The fire started just after midnight.
Aria smelled the smoke before the alarms sounded—acrid, sharp, real. Not some test. Not a warning. This was a message.
She bolted upright from bed, yanking open the door to her suite. Down the hallway, flames licked the edges of the eastern wing—Luciano's war room.
"Luciano!" she shouted.
Chaos erupted. Guards scrambled, smoke billowed from beneath the door to the command center. The estate's sprinkler system activated too late, dousing everything in a futile, misty spray.
Luciano appeared through the haze, shirt half-burnt, blood on his shoulder.
"Aria!" he coughed. "Get out—go—"
She ran to him, arm hooking under his as they stumbled out through a back exit. Sirens wailed in the distance. Security vans skidded up the gravel drive. Enzo was barking orders, drenched and furious.
The war room was gone.
All of it—maps, files, weapons caches.
Gone.
And with it, their advantage.
⸻
By dawn, the fire was out, but the damage was permanent.
Luciano sat on the patio, shirtless and bandaged, rage simmering beneath the quiet.
Aria stood opposite him, soaked in soot and ash.
"It was them," she said. "My father. Talon."
Luciano didn't respond. He simply lit a cigarette with trembling fingers and exhaled a slow breath.
"We underestimated them," she continued. "We walked into this thinking they wanted power."
Luciano looked up. "And now?"
"They want to erase us."
⸻
That night, the estate was quieter than it had ever been.
The staff whispered. The guards were on edge. And Aria felt it—something fraying at the edges of their alliance.
She found Enzo outside, near the burned wing, running diagnostics on what little tech survived.
"We were breached," he said without looking at her. "Manual override. Inside job."
Aria's pulse spiked. "Inside?"
Enzo finally looked up. "Someone here helped them."
⸻
Luciano's office was dark when she entered.
He stood at the window, back to her.
"Do you trust me?" she asked.
He didn't turn. "Do you trust me?"
Silence.
Then she said, "There's a leak in your house. And I'm going to find it."
He finally faced her.
His voice was quiet. "Find it before it kills us."
⸻
Aria began with the lower ranks—servants, drivers, guards. She asked the questions no one else dared: Where were you at midnight? Who had access to the server room? Who left the back gate unlocked?
Most had alibis. Some cracked under pressure.
One name came up more than once.
Ivanna.
Luciano's personal aide.
Too quiet. Too clean. Too invisible.
Aria cornered her in the gardens just after dusk.
"Ivanna," she said calmly. "We need to talk."
Ivanna tried to walk past. Aria blocked her path.
"I have no idea what you're implying—"
"Then why is your security key the only one unaccounted for last night?"
Ivanna's face drained of color.
She ran.
Bad idea.
Aria chased her through the hedges until two guards caught up and tackled Ivanna to the ground.
In her coat pocket: a burner phone. Contacts. Coordinates.
Aria knelt beside her, heart pounding.
"You sold us out."
Ivanna spit blood on the grass. "I sold him out. You? You're already dead—you just haven't figured it out yet."
Aria stood, chest heaving.
She looked to the guards. "Lock her in the wine cellar. No contact. No light."
Then she walked away, jaw clenched.
This wasn't just betrayal.
It was war from within.
⸻
In a dark room miles away, Aria's father answered a phone.
"She's still breathing," said a voice on the line. "Even after the fire."
He chuckled.
"Good. Let her feel powerful."
A pause.
"Then take it all from her."