open, but the light behind them — that sharp, commanding, impossibly alive light — went out.
Just like that.
Dominic Rosetti, king of an empire, was dead on his study floor, and his twenty-three-year-old daughter was kneeling in his blood with a yellow highlighter somewhere behind her and a scream building in her chest that, when it finally came, didn't sound human.
She didn't know how long she screamed. Minutes. Hours. Time had stopped — the broken clock told her so.
Eventually, she heard sirens. Then footsteps. Then voices.
Hands tried to pull her away from her father's body. She fought them. She punched and kicked and bit, and it took two paramedics and a police officer to peel her off the floor. Her hands were red to the elbows. Her shirt was soaked through. There were bloody handprints on her face where she'd wiped her tears.
She looked like a crime scene herself.
Detective Paul Herrera found her in the back of an ambulance, a shock blanket around her shoulders, her eyes staring at nothing. He was a thick man with a thick mustache and tired eyes that had seen too many bodies in too many mansions.
"Miss Rosetti." He crouched in front of her, notebook in hand. "I know this is — I know this is the worst moment of your life. But I need to ask. Did you see anyone? Hear anything before the shot?"
She blinked. Slowly, she turned her gaze to him. Her voice, when it came, was flat and hollow.
"Where were my father's guards?"
Herrera exchanged a look with his partner. "We found six bodies on the grounds. Suppressed weapons, precise shots. Whoever did this was professional. Military-grade professional."
"Six," she repeated. "There should be twelve."
Another exchanged look. Herrera made a note.
"The others are unaccounted for," he said carefully. "We're looking into it."
Unaccounted for. That meant they'd either been killed and hidden, or — the thought made her stomach twist — they'd been part of it. Someone had let the killers in.
"Miss Rosetti, does your father have enemies?"
She almost laughed. Almost. The sound that came out was something broken and sharp.
"My father is — was — Dominic Rosetti."
Herrera nodded slowly. He understood. The man had a thousand enemies. The question was which one had finally succeeded.
But Valentina didn't need a detective to answer that question.
She already knew.
The funeral was three days later. It rained — because of course it rained, as if God himself was mourning or mocking, and Valentina couldn't decide which.
She stood at the front of the cathedral in a black dress, her dark hair pulled back so tightly it hurt, her face a mask of controlled grief. She had not cried since that night. She had decided, somewhere between washing her father's blood off her hands and choosing his casket, that she would not cry again until the person who killed him was in the ground.
The cathedral was packed. Politicians who had taken her father's money. Businessmen who had laundered it. Family allies who had profited from his protection. They all came in their black suits and their practiced sorrow, and Valentina memorized every face and calculated the sincerity of every condolence.
Most scored zero.
Her father's sister, Aunt Gianna, stood beside her — a sharp-faced woman in her fifties who smelled like espresso and wore her grief like armor.
"Half these people are here to see if we're weak," Gianna murmured, her lips barely moving. "The other half are here to confirm it."
"We're not weak," Valentina said.
Gianna looked at her niece — really looked at her. Something shifted in the older woman's expression. Respect, maybe. Or fear. Because the girl standing beside her didn't look like the bright, ambitious law student who argued about constitutional rights at dinner. She looked like her father.
"No," Gianna agreed quietly. "We're not."
The service was long. The priest spoke about mercy and forgiveness. Valentina thought about the gun her father kept in his desk drawer — the one he hadn't reached in time — and decided she would carry one from now on. Mercy was a luxury. Forgiveness was a lie.
After the burial, people gathered at the Rosetti estate for the reception. Valentina moved through the crowd like a ghost in a black dress, accepting handshakes and cheek kisses, storing information, reading the room.
It was then that she felt it.
A shift in the air. A ripple through the crowd. Conversations dimming. Eyes turning toward the front entrance.
She looked up.
And her blood turned to ice.
He stood in the doorway like he owned it — like he owned the entire cathedral, the rain, the grief, and every person in the room. Six foot two, built like a man who had been forged rather than born, wearing a black suit that cost more than most people's cars. His dark hair was pushed back from a face that was brutally, offensively handsome — sharp jaw, straight nose, cheekbones that could cut glass, and eyes so pale they were almost silver.
Cold eyes. Wolf eyes.
Dante Vittori.
Heir to the Vittori empire. Son of Alessandro Vittori — her father's oldest, deadliest rival. The man whose family had been at war with hers for three generations. The man whose territory bordered her father's. The man who had the most to gain from Dominic Rosetti's death.
And he had the audacity — the sheer, breathtaking audacity — to show up at her father's funeral.
He wasn't alone. Two men flanked him, both large, both armed beneath their jackets. But they were accessories. Background noise. Because Dante Vittori was the kind of man who commanded a room simply by existing in it.
The crowd parted. Not consciously — instinctively. The way animals move away from a predator. He walked through them without acknowledging a single person, his eyes fixed on one target.
Her.
Valentina didn't move. She didn't flinch. She didn't breathe.
He stopped three feet in front of her. Up close, he was even more imposing. She could smell his cologne — something dark and expensive that she hated immediately, not because it was unpleasant but because it was. His eyes swept over her face, cataloging, calculating. There was no warmth in them. No sympathy. Just a cold, sharp intelligence that made her feel like she was being read like a document.
"Miss Rosetti." His voice was deep, controlled, and utterly devoid of emotion. "My condolences."
The words hung in the air between them. The room was silent. Everyone was watching.
Valentina stared at him. At his perfect suit and his perfect face and his perfect composure. At the man she was certain — certain in her blood, in her bones, in the marrow of her grief — had ordered her father's murder.
She stepped closer. Close enough to see the faint scar above his left eyebrow. Close enough to see that his eyes weren't just silver — they had flecks of ice blue, like a frozen lake.
"You don't get to say that," she said softly. Her voice was quiet, but in the silent room, it carried. "You don't get to stand in his house, at his funeral, and say that."
Something flickered in his expression. Not guilt. Not shame. Something else — something she couldn't read, and it infuriated her.
"I came out of respect," he said. Same flat, controlled tone.
"Respect." She tasted the word like poison. "You came to admire your work."
His jaw tightened. Almost imperceptibly, but she caught it. "Be careful, Miss Rosetti."
"Or what? You'll kill me too?"
The room held its breath.
Dante Vittori looked at her. Looked at this girl with blood still metaphorically on her hands and fire literally in her eyes, standing in front of a man twice her size, a man that hardened criminals refused to make eye contact with, and accusing him of murder at her father's funeral.
And for one fraction of a second — so fast she almost missed it — something shifted in those cold silver eyes. Something that looked almost like... admiration.
Then it was gone.
"I didn't kill your father," he said quietly. Only for her ears.
"Liar."
"Believe what you want." He reached into his jacket pocket. Both of her father's surviving guards stepped forward, hands on their weapons. Dante didn't react. He pulled out a small white card and held it between two fingers.
"When you're ready to hear the truth," he said, "call me."
She didn't take the card. She stared at it, then at him, and in that moment, every ounce of grief and rage and helpless fury consolidated into a single, crystalline thought:
*I will destroy you.*
She slapped him.
The sound cracked through the room like a second gunshot. His head turned with the force of it. A red mark bloomed across his sharp cheekbone. His two guards surged forward; he stopped them with a raised hand without looking.
Slowly, he turned his face back to her. His eyes were burning now — not hot, but cold. The kind of burn you get from touching ice too long.
"You get one," he said, his voice dangerously soft. "That was it."
He placed the card on the table beside her, turned, and walked out.
The room exhaled.
Valentina stood perfectly still, her palm stinging, her heart hammering, her mind racing. She looked down at the card on the table. White. Expensive stock. Just a phone number in black ink. No name. He didn't need one.
She picked it up.
Not to call him. Not to hear his lies.
She picked it up because she wanted to remember this moment. This feeling. This absolute, unshakable certainty that burned in her chest like a second heartbeat.
She would find out the truth. She would uncover every secret, dismantle every lie, and burn his empire to ashes. And if she had to walk through hell to do it, she would walk through hell in heels.
She tucked the card into her bra, straightened her back, and turned to face the room full of vipers who had come to mourn a king.
"Thank you all for coming," she said, her voice clear and steady. "My father would have appreciated your... loyalty."
The word landed like a blade. Half the room flinched.
*Good,* she thought. *Be afraid. You should all be afraid.*
Because Valentina Rosetti was no longer just a law student with a highlighter and a dream of justice.
She was her father's daughter.
And someone was going to pay.
Later that night, alone in her father's study — now scrubbed clean, the marble bleached white, the grandfather clock removed — she opened the safe using her mother's birthday, reversed.
Inside, she found three things:
A thick manila envelope marked "INSURANCE."
A loaded Beretta 92.
And a photograph.
The photograph showed two men shaking hands. One was her father, years younger, smiling. The other was a man she didn't recognize — tall, dark-haired, with cold, pale eyes.
She turned it over. On the back, in her father's handwriting, were four words that made her world tilt on its axis:
"He is my debt."
She looked at the man in the photograph again.
It wasn't Dante Vittori.
It was his father.
---
END OF CHAPTER 1
Next Chapter: Valentina opens the manila envelope and discovers a secret that changes everything she thought she knew. Meanwhile, Dante Vittori makes a move that will force their worlds to collide in the most dangerous way possible.