Chapter 15
“I want him to wake up every day with everything he thought he won rotting in his hands,” I continued. “I want Elodie to scream his name in bed while she dreams of my shadow. I want his mother to see the empire she built crack brick by brick until all that’s left is ash. I want the Ferrante name to mean failure.”
A long breath escaped Jeremiah’s lungs.
“Now that,” he said, “I can work with.”
He flicked the cigarette off the rooftop and turned to me fully.
“You want to dismantle the Ferrante empire?” he said. “You’ll need more than rage.”
“I’ve got rage,” I said. “And brains. And a name that’s legally dead.”
He gave a small nod. “Then we build the war.”
“And we start,” I added, stepping beside him, “with the ports they’ve been using for that trafficking shipment.”
He smirked. “You really are Peter’s sister.”
“I’m worse,” I said. “Because I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
Jeremiah offered his hand.
A pact. Quiet and final.
I stared at it for a second. Then I took it.
And just like that, Aria Velenza declared war on the empire that tried to bury her.
Harvick wanted me to grieve in silence.
He should’ve killed me when he had the chance.
HARVICK’S POV
My head was fucking breaking while having that meeting with the southern dons because nothing was going right. Every shipment was either raided or vanished. Every backdoor port we had locked down for years suddenly turned into a cursed trap. The buyers were getting nervous, the Bratva was already asking too many fucking questions, and I had five of my best runners found burned in a ditch last week with their tongues cut out and a single word branded on their chests–Silenc3r.
I slammed my fist on the table so hard that even the old men flinched.
“You’re all sitting here like little bitches waiting for me to hand you answers,” I growled, looking at each of them. “Who the fuck is leaking our movements? Who knew.about the Montenegro route? Who the fuck let that intel slip?”
One of the underbosses opened his mouth to speak but I snapped at him before he could get the first word out.
“I don’t want your excuses, Lauro. I want the son of a bitch who’s playing a ghost with my empire. We had a clean system. A locked pipeline. And now? Silence is louder than loyalty.” Another don leaned in, face calm but voice careful. “There’s a rumor… someone new. A name
survivors. No message. Just ashes.”
“I don’t give a fuck what they’re calling him,” I snapped. “I want him found. I want him bled out on my steps. You understand me?”
My phone buzzed once on the table.
I ignored it. Kept barking orders. Told them to double our guards at the Tunisian port, to rotate every driver in Naples, and to vet every crew down to their shoelaces. Then it buzzed again. And again.
I grabbed it with the intention of smashing it against the wall–but I saw the message.
It was from Marco. One of my oldest men. The one who doesn’t rattle easy.
“Boss… this looks like her.”
2
Attached was a grainy photo. A woman caught by CCTV near the Garezzo safehouse. Black curls. Slim frame. Covered face but the angle of her jaw. The set of her spine. My hand started shaking.
No. No fucking way.
“She’s dead,” I whispered.
I stared at the screen and blinked hard like that would erase the image.
“She’s fucking dead,” I said louder, rising from my seat and throwing the bottle across the room “I buried her. I held what was left of her in my hands. I saw the fucking fire. Don’t bring me this ghost bullshit!”
Everyone went silent.
I looked at the photo again. I knew it couldn’t be her. It wasn’t logical. Wasn’t possible.
But deep in my gut, deep in the part of me that still remembered the way she breathed in her sleep…I fucking knew.
“Get out,” I said coldly. “All of you.”
They didn’t argue. Chairs scraped and doors opened and soon I was alone. Just me and the buzzing echo of a name I’d tried to burn out of my brain.
Elodie came in. Her voice sickly sweet like always. “Baby, you need to rest. You’re pushing too hard-”
‘Get out, Elodie,” I said without looking at her.
She froze.
‘I said get out.”
And when she didn’t move fast enough, I turned and stared at her so sharp she flinched.
I waited for the door to shut before I pulled up the image again.
Danica… or whoever the fuck this was… she was supposed to be gone. Buried. Ghosted from my world. But now there’s whispers. There’s movement. There’s fucking fire in the cracks of my empire.
And if it’s her…
If it’s really her?
3/3 48.4%
If it’s really her?
Then I’ll drag her back from hell just to find out why she’s haunting me. And if someone’s pretending to be her?
Then they better start digging their own grave.
Because no one fucks with Harvick Ferrante and walks away breathing.
By midnight I interrogated my men like they were strangers I’d been waiting years to destroy.
Marco was the first. He flinched the moment I locked eyes with him and I didn’t even wait for a word–I drove my fist into his gut so hard he folded. Then another to his jaw. He spat blood muttered something about the photo maybe being a lookalike.
A lookalike?” I growled, grabbed the back of his neck and slammed his head against the wall You think I can’t recognize the woman I bled for? The woman who nearly ruined me? The one uilt a life around and buried with my own fucking hands?”
One of the others tried to speak. I pulled my pistol and cracked it across his temple before the ull sentence left his mouth. Blood ran down his cheek as he stumbled.
