The silence was a lie.
Sixteen-year-old Marcella Vale felt it in her bones—the wrongness of it, the unnatural stillness that pressed against her skin. The Vale mansion was never silent. Not truly. Its corridors usually hummed with the faint murmur of staff, the occasional ringing of her father's phone, and the clink of glasses from the kitchen.
But now, that life had been drained away.
Moments before, voices had clashed behind the heavy mahogany doors of her father's study—the deep, commanding rumble of her father and the higher, urgent pitch of her sister, Serafina. The sounds had been sharp, jagged. Angry. And then… nothing. No footsteps. No door opening. No fading argument.
Just a silence that felt thick enough to choke her.
Marcella stood at the far end of the hallway, barefoot in a pale nightdress, her heart knocking against her ribs. A prickling unease crawled up her spine, and her fingers curled against her sides. She didn't want to move. Every instinct screamed that nothing good lay beyond that door. And yet… she couldn't stay still.
The air smelled faintly of her father's cigars, the warm, spiced aroma carried by the draft that whispered down the hall. Normally, it was comforting. Tonight, it made her stomach turn.
She took a step forward. The cold marble floor bit into her soles. Another step, and another, until her shadow stretched along the wall beside her, trembling with the faint flicker of the hallway's sconces.
Halfway there, it came.
A sound that ripped the silence apart.
Bang.
Her body jolted.
Bang.
Her breath caught in her throat, lodged there like a stone. Gunshots—sharp and final, the kind of sound you couldn't mistake for anything else.
Marcella's legs moved before her mind did. She darted toward the edge of the hall and pressed herself into the shadow of a massive bookshelf, its dark wood towering over her like a sentinel. Her back flattened against the wall, her body curled in the narrow space between the wood and the cold plaster.
Her pulse pounded so loudly she was certain it would give her away.
The study door was just a few feet ahead. The carved brass handle gleamed faintly under the light, and through the keyhole—just a sliver—she could see the world inside.
She wished she hadn't looked.
Her father's desk, once a symbol of power, was now a scene of ruin. His body was slumped forward, his head turned slightly to the side, eyes open but unseeing. A dark crimson bloom spread across his white collar, stark against the fine fabric.
On the floor, Serafina lay sprawled on her side, her chest unmoving. Her hand was outstretched toward something—toward their father, perhaps—but the reach had been cut short forever. Her nightgown was torn at the hem, her hair loose around her pale face.
Marcella's breath trembled. A sound tried to escape her throat, but she bit it back so hard she tasted blood.
And then she saw him.
A figure in a black hoodie, the hood casting his features in shadow. His posture was relaxed, casual even, as though the room wasn't heavy with death. In his hand, the gun still glinted under the desk lamp.
Her gaze snagged on it.
The weapon wasn't ordinary—it was marked. Etched into the metal grip was a crest she knew as intimately as her own family's: a serpent coiled around a cross.
The De Luca family crest.
Every instinct told her to look away, to shut her eyes. But then the man shifted, and for a heartbeat, his hood fell back just enough for the light to brush across his face.
Lorenzo De Luca.
The name hit her like ice water. The heir to her father's oldest enemy. She had seen him before, in photographs tucked into newspapers, in glimpses across the ballroom at tense gatherings where smiles were masks and champagne was a weapon. But never like this.
Never with a gun in his hand and her family's blood on his clothes.
He lowered the weapon with calm finality, the way someone might place a pen down after signing their name. Then he turned toward the door. His footsteps were slow, deliberate. There was no rush. No fear of being caught.
No remorse.
The heavy door closed behind him with a muted click, the sound oddly small for something so final.
Marcella didn't move. The scent of cigar smoke was fading now, overtaken by something metallic and sharp that seemed to fill her mouth and nose.
When she finally stepped out from her hiding place, her body felt foreign, her limbs stiff and shaky. She crossed the study's threshold like a ghost.
Her father's skin was already cool when she touched his hand. She stared at his face, searching for some sign that he could still speak, still tell her what to do. There was nothing.
Her gaze shifted to her sister. Serafina's eyes were closed, her expression eerily peaceful. A dark hole marred the delicate curve of her temple. Marcella knelt beside her, brushing her fingers over her sister's knuckles, willing them to warm under her touch.
They didn't.
Something in her chest shifted then—snapped, perhaps. The tears that burned at the edges of her eyes didn't fall. They couldn't. Grief was there, heavy and suffocating, but it was tangled with something hotter.
Hatred.
The kind that carved itself into the bones, that didn't fade with time.
She didn't whisper her promise aloud. The walls didn't need to hear it. But inside, where the girl she had been was already burning away, the vow was made.
She would find Lorenzo De Luca.
She would look into those same eyes again.
And she would take everything from him, the way he had taken everything from her.
It was not the promise of a child.
It was the vow of a woman forged in fire.
And she would not rest until it was fufulfilled.