The heavy humidity of a Milanese evening clung to the marble pillars of the Valerius estate, but inside, the air was clinical, sharp, and smelled of expensive tobacco.
Jax sat in a high-backed velvet chair, his tailored suit straining against the breadth of his shoulders. To anyone else, he looked like the ultimate professional—a lethal weapon in a silk tie. To the underworld, he was a ghost, a kingpin whose name was whispered in the dark to frighten rivals.
But tonight, he was just "Candidate Number Seven."
"My daughter is starting her final year of university," Lorenzo Kaida's father, said, pacing the length of his mahogany desk. The man was one of Italy's most feared prosecutors, a man who had put Jax's own associates behind bars. "She is headstrong. She thinks she's safe. She doesn't realize that my work makes her a target."
Jax's eyes didn't flicker. His gaze was fixed on a framed photograph on the desk. Kaida.
In the photo, she was laughing, a stray lock of dark hair falling over her face. She looked soft. Radiant. The exact opposite of the cold, jagged edges of his life. He had spent three months watching her from the shadows of tinted windows and rooftop vantage points. He knew her coffee order, the way she bit her lip when she was nervous, and the exact route she took to class.
He didn't just want the job. He had orchestrated the "security threats" that had scared her father into hiring a new lead guard. He had cleared the field of every other applicant.
"I can guarantee her safety," Jax said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that made the older man pause. "No one will get within three feet of her without my permission. I will be her shadow. Her silence. Her wall."
Lorenzo looked into Jax's eyes—eyes that held a darkness even a seasoned lawyer couldn't decipher. "You seem... overqualified, Mr. Rossi."
"I take my debts seriously, Signor," Jax replied, a cold smirk ghosting his lips. And I've decided your daughter is the only debt I'm interested in collecting.
Outside, the heavy iron gates of the estate groaned shut. Jax stood up, adjusting his cuffs. The hunt was over. The obsession was finally moving into the light.
Kaida didn't know it yet, but her gilded cage just got a new master. And he was never letting her go.