The park was painted in gold. The kind of light that softened edges and made the world seem gentler than it truly was. Families lingered along the paths, their laughter like fragments of a song. Lovers leaned against the railing near the fountain, whispering secrets. Children darted around with balloons tied to their wrists.
Dante watched it all with detached eyes, but he wasn't here for any of it. His focus never strayed from the girl.
Serena Vale.
She moved with a quiet innocence that didn't belong in his world. Every time her laughter spilled into the air, it gnawed at him, sharp and unwanted, because it echoed something from another life. Something he had buried long ago.
Her father's shadow.
Vale.
Dante adjusted his position against the lamppost, the glow of the streetlight catching the smoke of his cigar as it curled upward into the cooling air. Serena leaned closer to the boy — Ethan. Clean, polished, the type of man who still believed in happy endings. Dante sneered.
"Naïve," he muttered under his breath.
The boy wouldn't last. Dante had seen men like him collapse when faced with the weight of the real world. Love wasn't strong enough when debts and bloodlines came into play.
Serena's smile flickered in the light, and for a moment, Dante was dragged back to another time.
Flashback – Fifteen Years Ago
The warehouse smelled of gun oil and damp concrete. Vale stood opposite him, the same gray-eyed stare Serena carried now, a pistol loose in his hand and a smirk tugging at his lips.
"You're late," Vale had said.
"And you're impatient," Dante had replied, tossing the keys of the truck they had just secured onto the table. Inside that truck were crates that would make them both millionaires by sunrise.
They had been partners — not by blood, but by choice. Two men carving out an empire in a city that had long belonged to other wolves.
"Someday," Vale had told him that night, raising a glass of whiskey, "they'll tell stories about us. Dante and Vale. The kings of this city."
Dante had believed it. Back then, he believed in brotherhood.
But brotherhood meant nothing in the face of greed.
Back to the Present
Dante exhaled, his jaw tightening.
Vale hadn't died a king. He had died a coward.
Dante remembered the moment he discovered the betrayal — millions siphoned off, shipments rerouted, and worst of all, a secret deal with their enemies. Vale hadn't just betrayed him. He had betrayed the code, the family, everything they had built.
The night Dante confronted him played in his mind like a scar.
Flashback – The Betrayal
The rain had come down in sheets, hammering against the hood of Dante's car as he waited outside the crumbling dockyard. Vale arrived, late, soaked to the bone, and carrying a briefcase Dante knew was stuffed with money that didn't belong to him.
"You took what was mine," Dante said, stepping from the shadows. His gun was already drawn, though he hadn't lifted it yet.
Vale had the audacity to smile, though guilt flickered across his face. "It wasn't yours, Dante. It was ours. But you were too blind to see I wanted out. I'm not going to die chained to this world."
"You don't walk away," Dante had hissed. "Not from me. Not from the family. You know the price."
But Vale hadn't listened. He had walked into that storm with a false promise on his lips — I'll make it right, brother.
The next morning, the city woke to the news: Vale, dead in a car accident.
Only Dante had never believed it was an accident.
Present
That doubt had never left him. It festered. It grew. It drove him to dig into every corner Vale had left behind. And in that search, he had found her.
Serena.
At first, he had dismissed her. Just a child. An innocent. But the older she grew, the more she carried the ghost of her father — his smile, his stubbornness, the sharpness of those gray eyes.
Dante ground out the end of his cigar against the lamppost, his thoughts darkening.
Thirty years old. Half his life had been spent in blood and smoke, in the currency of betrayal and violence. At fifteen, while other boys were still chasing schoolyard dreams, he was already running corners, spilling blood, carving his name into the city's underworld.
And now, at thirty, he stood as a king Vale could never be — feared, obeyed, unchallenged.
And yet Vale's ghost still lingered.
Inside Dante's World
"Boss," a voice interrupted his thoughts.
Marco, one of his most trusted lieutenants, approached with hesitation. He was a broad man, scarred from a dozen fights, but even he looked uneasy as he glanced toward the fountain.
"You've been watching her for weeks," Marco said carefully. "She's… just a girl."
Dante's eyes snapped to him, cold and sharp. "She's not just anything. She's Vale's daughter."
Marco shifted uncomfortably. "With respect, boss… Vale's been gone a long time. You're thirty now. You built everything he couldn't. Whatever score there was—"
"The score doesn't vanish with the man," Dante cut in, his voice low but edged with steel. "Vale stole from me. Betrayed me. Died before he could pay what he owed. That debt is still mine to collect."
Marco swallowed hard, his gaze flicking to Serena again. "And the girl?"
Dante's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "The girl will learn what her father never did. That debts don't die with blood. They live on."
He turned back toward Serena, watching as Ethan brushed a strand of hair from her face, making her blush. A strange, almost unfamiliar flicker ran through him — not tenderness, but possession.
She was Vale's, yes. But she would be his.
The night deepened. One by one, the park-goers drifted away, leaving the fountain quieter, the laughter fading into silence. Serena and Ethan lingered, wrapped in the bubble of their young love.
Dante didn't move until they finally left, hand in hand, unaware of the shadow that stalked them.
When he finally stepped from the lamppost, his coat catching the breeze, he knew his decision had already been made.
He would let her have this. The boy. The laughter. The illusion of safety.
But soon — when the time was right — Serena Vale would come to understand.
Her father's sins belonged to her now.
And Dante always collected.