Chapter 1
My hand was already bruised by the time the door finally opened.
Behind me, my little sister was shaking so hard her school skirt kept brushing against the stone wall.
There was blood on the hem.
Not hers.
And somehow that made it worse.
Because blood that belongs to someone else means you were close enough to death to carry part of it with you.
Then Luca Ravellini opened the door.
Yes, that Luca Ravellini.
The man every bartender in the city knew by face, and every smart person avoided by instinct.
I had served him bourbon before.
I had watched men go quiet when he walked into a room.
But I had never stood on his doorstep after midnight with a terrified fourteen-year-old girl behind me and nowhere else left to run.
He looked at me once.
Then he looked at Sofia.
Then his eyes dropped to the blood on her uniform.
Everything about his face changed without moving much at all.
That was the first thing that scared me.
Not anger.
Not shouting.
Just the way he suddenly looked like a man doing math with other people’s lives.
“My sister saw something,” I said.
“She saw three men kill someone behind her school.”
“She ran.”
“They saw her face.”
“And if I take her home, they’ll find us before morning.”
Sofia made the smallest sound behind me.
Luca didn’t ask why I came to him.
He didn’t ask why I hadn’t called the police.
He just looked past us into the dark street like he expected danger to be standing there already.
Then he stepped aside.
“Inside.”
That should have felt like mercy.
It felt like crossing a line I could never uncross.
The second the door shut behind us, he locked it.
Then another lock clicked.
Then another.
Then he touched something on his phone, and somewhere deeper in the house, I heard security systems wake up.
That was when Sofia grabbed my arm so tightly her nails dug into my skin.
“Who’s looking for her?” he asked.
I swallowed hard.
“I don’t know their names.”
“But one of them had a green dragon tattoo on his neck.”
His jaw tightened.
Only once.
Only a little.
But that tiny movement changed the air in the whole room.
“The Triad,” he said.
I swear even the chandelier light felt colder after that.
I had heard that name before at the bar.
Always in low voices.
Always followed by silence.
Luca looked at my sister again.
Not like a man staring at a problem.
Like a man realizing the problem had already reached his front door.
Then he asked Sofia how old she was.
She couldn’t answer.
I did.
“Fourteen.”
That was when he took out his phone and called in perimeter security.
That was when he told one of his men to wake up another.
That was when I understood this was no longer just one frightened girl hiding for the night.
This was something bigger.
Something ugly.
Something important enough to make a man like Luca Ravellini move fast.
He brought us upstairs himself.
He gave Sofia a room bigger than our whole apartment.
He told us no one would get through that door without his permission.
Then he came back with tea, cookies, and questions sharp enough to cut through shock.
And when Sofia finally whispered what she saw in that alley, Luca went completely still.
Because the dead man was not random.
He was District Attorney Marcus Webb.
And my little sister had just become the only witness who could destroy men powerful enough to hunt a child before sunrise.
I thought that was the worst part.
May you like
It wasn’t.
Because the cruelest twist came the next morning when Luca walked into his office, looked me in the eye, and told me the Triad had already been to our apartment building.
