(Isabella POV)
The sound came first—that low, mechanical purr of engines that didn't belong on our block. Too smooth, too expensive, like silk over steel. Not taxis with their rattling exhausts, not delivery trucks wheezing up the hill. These were predators disguised as transportation.
I pressed my face to the crooked blinds, squinting through the gap where the slat had broken months ago. My blood turned to ice water.
Black SUVs lined the curb like wolves claiming territory. Tinted windows so dark they swallowed streetlight whole, chrome that gleamed despite the city grime. The kind of cars you only saw in movies about men who made people disappear.
My stomach plummeted through the floorboards.
They didn't rush. That was the worst part. They idled there, engines humming with patient menace. Savoring the moment before the kill. Because that's what this was—a hunt. And we were the prey cowering in our burrow.
Across the narrow hallway, Mrs. Fazio's door cracked open an inch. Her wrinkled face appeared in the gap, took in the scene below, then vanished. The deadbolt slid home with finality. Upstairs, curtains twitched and fell still. The whole building inhaled and forgot to breathe.
Everyone knew what it meant when black cars stopped on your street. Everyone knew whose men drove vehicles that cost more than our apartments were worth.
Torrino men.
I spun away from the window, heart hammering against my ribs like a caged bird. My father sat slumped on our threadbare couch, still wearing his blood-stiffened shirt like a confession. The stolen locket rested in his palm, catching the weak light from our single functioning lamp.
"They're here."
He blinked at me with glassy eyes, confusion swimming in features I'd inherited—the same dark eyes, the same stubborn chin. But where I'd learned to sharpen those traits into weapons, his had softened into weakness.
"Who's here?" His voice came out cracked, uncertain.
The innocent act shattered something inside my chest. "Don't." The word came out harsh, desperate. "Don't you dare play stupid with me now. Not when we're about to die for your greed."
I dropped to my knees in front of him, grabbing his stubbled chin and forcing him to meet my gaze. His skin felt clammy, feverish. "What did you take from them? What is that thing?"
His mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping on dry dock. The locket seemed to burn in his palm, gold catching the light like captured fire.
"It was just..." He swallowed hard, Adam's apple bobbing. "It was in the safe. I thought—Madonna mia, I thought it was just jewelry. Something to pawn. For your mother's treatments."
"Just jewelry?" My laugh came out sharp enough to draw blood. "You broke into Leonardo Torrino's private office and stole what you thought was just jewelry?"
He flinched at the name like I'd struck him. Everyone did. Even spoken in whispers, that name carried weight—the gravity of fear, the pull of something dark and magnetic.
I stared at the locket gleaming between his trembling fingers. It wasn't costume jewelry from some pawn shop. This had weight, presence. The gold was warm, as if it remembered human skin. Delicate engravings covered its surface—too fine, too personal for mere decoration. This was memory made tangible. This was sacred.
And we'd stolen it from the most dangerous man in New York.
"You've killed us," I whispered, the truth settling in my bones like winter.
Because when you stole from Leonardo Torrino, you didn't just take his property. You took a piece of his soul. And he collected those debts in blood.
A car door slammed outside, the sound echoing off brick walls like a gunshot. Heavy boots hit pavement with military precision. Voices murmured in the darkness—low, controlled, the kind of coordination that came from years of moving through shadows.
"They won't hurt us." My father's voice cracked with desperate hope. "I'll explain. I'll tell them about your mother, about the medical bills—"
"Stop." I grabbed his wrist hard enough to leave marks. "Do you hear yourself? Do you think men like that care about sob stories?"
But even as fear raced through my veins like poison, something else stirred beneath it. Something shameful and electric. The Torrino empire had finally noticed us—really noticed us. And there was a dark thrill in being seen by something so powerful, so utterly lethal.
Power called to power, even when that power belonged to someone else.
Another car door slammed. Closer this time.
I rushed back to the window, pulse hammering in my throat. Shadows moved with deadly purpose across the street. Men in suits that cost more than my father made in a year, ties knotted with the precision of garrotes. Their shoes gleamed despite the grimy sidewalk, and they moved like dancers—every step calculated, every gesture economical.
They didn't knock on doors asking permission. They swept through buildings like they owned them.
Maybe they did.
The building's front door opened without resistance—someone had buzzed them in, or locks simply didn't matter when you carried Torrino credentials. Footsteps echoed up the stairwell, measured and relentless as a funeral march.
I thought about running. The fire escape outside our kitchen window, down into the alley where rats and secrets lived in equal numbers. But running was for prey, and something deeper than survival instinct told me these men would catch anything that ran. Wolves always outpaced rabbits.
Besides, there was nowhere to go. When Leonardo Torrino wanted you found, the city itself became his hunting ground.
My father had gone gray, muttering prayers in rapid Italian that tumbled over each other like falling stones. The locket slipped from his nerveless fingers and landed on the carpet with a soft accusation.
"They're coming." My voice sounded strange, disconnected from the terror clawing at my chest.
The footsteps reached our floor. Paused. I could almost feel them listening, calculating, savoring the moment before they revealed themselves.
Then the apartment door exploded inward in a shower of splintered wood and screaming hinges.