Chapter 1
I grew up as a shadow in the outlying vision of Smart Vane, a man who ruled the city's underworld but refused to acknowledge the "bastard daughter" from a forgotten affair. To Smart, I was a liability; to me, he was a god I needed to impress. Desperate to earn a seat at his table, I decided to deliver him the one thing his empire lacked: the head of Charlotte Salvator
Under the alias 'Ria,' I traded my silk for leather and infiltrated the Salvator recruitment trials. I played the part of a cold-blooded drifter perfectly, clawing my way through the ranks until I was assigned to the inner circle's security detail. My plan was simple: record the shipment manifests, map the safe houses, and vanish.
Yet the plan shattered the moment I was summoned to Charlotte's private office for a "loyalty screening." Standing by the window was Charlotte Salvator, a woman whose reputation for cruelty was matched only by her uncanny ability to spot a lie.
As she stepped into the room, she didn't look at her files. She simply turned, her dark eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying familiarity. "You have your father's eyes, Vera," she murmured, her voice like velvet over a blade. "But you lack his talent for hiding fear."
The door clicked shut behind me, and for the first time, I realized I wasn't the hunter—i was the bait.
I stood glued to the floor struggling to suppress my fears and at the same time think fast about how to convince Charlotte I was on her side. Then i finally gained my voice "father"?, i chuckled, "that man is as good as dead to me and I won't rest until I see him down". Charlotte walked closely towards me, her eyes fixed on me like "an eagle targeting its lunch" she leaned near my ears and whispered, "how can I trust you huh", "mere words are nothing until placed into action". If you really hate him so much then prove it". For your own sake I hope you won't do anything silly, I've got eyes everywhere. Charlotte said, patting my shoulder.
Before I could utter another word Charlotte signaled me out of her office.
CHAPTER 2
The cold air of the hallway felt like a slap, shocking me back into my body. I walked with a calculated steady stride, knowing that if Charlotte really did have eyes everywhere, then I had to watch my steps. I wasn't just "Ria" the drifter anymore; I was a marked woman playing with" a double sided blade".
I returned to the barracks, my mind racing through the psychology of betrayal. To win Charlotte's trust, I can't just give her crumbs. I have to give her blood. I pulled a burner phone from a hollowed-out mattress—my direct line to Smart Vane's right-hand man.
"I'm in," I whispered when the line clicked open. "But Charlotte is suspicious. I need a win to get closer. Give me the coordinates for the Eastside armory transport."
There was a pause. "Smart won't like risking that shipment, Vera."
"Tell Smart if he wants Charlotte's head, he has to stop being stingy with the bait," I snapped, remembering the coldness I'd seen in his eyes my whole life.
Two nights later, I leaked the transport details to Charlotte's head of intelligence. I watched from the shadows of a warehouse as Charlotte's men ambushed the convoy. It was a massacre. My father's men were dragged out of their trucks, his precious black-market hardware seized in minutes.
As the smoke cleared, Charlotte appeared, looking like a dark saint in the moonlight. She found me leaning against a crate, my knuckles bloodied from a "fight" I'd staged to look authentic. She didn't say thank you. Instead, she handed me a heavy, silver-plated revolver.
"You gave me his shipment," she said, her voice humming with dangerous approval. "Now, I want you to give me his silence. He's hosting a gala at the Sias Lounge tomorrow night. You're going to walk in as his daughter, and you're going to walk out as my successor."
The weight of the gun felt like a lead. I had spent my life wanting Smart Vane to look at me, and now, I was going to be the last thing he ever saw.
CHAPTER3
The Sias Lounge was a cage of crystal and gold, teeming with the city's elite—and every single one of them was a predator. I smoothed the silk of my gown, feeling the cold weight of the silver revolver strapped to my thigh. My heart raced and my ribs felt tight, but I kept my face as frozen as ice.
Across the ballroom, stood Smart Vane in the center of a servile circle, looking every bit like the king he pretended to be. He hadn't seen me yet. I caught Charlotte's figure by the balcony; she wasn't looking at the crowd. Her eyes were fixed on me, a silent conductor waiting for the first note of a tragedy.
I pushed through the crowd, the smell of expensive cigars and desperation gathered in the air. As I stepped into his line of sight, the circle around my father went silent.
"Vera," he said, his voice carrying that familiar, dismissive edge. He didn't offer a hug or even a smile. He just looked at me up and down like a piece of trash . "I heard you were playing soldier with the Salvators. I assumed you'd be dead or begging for a way back by now."
"I'm not here to beg, Smart," I said, my voice steady despite the desperations
screaming in my veins. "I'm here to give you the one thing you never gave me: a "legacy."
The room seemed to shrink. I felt the gaze of Charlotte's hidden "eyes" on my back, and my father's hand drifted toward his blazer.
"You're bold for a girl who failed her first assignment," he said with disgust, stepping closer until I could smell the gin on his breath. "The armory shipment? My men are dead because of you."
"Your men are dead because you're outmoded," I whispered, leaning in so that only he could hear. "And Charlotte wants you to know that the 'bastard' sends her regards."
His eyes widened—not with anger, but with an iota of genuine fear. For the first time in my life, he truly saw me. And in that second, I realized Charlotte didn't just want him dead; she wanted him to know exactly who did it.
CHAPTER 4
Check-mate," I mouthed.
The air in the ballroom didn't just chill; it shattered. My father's hand didn't make it to his holster. A single, muffled thing from the gallery—Charlotte's silencer—sent a bullet through the champagne glass in his hand. The crystal exploded, and with it, the appearance of the gala.
The music died in a discordant screech of violins. Then came the screams.
"Vera, you little—" Smart didn't finish. His personal guards, "the clenched fists in tuxedos", lunged forward. I didn't wait. I kicked the heavy oak table between us, sending silver platters into their midst.
I hid behind a marble pillar just as the first real volley of gunfire turned the Sias Lounge into a shooting gallery. Dust from the plaster choked the air. I reached for the revolver on my thigh, my heart pounding against my ribs.
"Move, Ria!" a voice barked in my ear. It was one of Charlotte's extraction teams, disguised as a waiter. He shoved a smoke grenade toward the center of the dance floor.
BOOM.
The whole atmosphere vanished into thick smoke and dust . I stayed low, moving by muscle memory toward the extraction routes I'd mapped out weeks ago. I wasn't the "bastard daughter" anymore; I was a ghost in the machine.
I burst through the kitchen doors, the heat of the stoves a sharp contrast to the air-conditioned chaos behind me. A cook tried to block my path; I didn't shoot, just used the butt of the revolver to clear my way. I scrambled toward the service elevator, but the doors were already sliding shut.
A hand reached out—not to help, but to grab. It was smart. Blood from the glass shards had mapped red rivers down his face, making him look like the devil himself.
"You think she'll keep you?" he hissed, his grip like a vice on my throat. "She's using you to get me, Vera. Once I'm gone, you're just a witness she doesn't need."
The elevator hummed, the floor numbers ticking down toward the garage. I looked at the man who had ignored me for twenty years and felt nothing but the cold weight of survival. I slammed my forehead into his nose—a sickening crunch—and as he recoiled, I shoved him back into the smoke-filled hallway.
The doors clicked shut. I was alone in the vibrating silence of the lift. When the doors opened to the rainy alleyway, a black sedan was waiting, its engine a low, predatory growl.
Charlotte was in the back seat, tapping a cigarette. "He's still breathing, isn't he?"
"For now," I said, climbing in, my gown ruined and my hands shaking. "But the 'god' is bleeding. That's a start."
Chapter 5
You have a soft heart, Vera," Charlotte said, her voice a low vibration that made the hair on my arms stand up. "You had the chance to finish it in that hallway. Instead, you gave him a broken nose and a head start."
"I gave him a message," I replied, my voice raspy from the smoke. "Death is too quick for a man who spent twenty years pretending I didn't exist. I want him to watch his empire crumble first. I want him to feel the 'shadow' outstripping him."
Charlotte finally turned, her eyes scanning the blood on my collar with a clinical, almost predatory interest. She reached out, her gloved fingers tilting my chin up. "Spoken like a true Salvatore. But remember: in this world, a wounded animal is more dangerous than a dead one. Smart Vane still has his 'clenched fists,' and now they have a target."
She tapped the glass partition, and the driver took a sharp turn into the industrial district, far from the polished marble of the heights. We pulled into a nondescript warehouse—the nerve center of her intelligence web.
As the heavy steel doors groaned shut behind us, Charlotte stepped out of the car, her heels clicking like a countdown on the concrete. "You proved you can bleed him, Vera. Now, prove you can replace him."
She led me to a massive surveillance area. Screens flickered with chaotic feeds from the Lounge: police cordons, panicked socialites, and a grainy shot of my father being shoved into an armored SUV by his remaining loyalists.
"He's retreating to 'The Vault,'" Charlotte whispered, pointing to a heavily fortified penthouse on the city's edge. "He'll go to ground, burn his files, and call in every favor he's owed. We have six hours before he vanishes into the wind."
She handed me a tactical earpiece and a new set of keys—not to a sedan, but to a high-powered motorcycle parked in the corner.
"He thinks I'm the one coming for him," Charlotte smiled, a cold, sharp expression that didn't reach her eyes. "He's bracing for a siege. He isn't expecting a ghost. Go to his safe house. Use the codes you stole from the armory transport. Enter as a daughter seeking 'asylum,' and leave as the woman who took his crown."
The weight of the silver revolver in my hand felt different now. It wasn't a burden; it was a key.
"And if he realizes it's a trap before I get through the door?" I asked.
Charlotte leaned in, her velvet-over-blade voice chilling my soul. "Then you'll find out if you really have his talent for hiding fear—or if you're just another shadow meant to be stepped on."
I swung my leg over the bike, the engine roaring to life, echoing the thunder outside. I wasn't playing a double-sided blade anymore. I was the blade.
Chapter 6
The cold rain hit my face like a slap, grounding me as I rode away from the warehouse. Every gear shift was a jagged memory of the twenty years he'd spent building walls I was now about to tear down.
I reached the Vault in no time. It was a brutal megalith of concrete and glass, shimmering under the city's artificial glow. Charlotte was right—the outer edge was crawling. Salvatore's personal "clenched fists" were out in force, their tactical flashlights cutting through the downpour like frantic needles.
I didn't slow down. I cut the engine a block away and ghosted through the shadows of the service entrance. The codes from the armory transport chirped a soft green on the keypad. The first lie worked.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of ozone and expensive shredded paper. I found him in the center of the penthouse, framed by floor-to-ceiling windows. He looked smaller than he did in my nightmares, hunched over a mahogany desk, frantically feeding the last of his legacy into a burner.
"Vera?" His voice cracked as I stepped into the light. He didn't look for a weapon; he looked for a savior. "Charlotte... She's burned the docks. She's coming here. I knew you'd come. Family... it's all we have when the world turns."
I didn't lower the silver revolver. I watched the relief in his eyes curdling into a slow, horrific realization as he noticed I wasn't breathless, I wasn't running, and I wasn't alone. The tactical earpiece hummed—Charlotte's silent presence on the other end of the line.
"You're right, Dad," I said, the word tasted like copper. "Family is everything. That's why I'm the only one who gets to watch the lights go out."
I reached into my jacket and pulled out the record book I'd lifted from the transport—the one thing he needed to rebuild. I didn't hand it to him. I tossed it into the burner.
His scream was lost in the sudden, violent shattering of the glass behind him. Charlotte hadn't just sent a ghost; she'd sent a distraction, and I was the one holding the match.
"Drop it, Vera," he growled, the mask of the desperate victim slipping to reveal the predator beneath. He didn't reach for a gun; he reached for a heavy glass decanter, shattering it against the desk to create a jagged, crystalline blade. "You were always too emotional. Charlotte sees it. I see it. You don't have the stomach for what comes next."
I didn't drop the revolver. I stepped into his space, the distance between us shrinking until I could smell the expensive scotch and the rot of his dying empire. "I have twenty years of your 'lessons' in my stomach, Dad. I'm full."
He lunged with a speed that defied his age, the glass shard whistling past my ear. I blocked with the barrel of the gun, the metal clashing against the glass with a bone-shaking jar. I didn't fire. This wasn't about a bullet; it was about the deep rooted weight of the betrayal.
We slammed into the mahogany desk, wood smashing under our combined weight. He was stronger than he looked, his fingers clawing at my throat, trying to find the pulse he'd once claimed to protect. I drove my knee into his ribs, hearing the muffled crack that signaled the end of his breath—and his leverage.
"You're... just... like me," he wheezed, blood flecking his lips as I pinned him against the cold floor. The silver revolver pressed into the soft hollow of his throat.
"No," I whispered, my voice a ragged edge. "You built a cage. I'm building a graveyard."
The tactical earpiece crackled. Charlotte's voice was a low, clinical purr. "Finish it, Vera. Before the 'clenched fists' reach the door. Prove you're the blade, not the shadow."
I looked into his eyes—searching for a flicker of the father I'd invented as a child. I only found a mirror of my own cold fury.
Chapter 7
My finger tightened on the silver trigger, the metal biting into my skin, ready to finalize the debt. But before the hammer could fall, the heavy steel doors of the penthouse didn't just open—they dissolved in a controlled, surgical explosion.
Charlotte stepped through the settling dust, her figure sharp against the firelight. She wasn't wearing her tactical gear anymore; she was back in her tailored silk, looking every bit the ruling queen of a new era.
"Enough, Vera," she said, her voice carrying over the roar of the wind. She didn't raise a weapon, but the two snipers flanking her did, their red laser dots dancing across my father's chest—and my own.
"You told me to finish it," I yelled, my pulse pounding against the revolver's grip. "You said I was the blade!"
"A blade is a tool, Vera. And a dead man is a useless one," Charlotte countered, walking toward us with a clinical, predatory interest. She looked down at my father, who was gasping for air on the floor. "Your father has the offshore account keys and the names of the three senators who haven't turned yet. If you kill him now, we lose the infrastructure. "We lost the crown."
I looked down at the man who had spent twenty years erasing me. He was pathetic, a weary animal, yet Charlotte was right—he was still a valuable asset for intelligence.
"He doesn't deserve to breathe," I hissed.
Charlotte leaned in, her velvet-over-blade voice chilling my soul. "In this world, we don't do what people deserve. We do what is profitable. Step back. Your training isn't over—it's just changed."
The weight of the gun felt like a lead. I had a choice: pull the trigger and become a ghost in the wind, or lower it and become Charlotte's right hand in a kingdom built on my father's bones.
I lowered the silver revolver, not out of mercy, rather to the realization of the fact that killing him was an escape for him; keeping him alive, "Powerless", helplessly watching me take his place was an exquisite torture. Charlotte immediately moved her team in to secure the "The Vault." While her technicians bled his accounts dry, she forced me to sign the documents that officially transfer the Salvatore assets into a blind trust controlled by the two women
As I stood on the balcony, Charlotte revealed a chilling detail: she didn't just find me to help her, she engineered the original transport hit that forced me out of hiding and tested my "lethality" before the takeover.
By dawn, the city wakes up to a new reality. The "clenched fists" were absorbed, and the name Salvatore is no longer whispered with fear, but with the knowledge that a new shadow was running the heights.
As I stood in my father's office, looking at the city i now partially owned, I realized I'm now tied to Charlotte, a woman far more dangerous and calculating than my father ever was.
Chapter 8
The silence in the office was heavier than the smoke that had filled the penthouse an hour ago. Charlotte sat in my father's high-backed leather chair—a throne she hadn't even bothered to clean the blood off of—and began peeling an orange with a small, ivory-handled knife.
"Don't look so betrayed, Vera," she said, the blade catching the morning sun. "If I hadn't 'engineered' your return, you'd still be wasting your potential in some gutter in Marseilles. I didn't just give you back your name; I gave you a purpose."
I walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, the city of Rome sprawling beneath us like a map of conquered territory. My reflection looked back at me—ghostly, stained, and unrecognizable. "You used me as a heat-seeking projectile to clear your
path. My father was the target, but I was the weapon that took the recoil."
"And you survived it," she countered, tossing a piece of zest onto the mahogany desk. "Which is why we are going to discuss the London Annex. Your father's senators aren't just going to hand over the keys because he's in a basement. They need to see the new face of the Salvatore legacy. They need to see you."
She stood up, circling the desk until she was inches from me. The scent of expensive silk and cold gunpowder clung to her. She held out a black file. Inside were the faces of the men who thought they were safe now that the 'Old Man' was neutralized.
"The infrastructure is cracked, not broken," Charlotte whispered. "We have forty-eight hours to solidify the transition before the Global Financial Oversight committees start flagging the account transfers. You're going to London. You're going to sit across from Senator Vane, and you're going to show him exactly why being my right hand is more terrifying than being your father's daughter."
I looked at the file, then at the silver revolver sitting on the desk between us. The debt wasn't paid; it had just been refinanced under a much higher interest rate.
"And if I decide I'm tired of being a tool?" I asked, my voice steady.
Charlotte smiled, a sharp, clinical expression that never reached her eyes. "Then you become an obstacle. And you've seen how I handle those."
Chapter 9
I didn't reach for the file. Instead, I let my hand hover over the silver revolver, the metal still radiating a faint, residual heat from the morning's work. The weight of the Salvatore legacy wasn't in the name or the blood—it was in the pure, exhausting momentum of the violence required to keep it.
"London is cold this time of year," I said, finally meeting her gaze. "Vane won't be moved by terror alone. He's a man of appetites. If I'm going to be your 'right hand,' I need more than a black file and a threat. I need the codes to the offshore accounts in the Caymans. If I'm the face of the transition, I need to be able to buy the loyalty I can't break."
Charlotte's smile didn't delay, but her eyes narrowed, calculating the cost of my sudden ambition. She tapped the ivory handle of her knife against the mahogany. "You're learning. Most girls would have asked for a plane ticket and a new wardrobe. You're asking for the records."
She reached into the pocket of her silk blazer and produced a small, encrypted flash drive. She didn't hand it to me; she set it on top of the file, a digital dowry for a bride of chaos. "The codes are there. But remember, Vera: the moment you use them, the Global Financial Oversight G.F.O will have a digital trail leading straight to your throat. You aren't just buying Vane; you're tying the trap."
I picked up the drive, the plastic cold against my palm. "I've spent my life with a rope around my neck, Charlotte. I've just grown tired of someone else holding the end of it."
I turned back to the window. Below, the Vatican glowed under the rising sun, a reminder of older, more patient powers. I wasn't going to London to save my father's empire or to solidify Charlotte's. I was going to find the one man Senator Vane feared more than a Salvatore—the liquidator who had been cleaning up my father's messes since before I was born.
"The jet is fueled," Charlotte said, her voice already retreating toward the door. "Don't be late. Vane doesn't like to be kept waiting, and I don't like to be disappointed."
As the heavy oak door clicked shut, I picked up the revolver and checked the cylinder. One round left. A poet might call it fate; I called it an emergency plan.
Chapter 10
The flash drive felt like a lead weight in my pocket as I crossed the room to the heavy velvet curtains. I didn't watch Charlotte leave; I watched the way the Roman sun hit the cobblestones, indifferent to the shifting of major plates in the underworld.
The "liquidator." My father had never spoken his name, only referred to him as "The Shadow". If the stories were true, he didn't just kill; he erased. He was the reason the Salvatore name still commanded a hushed admiration in the halls of the Vatican City State and the boardrooms of Lloyd's of London. To find him, I had to do more than just follow a paper trail; I had to bleed the right person.
I grabbed my coat, the silk lining sliding over my skin like a cold promise. The revolver went into the concealed gun case at the small of my back, a familiar, heavy anchor.
Outside, the air was steel, tasting of ancient stone and diesel exhaust. My driver, a man named Dante who had served my father for twenty years, stood by the black Maserati. He didn't ask where we were going; he saw the flash drive in my hand and the look in my eyes. He knew the transition had begun.
"The airport, Signorina?" he asked, his voice a low rasp.
"Not yet," I said, sliding into the leather interior. "We're making a stop at the Piazza hub. I need to send a message before I leave Italian soil, and I need a very specific kind of stationary."
I pulled out my phone and dialed a number that wasn't in any directory. As the line clicked open, I felt the first real flow of adrenaline. I wasn't Charlotte's pawn, and I wasn't my father's ghost. I was the storm hitting the coast.
"It's Vera," I said into the receiver. "Tell the Broker I'm coming for the Cayman Island accounts. And tell him to have the liquidator's frequency ready. London is about to get very, very hot."
As we pulled away from the curb, I looked back at the Salvatore estate one last time. The rope was still around my neck, but for the first time, I was the one holding the slack.
Chapter 11
The Maserati cut through the Roman traffic like a blade through silk, the engine's growl a low-frequency vibration that matched the humming in my veins. Dante drove with a grim, practiced silence, navigating the narrow arteries of the city while I stared at the passing blur of marble and history.
"You're thinking about the Shadow," Dante said, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror. "Your father spent thirty years trying to forget that man existed. You're inviting him back into the house."
"The house is already burning, Dante," I replied, my thumb tracing the edge of the flash drive. "I'm just choosing who gets to watch it fall."
They pulled into a side street off the Piazza hub, where the shadow of the Pantheon loomed like a silent witness. I didn't go for the tourist stalls; I headed for a featureless storefront tucked between a gelateria and a big bookshop. The sign above the door simply read L'Archivio.
Inside, the air smelled of ozone and expensive ink. A man with skin-like parchment looked up from a desk covered in mechanical watch parts. This was the Piazza hub, a neutral ground for the kind of agreements that never touched a server.
"I need a cipher-seal," I said, placing a heavy gold coin on the counter—an heirloom of the Salvatore private mint. "And a messenger for a one-way trip to the Lloyd's of London building. Hand-delivery only."
The old man nodded, his eyes darting to the bulge of the revolver at my back. He didn't ask questions; at this level, questions were a death sentence. He handed me a sheet of parchment and a wax seal bearing a symbol that hadn't been used since the Black Nobility era.
I scribbled a single line of coordinates and a frequency code. It wasn't a letter; it was a flare fired into the dark. By the time I stepped back out into the steel-cold air, the message was already moving.
"To the airport now?" Dante asked, holding the door open.
Now," I said, my voice hardening. "The Broker will have signaled the Cayman accounts by the time we hit cruising altitude. If the Liquidator is as fast as the stories say, he'll be waiting for me in the London fog."
As the Maserati accelerated toward Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport, I felt the weight of the Salvatore name, finally shifting. It wasn't a burden anymore; it was a weapon.