The dog didn't whimper. He screamed.
Rocco's howl tore through the night like a curse, wild and raw, echoing across the Adrano estate. It wasn't pain. It was terror.
He staggered into the courtyard, his glossy black fur now streaked with crimson. His jaws foamed and snapped wildly at nothing. A gaping wound stretched from his mouth to his chest. His belly dragged along the marble path, trailing a mess of blood, shredded muscle, and something wet and pink that slipped from his open stomach.
He had swallowed the bait.
A blood-drenched steak laced with rusted fishhooks, thin barbed wire, and ground glass.
The moment he sank his teeth into it, the wire caught his tongue, the glass sliced into his gums, and the hidden hooks sank into his throat. When he tried to swallow, they ripped downward — tearing his insides apart with every breath.
He thrashed.
He rolled in agony.
He slammed his own body into the garden wall as if he could break the pain off him — but there was no escape. His legs gave out. His mouth twitched. His eyes bulged. And then he collapsed at the base of the fountain where he used to drink each morning.
Blood flooded the white stones.
And silence followed.
---
Nyx watched from the trees.
She stood motionless in the shadows, wrapped in black, her breath steady. Her eyes never blinked. Not once.
There was no joy in her face. Only focus. This wasn't revenge. This was art.
Rocco hadn't just been a pet. He had been a weapon — trained to bark at her, bite her daughter, corner her family in their final minutes. Nyx remembered the night clearly. Rocco had lunged for Zara's leg, tearing her pajama pants as her daughter screamed and tried to run.
Now he was dead — torn from the inside out.
It was the first cut.
---
Clara Adrano ran into the courtyard barefoot, wrapped in a silk robe, half-asleep. Her scream when she saw the dog shook the house.
"Rocco!"
She dropped to her knees beside the mangled body. His tongue lay half-chewed, his lower jaw cracked and hanging loose. Blood had soaked into his fur so deeply it dripped from his ears.
She cradled the remains like a child. Her cries grew hoarse. She didn't even notice what was carved into the marble edge of the fountain until she looked up.
"BEGUN."
Scratched deep into the stone in jagged, crooked lines. Fresh. Wet. Violent.
She backed away from the fountain like it had burned her.
That's when the fear truly set in.
This wasn't random.
This was personal.
---
Back in the forest, Nyx turned and melted into the night, disappearing like smoke.
No alarms had been triggered.
No cameras had caught her.
She had known exactly when Clara's guards rotated, which cameras were down for maintenance, when the dog was let out for his night walk, and exactly which meat Rocco would snatch first. She had planned every movement down to the second.
She had studied them all for months.
Five years of silence.
Five years of tracking.
Five years of becoming the ghost that hunted her hunters.
She knew what time Ricardo Adrano cheated on his wife.
She knew what pills Clara took to sleep.
She knew the passwords to their gates, the weak points in their bulletproof cars, the real name of the mistress hiding in Naples.
She knew everything.
And now?
They would start to feel her.
---
She made her way back to the abandoned vineyard on the outskirts of town — the place that once belonged to her late husband's family. Overgrown. Forgotten. No one would think to look for her there.
She stripped off her gloves and hoodie, washed Rocco's blood from her fingers, and crossed off the first name on the list written in red ink on the wall.
There were 67 names on it.
Rocco wasn't even the first human.
But he was the first to suffer.
And she would make sure every scream from here on out echoed louder.