(Isabella POV)
The sound came first. That low purr of engines that didn't belong on our block. Too smooth, too expensive. Not taxis or delivery trucks. These were predators dressed as cars.
I pressed my face to the crooked blinds. My blood turned to ice.
Black SUVs lined the curb like wolves claiming territory. Tinted windows that swallowed streetlight whole. Chrome gleaming despite city grime. The kind of cars you only saw in movies about men who made people disappear.
My stomach dropped.
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 prey cowering in our burrow.
Across the hallway, Mrs. Fazio's door cracked open. Her wrinkled face appeared, saw the scene below, then vanished. The deadbolt slid home. Upstairs, curtains twitched and went still. The whole building held its breath.
Everyone knew what it meant when black cars stopped on your street. Everyone knew whose men drove vehicles worth more than our apartments.
Torrino men.
I spun from the window, heart hammering. My father sat slumped on our threadbare couch, still wearing his blood-stiffened shirt. The stolen locket caught weak light from our single lamp.
"They're here."
He blinked at me with glassy eyes. Confusion swimming in features I'd inherited. Same dark eyes, same stubborn chin. But where I'd sharpened those traits into weapons, his had softened into weakness.
"Who's here?"
The innocent act shattered something in my chest. "Don't." The word came out harsh. "Don't play stupid with me now. Not when we're about to die for your greed."
I dropped to my knees, grabbing his chin and forcing him to meet my gaze. His skin felt clammy. "What did you take from them? What is that thing?"
His mouth opened and closed like a dying fish. The locket seemed to burn in his palm.
"It was just..." He swallowed hard. "It was in the safe. I thought it was jewelry. Something to pawn. For your mother's treatments."
"Just jewelry?" My laugh came out sharp. "You broke into Leonardo Torrino's private office and stole what you thought was just jewelry?"
He flinched at the name. Everyone did. Even whispered, that name carried weight. The gravity of fear, the pull of something dark and magnetic.
I stared at the locket gleaming between his fingers. This wasn't costume jewelry from some pawn shop. This had weight. The gold was warm, like it remembered human skin. Delicate engravings covered its surface. Too personal for decoration. This was memory made tangible. Sacred.
And we'd stolen it from the most dangerous man in New York.
"You've killed us," I whispered.
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. Heavy boots hit pavement. Voices murmured in darkness. Low, controlled, the coordination of men who moved through shadows for a living.
"They won't hurt us." My father's voice cracked with hope. "I'll explain. Tell them about your mother, the medical bills."
"Stop." I grabbed his wrist hard enough to bruise. "Do you hear yourself? You think men like that care about sob stories?"
But even as fear raced through my veins, 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 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. Shadows moved with deadly purpose. Men in suits that cost more than my father made in a year. Ties knotted with the precision of garrotes. Their shoes gleamed despite grimy sidewalks, and they moved like dancers. Every step calculated, every gesture economical.
They didn't knock 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 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. But running was for prey, and something deeper than survival 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. The locket slipped from his fingers and landed on carpet with a soft accusation.
"They're coming."
The footsteps reached our floor. Paused. I could 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.