Chapter 24
I was training harder with knives when my phone buzzed once on the metal table–just one vibration, short and sharp, but something in my gut twisted like it already knew. I didn’t even wait for Jeremiah’s nod. I dropped the blade and reached for the screen. The message came from one of Peter’s men, encrypted but shaking in its clarity: “Peter’s down. Ambushed. Nerona. We’re trying to secure the site.”
The floor dropped beneath me.
My lungs refused to work right and the walls started closing in as if the air itself was trying to mourn before I could. I didn’t say a word. I grabbed my gun and was already outside before Jeremiah even caught up. He shouted something behind me but my ears were ringing too hard, and my only answer was the sound of tires screeching against asphalt.
It took fifteen minutes to reach the warehouse. Fifteen minutes that felt like hours clawing through my throat.
And then I saw him.
Peter was lying on the ground, soaked in his own blood, riddled with bullet holes, chest still and eyes wide open. No last breath. No goodbye. Just gone. My knees hit the concrete before I even realized it and my hands were covered in his blood when I pulled his body into my arms. My nails dug into the front of his shirt and I screamed into his shoulder, not caring who the fuck heard me.
His hand was still clutching something–my childhood photo, folded and torn at the edge, the one he always kept in his wallet. The one where I was smiling, six years old, holding his hand. I held it to my chest like it could rewind time, like it could bring him back just one more second.
Jeremiah didn’t say anything. He just dropped down beside me and wrapped his arms around both of us. His silence was the only mercy I could take right then.
A few of our men stood back, waiting, grieving in their own quiet ways. But I didn’t cry pretty. I sobbed. I broke. I tore at the floor because I knew–I knew one of our own betrayed us. One of Peter’s trusted men leaked his schedule and walked him into that ambush.
Peter wasn’t just my brother. He was my backbone. My shield. He was the only reason I survived that first death. He built Aria Velenza when Danica Monroe burned. He swore to never let the
world silence me again.
And now they took him.
I looked down at his blood still warm on my hands, and something inside me stopped shaking. It didn’t still. It hardened.
“This isn’t pain,” I whispered, pressing my lips to his forehead one last time. “This is purpose
now.”
I stood up, slow and deliberate, and turned to Jeremiah. My voice was razor–edged, cold and final.
“I want every man in our network interrogated. I want names. I want the fucking rat’s teeth mailed to me before his corpse cools. And when we find the one who pulled the trigger, I won’t
just kill him. I’ll make him beg for death.”
Jeremiah gave a silent nod, his eyes dark as the grave we’d soon be digging.
The war wasn’t just Aria’s anymore.
Now… It belonged to Peter too.
The death of my brother Peter didn’t just carve a hole in my chest. It cracked the sky above me and poured hell into my bones. There was no more mourning after that, no more softness left to rot. There was only the war he trained me for and the ghosts that would answer to me one by
one.
I held a private funeral for him in the Velenza estate’s hidden chapel, where no outsiders coul twist his death into a headline or a mafia rumor. Just Jeremiah, a few loyal guards, and me. W didn’t wear black, we wore steel. Peter didn’t believe in pity. He believed in legacy. And I wa going to make sure his name was written in blood.
When the ashes settled and his urn was placed beneath the marble stone etched with “Brother Soldier. Savior.“, I didn’t cry anymore. I kissed the stone and whispered, “I’ll carry you now. promise.”
After that, the power shifted. Officially.
Peter’s men bowed to me. His codes, passwords, and high–tier connections were transferrec under my name. I became the new head of the Velenza Network–not as an heiress, but as a sovereign. I didn’t inherit his empire. I earned it.
And the first thing I did was sit down and write a list. A kill list.
At the top: the traitor who sold my brother out.
When they dragged the rat in, blindfolded and beaten, I didn’t ask why. I didn’t offer a drink or a deal or a second fucking chance. I walked in wearing a silk robe and combat boots, holding the lagger Jeremiah gifted me that morning.
He’d pressed it into my palm after the funeral and said in that calm, low voice of his, “It’s engraved. For you. ‘Never again silenced.‘ It’s what Peter would’ve wanted.”
And it was.
carved that blade into the traitor’s shoulder and twisted until he screamed like a pig. No mask. No gloves. I wanted him to see my face as the last thing he would ever breathe for.
Who paid you?” I asked, voice flat.
He hesitated. I smiled and stabbed lower.
‘Elodie,” he whimpered, sobbing. “It was her. And the Don from Calabria. She offered half a million for Peter’s route and… and-”
cut his throat before he could finish.
Not because I didn’t want to hear the rest. Because I already knew. Elodie wanted me dead. And now she bled my family too.
stood over the traitor’s corpse and laughed–a quiet, sharp, dead laugh that made even my own guards shiver.
4:54 pm D DDD
“She thinks this was revenge, I murmured. “No. This was an invitation.”
Word spread fast after that. Not just about Peter’s death but about what I did to the man who betrayed him. And suddenly, allies started looking twice before speaking. Some bowed. Others
ran.
Then Jeremiah had to leave two nights later. His legitimate front was under fire in the East and he needed to handle it personally. He stood in the doorway before his jet, dark suit, sharp jaw, and that unreadable look in his eyes.
“You good without me?” he asked.
“I don’t need to be good,” I told him. “I just need to be done.”
He smirked once, and left. I watched his plane vanish into the black and turned back toward the gates.
This was no longer about love. Or betrayal.
This was now a bloodline war. And I was burning every root Elodie came from.
