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I took the phone from her hand and watched Luca’s face split open again. It was so satisfying watching myself kick his ass.

Then my own phone rang. It was the house. The urgent beep wiped the amusement off my face.

Bianca saw the instant change in me and winced.

“Your father?”

I nodded before I answered.

“Yes?”

It wasn’t my father. It was worse. Enzo Colleti, our Head of Security. His voice was grim.

“Miss Ventresca.”

That tone. Something inside me shifted.

“What?”

“Your father wants you home.”

I straightened.

“Why?”

The silence stretched too long. Cold moved through my spine.

“What’s happened?”

There was another pause.

“He said to come home. Now.”

The line went dead. I stared at the screen. At my reflection in it.

There was blood on my mouth and madness in my eyes.

Bianca folded her arms.

“What now?”

I crushed the cigarette beneath my heel and looked back toward the club. Toward the mess I’d left behind. And for the first time in a long time, the adrenaline started draining. It left something ugly in its place.

Instinct.

Something had changed. At home. In my house.

And whatever waited for me there, it was far worse than Luca Bellandi bleeding on a nightclub floor.

Chapter 2: Zeno

The man across from me was sweating through his shirt. And it had nothing to do with the heat.

It was because he knew… in that way that men always knew when they were about to lose something special.

Money. Territory. Teeth. Sometimes all three.

I sat at the head of the table in silence, fingers steepled beneath my chin, watching him unravel.