Chapter 2 - The Ghost Reawakens

The next forty-eight hours were a blur of shadows. Dante moved her to his private penthouse, a fortress of steel and glass. She refused to speak for the first day, sitting by the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching the city with a predator’s patience.
She wasn't eating. She wasn't sleeping. She was calculating.
“You saved me,” she said suddenly, her voice gaining strength, shifting from a rasp to a low, melodic tremor. She didn't turn around. “Why? You are a Serrano. My father’s rival.”
Dante poured a glass of whiskey, his movements controlled. “You saved me three years ago, Elena. The docks. I was a nobody, a runner for the low-level street crews. I was being beaten to death by the Moretti syndicate. You threw a knife. You didn't know me, but you hated them more than you hated the world.”
She turned then. Her hair, now short and dark, framed a face of haunting, aristocratic beauty. But the eyes—they were entirely different. They were cold.
May you like
“I didn't save you for mercy, Dante,” she said, walking toward him, her movements fluid and lethal. “I saved you because you were a weapon I hadn't sharpened yet.”
Dante stopped breathing. He realized then that he hadn't been the one running the city for the past few years. He had been a pawn in a game he didn't even know was being played.