Chapter 13
I tilted my head, locking eyes with him. “That’s a rare sigil. Most Ferrantes wear the serpent.” His gaze sharpened like a blade drawn slow.
“That’s none of your business,” he said quietly. “Unless you’re asking as a Ferrante.”
I leaned back in my seat, slow, careful, calculating.
“No,” I said. “I’m asking as someone who buries Ferrantes.”
His eyes didn’t flinch.
But I swear… the air between us turned lethal.
And I liked it.
Cassian didn’t talk about the Ferrantes after that. He stayed cold, sharp–eyed, and distant like nothing in the world could pierce him and maybe nothing could. But something shifted in me that night. Something restless. Something that made me follow the quiet hush of footsteps after the auction meeting ended, heels silent, breath tight, as I watched my brother Peter and Cassian walk into the private war room and shut the door.
I stayed close to the wall.
The conversation wasn’t loud, but it didn’t need to be. My ears had learned to stretch in silence. “You clean now?” Peter asked, pouring whiskey into one glass, sliding it across the table.
Jeremiah didn’t touch it. He never did.
“Cleaner than the last time you bailed me out of a burning cell in Belarus,” he said, dryly. “But still owe you one.”
Peter exhaled. “I didn’t come here for that.”
“I know,” Jeremiah muttered. “You came here to ask if I’ll back your little sister. You know I don‘ work with emotionally compromised people.”
“She’s not emotional anymore,” Peter said. “She’s fire now. She burned her old life down and buil a new one in ashes. You of all people should respect that.”
There was a long pause.
“She’s still got Ferrante blood in her past,” Jeremiah said. “That doesn’t sit right with me.” “That’s exactly why I picked you,” Peter replied. “You hate that bloodline more than she does.”
I backed away as their voices faded into low strategy, my heart thumping as realization crashec over me like cold steel.
The real Jeremiah Ferrante.
Harvick’s fraternal twin.
The man they whispered about once at the Ferrante mansion but never dared name again. The twin disowned by their father for refusing to play the puppet mafia prince. The one who vanished before J even met Harvick. The one they said was dead or locked up or worse.
But he was alive.
And far more dangerous than anyone in that family.
He wasn’t just cut from a different cloth–he’d set the whole damn loom on fire.
Later that night, Peter caught me pacing by the hallway, arms crossed, nerves tangled in my veins. He didn’t pretend not to notice. He just looked at me with that same brotherly exhaustion and said calmly, “I know you were eavesdropping, Aria.”
I didn’t even blink. “I wanted answers. You didn’t tell me he was Ferrante.”
“I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d shut it all down if you knew,” he said. “You hate the Ferrante name so bad you’d burn anyone tied to it but Jeremiah? He hates that name worse than you do. It runs in his veins like poison and he’s been trying to flush it out for a decade.”
I stayed quiet, but my breathing was shallow.”
‘He changed his name, left the continent, got blacklisted by his own blood, and still survived,” Peter continued. “He doesn’t play like Harvick. No charm. No lies. Just pure execution.”
‘He’s cold,” I muttered.
‘He’s clean,” Peter corrected. “He doesn’t let emotions ruin his plans. And that’s exactly the kin of man you need next to you. Not to protect you. But to collaborate.”
raised an eyebrow. “You want me to team up with him?”
Peter nodded. “You both have the same enemy. You both know how deep the rot runs in that family. And you both have nothing left to lose.”
stared out the window, hands clenched. Somewhere out there, Harvick was playing husband tc a snake. Somewhere out there, Lara Ferrante was probably celebrating her son’s fake wedding and sleeping just fine knowing I was gone.
But now… I had something they didn’t expect.
had the other Ferrante.
The one they erased.
The one they couldn’t tame.
And maybe… just maybe… I’d use him to take back everything they stole from me.
I don’t want another Ferrante to link with, but Harvick pretended to be Jeremiah so well that the name already makes my skin crawl. And now here I am, standing beside the real one. The one who doesn’t smile. The one who doesn’t lie. The one who moves like a ghost in a room full of killers and never breaks a sweat.
Peter had warned me this mission wouldn’t be clean. He said if I wanted the Ferrantes to fall, I needed to know where their rot spread–and that trail led to a warehouse in Valmora, tied to a cargo shipment the family labeled “textile trade” but had nothing to do with silk or cotton. It was human cargo. And that alone made my blood go cold.
Jeremiah and I moved through the safehouse silently that morning. Him loading the gear like he was preparing for war. Me checking blueprints on the table, tying my hair up like a noose around everything I used to be. He hadn’t said a single thing beyond mission brief.
The tension in the room was unbearable, and I had enough of it crawling through my bones.
