Before she was Nyx, she was Arianna Velleti — firstborn of the Velleti Syndicate, a family feared across Europe.
Blood soaked her childhood like rain on stone.
She was twelve the first time she held a pistol. Fourteen when she shot a man who tried to rob her uncle during a drug handoff in Palermo. Sixteen when she helped dispose of a body. Not because she wanted to — but because you didn't say no to family.
Her father, Alessandro Velleti, was a legend. A monster draped in silk suits and iron principles. His word was law. His sons were warriors. His daughters were weapons. No one escaped the family. Not without leaving a trail of corpses behind.
Except Arianna tried.
---
She remembered sitting across from him the night she told him she wanted out. She was twenty-one, fresh from a mission that ended in flames, bullets, and a little girl's scream still echoing in her head.
"I'm done," she had said.
Alessandro had stared at her with those heavy, black eyes. He didn't yell. He didn't strike her.
He simply said, "Then die."
And walked away.
---
It wasn't a threat.
It was a sentence.
Three days later, her car exploded. She survived. Barely. She disappeared.
She burned her fingerprints. Faked her death. Changed her name.
She became Nyx — named after the Greek goddess of the night. The one even Zeus feared. A name with no family, no trace, no warmth. Only shadows.
---
But while she was rebuilding a quiet life in hiding, something far worse was happening to the family she once called her own.
The Adrano Family, long-time rivals of the Velletis, had launched a full-scale purge.
With bribes, assassinations, and backroom betrayals, they took over the Velleti Syndicate from the inside.
Her uncles were shot during meetings they thought were safe.
Her brothers were found floating in the Tiber, throats cut, eyes missing.
Her cousins disappeared — one by one — until their names were whispered like curses in dark corners.
By the time it was over, the Velletis were nothing but a memory. And Arianna, long presumed dead, was the last one left.
But the Adranos weren't satisfied.
They wanted her, too.
Not just to kill her — but to make her suffer. To break her. To destroy her spirit so thoroughly she'd be remembered not as a Velleti — but as a cautionary tale.
---
She ran far.
She worked under fake identities, built a life from nothing. Became a florist. Fell in love with Elias, the only man who ever looked at her like she wasn't a storm. He gave her a quiet home, a garden, a gentle life.
His mother, Marta, welcomed her as a daughter.
And when their baby, Zara, was born — she thought, for the first time, that she was free.
But you don't walk away from a bloodline like the Velletis or the Adranos without ghosts dragging behind you.
---
It started with whispers.
A strange car parked too long outside the house. A phone call with silence on the other end. A rose left on her doorstep — a symbol both her family and their enemies once used to mark death.
She knew.
She tried to run again.
But they found her.
---
Nyx remembered that night in fragments.
The shattering window.
The masked men.
Elias yelling her name.
Zara's tiny scream.
The sharp sting of being grabbed, pinned, stripped.
The blinding pain.
The baby inside her — gone in one brutal kick.
And then, the worst: the silence.
Elias… no breath.
Marta… limp.
Zara… eyes open, not blinking.
Then another shot.
It was her mother-in-law.
The only woman who had been a mother to her… was also now dead.
Nyx had been left in a pool of her own blood, belly torn, wrists snapped, soul broken. The Adrano men had called it a message — a gift from the past. A punishment for the Velleti daughter who dared run.
They thought she'd bleed out and die.
She didn't.
---
She woke in a hospital two weeks later, under a fake name, in another country.
And in that sterile room, hooked to machines, she died anyway — not her body, but everything else.
The woman who loved gardens and laughter was gone.
Only Nyx remained.
And she made herself a promise.
"I will not kill quickly."
"I will not kill cleanly."
"I will kill until nothing remains."
The Velleti girl had been made to kill.
Now she would use it for the only purpose that mattered:
Vengeance.
And no one — not a single soul connected to the Adrano name — would be spared.