Part 1

“Pull that stunt again, and I’ll end you.”

My voice didn’t sound like my own. It echoed through the private dining room of The Monarch like a gunshot in a library.

I felt every pair of eyes in the room lock onto me. The air was sucked out of the space, leaving only the scent of expensive cologne, cigar smoke, and the metallic tang of my own terror. My face burned, not just from the humiliation of Damen Moretti’s hand sliding down my backside, but from a rage so pure and white-hot it momentarily blinded me to the fact that I was likely signing my own d*th warrant.

Damen Moretti sat there like a king on a velvet throne. His tailored suit cost more than my family’s entire existence over the last decade. His dark eyes glinted with a mix of top-shelf bourbon and unchecked arrogance. Everyone in Chicago knew who he was. You didn’t just serve him dinner; you survived him. He was the shadow over the city, the name whispered in fear from the docks to the high-rises.

The men around him—his soldiers, his “business partners”—had erupted in laughter when he touched me. They treated it like sport. Like I was just another piece of furniture in this high-end steakhouse, something to be used and discarded.

But the laughter died the second the threat left my lips. It was cut off so abruptly it felt like someone had hit the mute button on the world.

One of his lieutenants, a guy with a neck as thick as a tree trunk and eyes like a shark, reached inside his jacket. I knew what was in there. A g*n. I heard the scrape of his chair against the marble floor.

But Damen raised a single hand. Palm out. Stop.

The lieutenant froze. The room held its breath. The only sound left was the faint, mocking jazz music drifting from the hidden speakers and the pounding of my heart against my ribs—a frantic, bird-like fluttering that hurt my chest.

I stood my ground, my fingers gripping the empty serving tray so hard my knuckles turned bone-white. I should have been trembling. I should have been begging for forgiveness. Every other server had warned me: “Don’t look at him. Don’t talk to him. Just drop the food and vanish.”

But I was so tired.

I was tired of the double shifts. I was tired of counting pennies at the grocery store. I was tired of coming home to our drafty apartment in the South Side, seeing my little brother, Toby, curled up in pain because we were rationing his insulin again. I was tired of being powerless.

Damen looked at me. really looked at me. His smug grin faded, replaced by something I couldn’t read. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t amusement. It was… curiosity. Dangerous, predatory curiosity.

“What’s your name?” he asked quietly.

His voice was smooth, deep, and terrifyingly calm. He leaned forward, elbows on the pristine tablecloth, studying my face like he was memorizing a map.

“Ava,” I said. My voice shook this time, betraying me. “Ava Lane.”

“Ava Lane,” he repeated, tasting the syllables. “That’s the name I’ll remember if you ever try that again.”

I didn’t wait for dismissal. I turned on my heel and walked out of that private room. My legs felt like water. My head was spinning. As the door swung shut behind me, I heard the explosion of outraged voices from his table—men demanding I be taught a lesson, demanding respect.

But then Damen’s voice cut through them all, sharp and final.

“No one touches her. Ever.”

I made it to the kitchen and collapsed against the stainless steel counter. The other servers stared at me with wide, horrified eyes. They looked at me like I was a walking corpse.

“You’re done, Ava,” one of the bussers whispered. “You need to run.”

I spent that night awake, sitting on the edge of my bed, staring at the peeling paint on my ceiling. I packed a bag for Toby. I counted the sixty-four dollars in my wallet. Where could we go? Indiana? Wisconsin? We wouldn’t make it far. The rent was two weeks late. If I lost this job, we were on the street. If I stayed, I might end up at the bottom of the Chicago River.

The next morning, my phone rang. It was the restaurant manager.

My stomach dropped to my shoes. This was it.

“Ava,” he said, his voice sounding strangled. “You… you need to come in.”

“I’m fired, right?” I asked, closing my eyes. “Just tell me. I’ll pick up my last check.”

“No,” he stammered. “You’re not fired. You’ve been promoted.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Personal server. For Mr. Moretti’s private meetings. Only him. It pays triple your current rate. Full benefits. Health insurance. It starts tonight.”

Health insurance. My mind flashed to Toby. To the insulin. To a fridge actually full of food.

But then I thought of Damen’s eyes.

“He wants me close,” I whispered to the empty room. “He wants to break me.”

I should have said no. I should have run. But poverty doesn’t give you the luxury of pride.

That afternoon, I walked into Damen Moretti’s office at the top of his skyscraper downtown. It smelled of leather and power. He was behind a massive mahogany desk, reviewing documents like a legitimate CEO, not a crime lord.

He looked up. One eyebrow raised.

“I’m not a toy you can play with,” I said, my voice echoing in the large room.

He set down his pen. “If you were a toy, Ava, I wouldn’t be afraid of breaking you.”

He stood up and walked to the window, looking out over the city he ruled. “You have guts. Most people tremble when I walk into a room. You threatened to end me.” He turned back to me, his expression unreadable. “I need that fire. But be warned… once you step into my world, there is no stepping out.”

He took a step closer, and the air between us crackled with a tension that was terrifying and confusingly electric.

“So, Ava Lane,” he whispered, towering over me. “Are you ready to sell your soul to save your family?”

Part 2: The Devil You Know

The penthouse at the top of the Moretti Spire wasn’t a home; it was a fortress wrapped in glass and steel. From up here, fifty stories above the Chicago pavement, the city looked like a circuit board of gold and amber light. Down there, people were rushing for the ‘L’ train, worrying about parking tickets, and fighting over the last loaf of bread at the corner bodega. Up here, the air was filtered, silent, and smelled of lemon polish and impending violence.

It had been a week since I walked out of The Monarch and into the devil’s den. A week since I sold my soul to Damen Moretti to keep my brother, Toby, alive.

My “promotion” was a joke, and we both knew it. I wasn’t just a server. I was a fixture. A witness. I stood in the corner of his office while he brokered deals that decided which shipping containers made it through the port and which ones “got lost” in Lake Michigan. I poured scotch for politicians who campaigned on cleaning up the streets, then came here to get their envelopes of cash.

I learned the rules quickly: Speak only when spoken to. See everything, say nothing. And never, ever flinch.

But the hardest rule was the one I hadn’t expected: Don’t look at Damen Moretti like he’s a man.

Because he was making it impossible not to.

The 2:00 AM Lessons

My brother, Toby, was safe. That was the only thing keeping me sane. Damen had moved him to a private care facility in Evanston. “Better security,” he’d said, brushing off my tearful gratitude like it was a business expense. But I knew the cost. The cost was me.

I couldn’t sleep. The silence in the penthouse was too loud. It was around 2:00 AM on a Tuesday when I wandered into the gym, a sprawling room of chrome weights and floor-to-ceiling mirrors. I expected it to be empty.

It wasn’t.

Damen was there, attacking a heavy bag with a ferocity that looked less like exercise and more like exorcism. He wasn’t wearing his suit armor. He was in sweatpants and a tank top, his skin glistening, revealing a roadmap of scars across his shoulders—white jagged lines that told stories of knives and bullets.

I froze in the doorway, intending to back out, but he stopped the bag with one gloved hand. He didn’t even look at me.

“Insomnia is a side effect of guilt,” he said, his breathing heavy but controlled. “Or fear. Which one is it, Ava?”

“Neither,” I lied, stepping into the room. “The bed is too soft. I’m used to a mattress with springs that stab me in the back.”

He turned then, unwrapping the tape from his hands. His dark eyes swept over me, and for a second, the air in the room felt thin. “You’re walking around my house like a ghost, Ava. You’re terrified. You jump every time a door slams.”

“I’m in a mob boss’s house,” I snapped, crossing my arms. “Forgive me if I’m a little jumpy.”

He walked over to a rack, grabbed a pair of boxing gloves, and tossed them at me. I caught them by reflex.

“Put them on,” he ordered.

“I’m not fighting you.”

“No. You’re going to learn how to fight everyone else.” He stepped closer, towering over me, the smell of sandalwood and sweat invading my personal space. “If you’re going to be in my world, you need to know how to survive it. I can’t always be the shield.”

That night became our ritual. Every night, when the city slept, Damen taught me how to be dangerous.

It wasn’t like the movies. It was ugly. It was painful.

“Thumb outside!” he barked, slapping my hand when I made a fist wrong. “You put your thumb inside, you break it on impact. Then you’re useless.”

He taught me where to strike to incapacitate a man twice my size. Throat. Groin. Instep. Eyes.

“You don’t fight with honor, Ava,” he told me, his chest pressed against my back as he corrected my stance, his hands firm on my hips to square them. The heat radiating off him made my head spin, a confusing mix of attraction and danger. “You fight to breathe another ten seconds. That is the only victory.”

One night, after he’d flipped me onto the mat for the tenth time, I lay there, gasping for air, staring up at the recessed lighting.

“Why?” I wheezed. “Why do you care if I can throw a punch?”

He offered me a hand. When he pulled me up, he didn’t let go immediately. His thumb brushed over the pulse in my wrist, checking the beat.

“Because the things that hunt in my world…” His voice dropped, losing its command, sounding almost haunted. “They like to break pretty things. And I won’t let them break you.”

It was the first crack in his armor. I saw it then—the fear behind the aggression. He wasn’t just training an employee. He was trying to prevent a ghost from the past from repeating itself.

The Fracture

The fragile peace of our late-night sessions shattered two weeks later.

It was a Thursday. The atmosphere in the penthouse was different—tense, sharp, vibrating with invisible electricity. Damen had been locked in his study all morning. His men, usually invisible shadows, were openly carrying automatic w*apons in the hallway.

I was cleaning up the remnants of a lunch meeting in the main dining room when I heard the shouting. It was coming from the West Wing, down the corridor that led to Damen’s private sanctuary.

I should have walked away. I should have gone to my room, put on my noise-canceling headphones, and ignored it. Curiosity in this house was a terminal illness.

But I heard a name. Victor Hail.

I froze. Even on the South Side, you knew that name. If Damen Moretti was the King of Chicago, Victor Hail was the Plague. Damen ran gambling and protection; he had lines he didn’t cross. Victor Hail trafficked. Drugs, w*apons, people. He was a monster without a code.

I crept down the hallway, the plush carpet swallowing my footsteps. The door to the study was cracked open an inch.

Inside, two men were standing in front of Damen’s desk. I recognized them—Marco and Vincent. They were Damen’s top lieutenants. Marco looked like he was about to vomit. Sweat was pouring down his face, staining the collar of his expensive shirt.

“Victor wants it back, Damen!” Marco’s voice was high, pitched with hysteria. “He knows we have the drive. He says if we don’t return it by midnight, he starts dropping bodies.”

Damen was sitting behind his desk, terrifyingly still. He was spinning a small silver flash drive between his fingers.

“Let him try,” Damen said. His voice was ice. “This drive proves everything. His routes, his buyers, the location of his ‘warehouses.’ This is how we bury him, Marco. This is how we finish it.”

“We?” Marco shouted. “There is no ‘we’ if we’re dad! You’re obsessed, boss! You’re obsessed with finding her and it’s going to get us all klled!”

The room went silent.

Damen stopped spinning the drive. He stood up slowly. “What did you say?”

Marco took a step back, realizing his mistake. “Damen, look, I just meant… it’s been three years. She’s gone. Sienna is gone. Trading this drive is the only way to—”

“You’re talking to Victor,” Damen said. It wasn’t a question.

Marco blinked. “What?”

“You’re terrified,” Damen observed, walking around the desk. “But not of me. You’re scared of what Victor will do to you if you don’t deliver this drive. You’re the leak, Marco.”

“No! Damen, I swear—”

“Vincent,” Damen said softly.

Vincent, the other lieutenant, didn’t hesitate. He pulled a silenced pistol from his jacket.

My hands flew to my mouth to stifle a scream, but I wasn’t fast enough to close my eyes.

Phut.

It was such a small sound. Nothing like the movies. Just a puff of air.

Marco’s head snapped back. He crumbled to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The blood was instant, dark and thick, soaking into the Persian rug.

I gasped. It was involuntary, a sharp intake of breath that echoed in the hallway.

Vincent’s head whipped toward the door. “Boss.”

Damen looked up, his eyes locking onto the sliver of space where I was standing. For a second, he looked devastated—not because he’d ordered a man’s death, but because I had seen it.

“Get her,” he said.

I ran.

Panic is a funny thing. It overrides logic. I didn’t know where I was running to—we were fifty floors up. The elevator needed a code. The stairs were alarmed. But my body just wanted away.

I made it to the heavy oak doors of the main entrance before strong arms wrapped around my waist, lifting me off the ground. I screamed, thrashing, my nails clawing at the wool suit of my captor.

“Ava! Stop!”

It was Damen. He spun me around, pinning me against the door, his body pressing mine into the wood to stop my struggling.

“Let me go!” I shrieked, tears blurring my vision. “You klled him! You just klled him!”

“He was a rat, Ava! He was selling us out to a man who skins people alive!” Damen shouted back, shaking me once, hard. “Look at me!”

I sobbed, my chest heaving, staring up at him. I expected to see a monster. I expected to see the cold, dead eyes of a killer.

But I saw panic.

“I didn’t want you to see that,” he whispered, his voice cracking. He brought his hands up to cup my face, his thumbs wiping away the tears that were spilling over. His hands were shaking. “God, Ava, I never wanted you to see that part.”

“Who is Sienna?” I whispered, the name slipping out before I could stop it.

Damen went rigid. He pulled back as if I’d slapped him. The vulnerability vanished, replaced by a wall of granite.

“Go to your room,” he said, his voice flat. “Lock the door. Do not come out until I come for you. We are on lockdown.”

“Damen—”

“GO!” he roared.

The Ghost in the File

I spent the next six hours in my room, pacing the floor until I wore a path in the carpet. The penthouse was on high alert. I could hear the heavy thud of boots in the hallway, the crackle of radios. We were under siege, though I didn’t know if the enemy was outside or inside.

I couldn’t just sit there. The image of Marco’s body was burned into my retinas, but so was the look on Damen’s face when Marco mentioned “Sienna.”

She’s gone. Sienna is gone.

Damen Moretti, the man who owned Chicago, had a weak spot. And I needed to know what it was if I was going to survive this.

I waited until the shift change. I knew the guards’ rotation now—I had learned to count the minutes during my insomnia nights. At 3:45 AM, the hallway guard went to the kitchen for coffee.

I slipped out.

I didn’t go to the elevator. I went back to the study.

The body was gone. The rug had been rolled up and removed. The smell of bleach hung heavy in the air, masking the copper scent of blood.

Damen wasn’t there.

I went to his desk. My hands were trembling so badly I could barely grip the handles of the drawers. Locked. Locked.

I tried the bottom drawer on the left. It clicked open.

Inside, there were no w*apons, no cash. Just a single, thick manila folder. It looked old, worn at the edges from being handled a thousand times.

I opened it.

The first thing I saw was a photo. A girl. She was stunning—dark hair like Damen’s, olive skin, and a smile that lit up the picture. She looked like she was laughing at a joke only she heard. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

Sienna Moretti.

I flipped through the pages. Police reports. Missing person flyers. Private investigator invoices—hundreds of them, totaling millions of dollars.

Date of Disappearance: October 14, 2021. Status: Cold Case.

My heart hammered against my ribs. This was his sister. The girl Marco said was “gone.” Damen wasn’t building an empire for greed. He was building an army to find a ghost.

I turned another page and froze.

It was a blurry surveillance photo, grainy and dark. It showed a girl in a hospital gown, huddled in the corner of a waiting room. She looked terrified, emaciated.

But it was the detail zoomed in on the next photo that made the blood drain from my face.

On the girl’s wrist, hanging loosely, was a distinctive silver charm bracelet. It had a unique charm—a tiny, intricate bird in flight.

I stopped breathing. The room spun.

I knew that bracelet.

The memory hit me like a physical blow. Three years ago. My mother was still alive then, working the graveyard shift as a triage nurse at County General. I would sometimes bring her dinner when she pulled double shifts.

I remembered sitting in the breakroom, eating a stale sandwich, while my mom vented about a patient who had come in that night.

“She was a Jane Doe, Ava,” my mom had said, looking haunted. “A kid. beaten bad. She wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t give her name. She just kept tugging on this silver bracelet she had. A little bird. She kept whispering about ‘the snake.’ She said the snake would come back for her.”

My mom had tried to call social services, but by the time she came back to the room, the girl was gone. Vanished. My mom had obsessed over it for months. She said the girl had a specific tattoo behind her ear. A butterfly.

I looked down at the file in my hands. There, clipped to the back, was a description of Sienna Moretti’s distinguishing marks.

Tattoo: Small butterfly, behind right ear.

“Oh my god,” I whispered into the silence of the study.

“What are you doing?”

The voice came from the doorway. Low. Dangerous.

I looked up. Damen was standing there. He looked exhausted, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, his eyes red-rimmed. He saw the file in my hands, and for a terrifying moment, I thought he might k*ll me too. He took a step toward me, his expression twisting into fury.

“That is not for you,” he growled, reaching for the file.

“I saw her,” I blurted out.

Damen froze. His hand hovered inches from the folder. “What?”

“I saw her,” I repeated, my voice shaking but gaining strength. “Not the photo. The girl. Sienna.”

Damen went completely still. The anger drained out of him, leaving him looking like a statue on the verge of crumbling. “Don’t lie to me, Ava. I will tear this city apart if you lie to me.”

“I’m not lying,” I said, stepping around the desk, closing the distance between us. I needed him to see the truth in my eyes. “Three years ago. County General ER. My mother was the nurse who treated her.”

Damen grabbed my shoulders. His grip was painful, desperate. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

“She came in as a Jane Doe,” I said, the memories flooding back faster now. “She had the bracelet. The bird. And the butterfly tattoo behind her ear. My mom… she tried to help her. But Sienna ran. She was terrified, Damen. She kept saying ‘The Snake’ was coming for her.”

Damen released me, stumbling back as if he’d been shot. He hit the edge of the desk and slumped against it, burying his face in his hands. A sound ripped from his throat—a jagged, broken sob that he tried to swallow but couldn’t.

“The Snake,” he choked out. He looked up at me, his eyes wet and burning with a hatred so intense it made the air cold. “Victor Hail. His tattoo… it’s a snake wrapped around a dagger.”

He looked at the window, out at the city darkness. “She was alive. She escaped. And I didn’t find her.”

“She was alive then,” I said softy, daring to reach out and touch his arm. His muscles were rock hard, tense with grief. “And if Marco was right… if Victor wants that drive back so badly… maybe she still is.”

Damen looked at my hand on his arm, then up at my face. The barriers were gone. The boss, the kingpin, the monster—they all vanished. There was just a brother who had failed the person he loved most.

“I have to get her back,” he whispered. “I have to kill him, Ava. I have to burn his world down.”

“I know,” I said. And then, the words that sealed my fate left my mouth. “And I’m going to help you.”

He shook his head. “No. It’s war now. I’m sending you and Toby away. Tonight.”

“No,” I said firmly. I grabbed his hand, interlacing my fingers with his. It was a bold move, insane even, but I felt the electricity shoot up my arm, and I saw his eyes widen. “You taught me to fight, remember? You said I needed to survive your world. Well, I’m in it.”

I took a breath.

“My mom couldn’t save her that night,” I said, my voice breaking. “She carried that guilt until she died. I’m not carrying it too. We find her, Damen. Together.”

Damen stared at me for a long time. The silence stretched, heavy and profound. Then, slowly, he turned his hand and gripped mine back. He squeezed, hard, like I was the only thing keeping him from falling off the edge of the earth.

“If you stay,” he said, his voice low and rough, “there is no going back. You understand that? You will have blood on your hands.”

I thought of Toby. I thought of the poverty, the helplessness, the way men like Victor Hail treated girls like Sienna. I thought of the way Damen looked at me—like I was strong enough to stand beside him in the fire.

“Then let it bleed,” I said.

Damen pulled me to him then. It wasn’t a kiss—not yet. He pressed his forehead against mine, his breath hot on my skin, his hands gripping my waist. We stood there in the center of his empire, two broken people holding each other up, while the city below us slept, unaware that a war had just begun.

“Okay,” he whispered against my skin. “We go to war.”

Part 3: Into the Fire

The Kevlar vest was heavier than I expected. It pressed against my chest, a suffocating hug that reminded me, with every shallow breath, that I was no longer just Ava Lane, the waitress who worried about tips and insulin prices. I was something else entirely. I was a soldier in a war I hadn’t started, but one I was determined to finish.

We were in the underground garage beneath the Moretti Spire. The air smelled of gasoline, cold concrete, and nervous sweat. Around us, Damen’s men were gearing up—checking magazines, fastening tactical Velcro, their faces grim masks of professional violence. They were the scary men I used to cross the street to avoid. Now, they were the only thing standing between me and death.

Damen stood by the black armored SUV, adjusting the cuffs of his tactical jacket. He had traded his Italian suit for dark combat gear, but he still looked like a king preparing to defend his throne. He looked up as I approached, his eyes scanning me from head to toe. He lingered on the gun holstered at my hip—the one he had taught me to use.

“You don’t have to do this, Ava,” he said. His voice was low, barely audible over the rack-slide of weapons being loaded around us. “You can stay in the car. You can stay here. If anything happens to you…”

“If I stay here, who talks to Sienna?” I asked, keeping my voice steady despite the tremor in my hands. “She’s been traumatized by men for three years, Damen. If a squad of guys with guns kicks down her door, she might shut down completely. She needs a woman. She needs… softness.”

Damen looked at me, and I saw the conflict warring behind his eyes. He wanted to lock me in a tower where I’d be safe. But he knew I was right.

He reached out, his hand cupping the back of my neck, his thumb brushing my jawline. The touch was electric, grounding me in the chaos.

“Stay behind me,” he ordered, his eyes burning into mine. “If things go south—and they will go south—you run. You get Sienna, and you run. Do not look back for me. Do you understand?”

“I’m not leaving you,” I whispered.

“Promise me, Ava.” His grip tightened slightly. “Promise me you get her out.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I promise.”

It was the first lie I had told him since that night in the gym.

The Shipyards

The meet was set for the old Calumet Shipyards on the far South Side. It was a graveyard of industry—rusting cranes that looked like skeletal dinosaurs against the moonlight, abandoned warehouses with shattered windows, and the black, oily water of the river lapping against rotting piers.

It was 1:00 AM. The fog was rolling in off Lake Michigan, thick and cold, wrapping everything in a ghostly haze.

Our convoy rolled in silent and dark, headlights off. We parked behind a wall of shipping containers, a hundred yards from the main warehouse.

“This is it,” Vincent whispered from the front seat. “Heat signatures show twelve targets inside. Maybe more in the rafters.”

Damen checked his weapon one last time. He looked at me in the rearview mirror. He didn’t say a word, but the look said everything. Be brave.

We moved out on foot. The wind cut through my jacket, biting my skin, but I was sweating. My heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs—thump-thump, thump-thump—so loud I was sure the enemy could hear it.

We entered the warehouse through a side door that Damen’s advance team had breached. The inside was cavernous, smelling of rust and pigeon droppings. In the center of the vast concrete floor, illuminated by a single, high-wattage floodlight, stood a group of men.

And him.

Victor Hail.

I recognized him instantly from the files. He was leaner than Damen, with a face that looked like it had been carved out of granite and left to weather. He wore a long grey coat, and even from this distance, his presence was repulsive. He radiated a cold, reptilian malice.

And there, kneeling on the wet concrete at his feet, was a figure with a burlap sack over her head.

My breath hitched. Sienna.

Damen stepped into the light. I stayed in the shadows with Vincent and two others, flanking him.

“Victor,” Damen called out. His voice echoed through the metal cavern, calm and commanding. “You look like h*ll.”

Victor smiled. It was a terrifying expression—all teeth, no warmth. “And you look desperate, Moretti. The King of Chicago, crawling through the mud to get his little princess back.”

“I have the drive,” Damen said, holding up the silver flash drive. It glinted under the harsh light. “Evidence of your trafficking rings. Your offshore accounts. The names of the politicians you bought. It’s all here. You give me the girl, you get your life back.”

Victor laughed. It was a dry, scratching sound. “You think I care about the evidence, Damen? I have judges in my pocket. I have the DA on speed dial. That drive is an inconvenience.” He stepped closer to the kneeling figure. “No. I took her because I wanted to see you bleed. And I’ve enjoyed watching you bleed for three years.”

Damen’s hand twitched near his holster. “The trade, Victor. Now.”

Victor signaled to one of his goons. The man yanked the hood off the kneeling figure.

I gasped.

It was Sienna. But she looked nothing like the vibrant girl in the photos. She was gaunt, her cheekbones protruding sharply beneath pale, translucent skin. Her hair was matted, and she was shaking violently. But it was her eyes that broke my heart—they were wide, vacant, staring at nothing.

“Sienna,” Damen breathed. I saw his composure crack. He took an involuntary step forward.

“Ah, ah,” Victor tutted, pressing the barrel of a silver pistol against Sienna’s temple. “Stay there, big brother. Toss the drive.”

Damen tossed it. The silver device arced through the air and skittered across the concrete to Victor’s feet.

Victor didn’t even look at it. He kept his eyes on Damen.

“Check it,” Victor barked at a lackey.

The henchman plugged it into a rugged laptop set up on a crate. A few agonizing seconds passed. The only sound was the wind rattling the corrugated metal roof and the distant drip of water.

“It’s real, boss,” the henchman said. “It’s all here.”

Victor nodded slowly. He looked down at Sienna. “Well, a deal is a deal.”

He lowered the gun.

For a split second, I felt a rush of relief. It was going to work. We were going to walk out of here.

Then Victor smiled again. He raised his eyes to the rafters.

“Kill them all.”

Chaos

The world exploded.

Gunfire erupted from the catwalks above us—muzzle flashes sparking like fireworks in the gloom. Bullets chewed up the concrete around Damen, sending shrapnel flying.

“Ambush!” Vincent screamed, shoving me behind a concrete pillar just as the spot where I had been standing was riddled with holes.

“Damen!” I shrieked.

Damen had thrown himself forward, not away from the fire, but toward it. He was diving for Sienna.

Victor fired—pop, pop, pop—but he was moving backward, retreating into the shadows of the warehouse maze.

I peeked around the pillar. It was chaos. Damen’s men were returning fire, the loud crack-crack-crack of their rifles deafening in the enclosed space. Bodies were dropping on both sides.

I saw Damen. He was pinned down behind a rusted forklift, twenty yards away. He was bleeding. A dark stain was spreading rapidly on his left thigh.

“He’s hit!” I yelled to Vincent.

“Stay down, Ava!” Vincent roared, firing blindly into the darkness. “We’re flanked!”

I looked at the forklift. Damen was firing back, his face grimacing in pain, but he couldn’t move. And Sienna… Sienna was still in the open, curled into a ball on the wet floor, hands over her ears, screaming a soundless scream amidst the crossfire.

She was ten yards from me. Ten yards through hell.

If nobody moved, she was going to catch a stray bullet. Or Victor would circle back and finish her.

I looked at Vincent. He was busy suppressing the shooters on the catwalk. He couldn’t move.

It had to be me.

You don’t fight with honor. You fight to breathe. Damen’s voice echoed in my head.

I didn’t think. I didn’t plan. I just moved.

“Cover me!” I screamed, though I doubt anyone heard me.

I broke from cover, sprinting low. The noise was incredible—a physical force that battered my eardrums. I saw sparks fly off the ground near my feet as bullets chased me.

I slid across the wet concrete, tearing my pants, and crashed into Sienna, tackling her flat against the ground behind a stack of wooden pallets.

“Sienna!” I yelled, grabbing her shoulders. She was trembling so hard her teeth were chattering. She looked at me with eyes that saw monsters.

“Snake… the snake…” she whimpered.

“No snake,” I said, breathless, gripping her face to make her look at me. “I’m Ava. Your brother sent me. Damen is here. Look at me! We’re going home!”

At the mention of Damen, her eyes focused for a fraction of a second. “Damen?”

“Yes! But we have to move. Now!”

I peered over the pallets. The forklift where Damen was hiding was taking heavy fire. He was pinned. And from the shadows to the right, I saw movement.

Victor.

He wasn’t leaving. He was circling. He was moving to flank Damen, gun raised, walking with the casual arrogance of an executioner. He was going to shoot Damen in the back.

Damen couldn’t see him.

Time seemed to slow down. The sound of gunfire faded into a dull roar. All I could see was Victor raising his gun. All I could see was the back of Damen’s head.

I had a clear shot.

My hand moved to my holster. The motion was muscle memory now, drilled into me during those 2:00 AM sessions. Grip. Draw. stance. Breathe.

My hands were shaking. I had never fired at a person. I had never taken a life. The paper targets in the gym didn’t bleed. They didn’t have families.

If you stay, you will have blood on your hands.

I saw Victor’s finger tighten on the trigger.

I didn’t have a choice.

I stood up. I leveled the gun. I didn’t aim for the leg or the shoulder. I aimed for the center of mass, just like Damen taught me.

“Hey!” I screamed.

Victor turned. His eyes met mine—shock, confusion, and then recognition.

I pulled the trigger.

The gun kicked hard in my hand. Bang.

Victor jerked. A red blossom appeared on his grey coat, right in the chest. He looked down at it, stunned, as if he couldn’t believe a waitress had just shot him.

He stumbled back, raising his gun toward me.

I fired again. And again.

Bang. Bang.

Victor Hail, the Snake, the monster of Chicago, crumpled backward. He hit the ground and didn’t move.

The silence that followed was deafening.

For a second, nobody fired. Everyone seemed frozen by the sight of the boss falling.

“Ava!”

Damen’s voice broke the spell. He was limping toward us, ignoring the exposure, ignoring the pain in his leg.

“Clear the room!” Vincent shouted, rallying the men. “Push them back! Boss is moving!”

Damen reached us. He collapsed to his knees, not from injury, but from the sheer weight of the moment. He looked at Victor’s body, then at the smoking gun in my hand, and finally at his sister.

“Sienna,” he choked out.

Sienna looked up. She reached out a trembling hand and touched his face, smearing blood from his cheek.

“Damen?” she whispered, her voice like cracked glass.

“I’m here, sorrellina,” he sobbed, pulling her into his chest. “I’m here. I got you.”

He looked at me over her shoulder. His eyes were dark, filled with a mix of pride, horror, and a love so intense it made my knees weak.

“You saved me,” he said.

“I ended him,” I whispered, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears. I looked at the gun in my hand. I felt sick. I felt powerful. I felt terrified.

“We have to go!” Vincent yelled, sliding in beside us. “Police scanners are lighting up. SWAT is five minutes out!”

The Escape

Getting out was a blur of pain and adrenaline. Damen refused to be carried, leaning heavily on Vincent while I supported Sienna. She was light, dangerously so, like a bird made of hollow bones. She clung to me, burying her face in my shoulder, flinching at every loud noise.

We piled into the SUV. The tires screeched as we peeled out of the shipyard, leaving the burning warehouse and the bodies behind us.

I sat in the back with Sienna, holding her hand, stroking her matted hair. She had fallen into a sort of catatonic doze, her body shutting down after the trauma.

In the front seat, a field medic was working on Damen’s leg. It was a through-and-through shot. Messy, but not fatal.

Damen turned in his seat, his face pale and sweating, grimacing as the medic tightened a tourniquet. He reached his hand back between the seats.

I took it. His grip was iron-tight.

“Are you okay?” he asked. Not asking about his sister. Asking about me.

I looked down at my hands. There was blood on my cuticles. Gunpowder residue on my skin. I had killed a man. I had crossed a line that I could never uncross. The old Ava—the one who worried about being late for her shift—was dead back in that warehouse.

I looked up at him. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But we’re alive.”

“Yes,” Damen said, bringing my knuckles to his lips. He kissed them, tasting the blood and the grime. “We’re alive.”

The Aftermath

We didn’t go back to the penthouse. Too obvious. We went to a safe house in the countryside, a sprawling estate hidden by trees and high fences.

The next few hours were a procession of doctors and nurses. Sienna was sedated and put in a warm bed, hooked up to IVs to rehydrate her. Damen was stitched up, gritting his teeth through the pain, refusing painkillers because he wanted to stay alert.

I took a shower. I scrubbed my skin until it was raw, trying to wash the feeling of the gun’s recoil out of my muscles. I watched the water turn pink at the drain.

When I came out, wrapped in a plush robe that was too big for me, I found Damen sitting on the balcony. It was dawn. The sun was rising over the Illinois plains, painting the sky in soft purples and oranges—a stark contrast to the darkness we had just lived through.

He was smoking a cigarette, something I hadn’t seen him do before. He looked older than he had yesterday. The lines around his eyes were deeper.

I walked over and sat beside him. He didn’t say anything, just draped his good arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his side. I rested my head on his chest, listening to the steady, strong beat of his heart.

“You should sleep,” I said softly.

“I can’t,” he replied. He exhaled a plume of smoke. “Every time I close my eyes, I see him aiming at you.”

“He was aiming at you,” I corrected.

“Same thing,” he murmured. He turned his head and kissed the top of my head. “You saved my life, Ava. You saved my soul.”

“He was a monster, Damen,” I said, staring at the sunrise. “I didn’t think I could do it. But when I saw him… when I saw what he did to her… it wasn’t hard.”

I shuddered. “That’s the part that scares me. It wasn’t hard.”

Damen turned me so I was facing him. He cupped my face with his hand. “Listen to me. You did what you had to do to protect the people you love. That doesn’t make you a monster. It makes you a warrior.”

He leaned in, his forehead resting against mine. “I promised I wouldn’t let them break you. I failed. You had to break yourself to survive this.”

“I’m not broken,” I whispered, looking into his dark, soulful eyes. “I’m just… different. I’m forged.”

Damen searched my eyes, looking for the waitress he had met, but finding the woman who had walked through fire for him.

“I love you,” he said.

The words hung in the crisp morning air. It was the first time he had said it. It was terrified and desperate and absolute.

“I love you too,” I breathed.

He kissed me then. It wasn’t gentle. It was fierce, possessive, a claim on life after so much death. It tasted of smoke and survival.

The Epilogue of Part 3

Later that morning, I went to check on Sienna. The doctor said she would sleep for another twelve hours.

I sat in the chair by her bed, watching her chest rise and fall. She looked so young, so fragile. But she was alive.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a news alert.

BREAKING: Gang War Erupts in Chicago Shipyards. Bodies Found. Suspected Crime Lord Victor Hail Confirmed Dead.

I swiped the notification away.

I thought it was over. I thought with Victor dead, the nightmare ended.

But then, Sienna stirred. She started mumbling in her sleep, thrashing against the sheets.

“No… no…” she whimpered. “Don’t tell… don’t tell Him…”

I leaned closer, stroking her forehead. “Shh, Sienna. Victor is gone. The Snake is dead.”

She opened her eyes. They were wide, blown with panic. She grabbed my wrist with surprising strength.

“Not Victor,” she rasped, her voice dry and terrified. “Not the Snake.”

I frowned. “What do you mean? Who are you afraid of?”

Sienna’s eyes darted around the room, as if the walls were listening. She pulled me down close, her lips brushing my ear.

“Victor was just the buyer,” she whispered, tears leaking from her eyes. “He didn’t take me. The man who took me… the man who sold me…”

She took a ragged breath.

“It was the man in the suit. The one who works for Damen. The one called Vincent.”

My blood ran cold.

I froze. Vincent. Damen’s right hand. The man who was guarding the door downstairs. The man who had led us into the “ambush.”

The man who was currently the only person armed in the house besides Damen.

And Damen was injured.

I stood up slowly, my heart stopping.

The war wasn’t over. The enemy wasn’t dead. He was in the living room, making coffee.

Part 4: The Enemy Within

The hallway leading from Sienna’s room to the main living area of the safe house felt like it was ten miles long. The plush carpet, which had felt luxurious an hour ago, now felt like quicksand dragging at my ankles.

Vincent.

The name echoed in my skull, bouncing around with the force of a ricocheting bullet. Vincent. The man who had stood beside Damen for a decade. The man who had handed me water during training breaks. The man who had just driven us to safety.

He wasn’t the savior. He was the architect of the nightmare.

I paused at the top of the stairs, my hand gripping the banister so hard the wood creaked. I had to breathe. I had to think. If I went down there screaming, Vincent would kill us all. He was armed. Damen was bleeding out on the sofa, his reflexes dulled by pain and blood loss. I was the only variable Vincent hadn’t accounted for.

I was the wildcard.

I looked down into the great room. The morning sun was streaming through the high windows, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. It looked so peaceful. Domestic, even.

Vincent was standing by the kitchen island, pouring coffee into a mug. He looked calm, efficient. He looked like a loyal soldier.

Damen was lying on the leather sectional, his injured leg propped up on pillows. His eyes were closed, his face pale and beaded with sweat. His gun was on the coffee table—too far to reach quickly.

I took a deep breath, pushing the terror down into a dark box in my stomach. Act, I told myself. You convinced a restaurant full of people you were fine while your life was falling apart. You can do this.

I walked down the stairs.

The Performance

“How is she?” Vincent asked without turning around. He heard my footsteps. A predator always hears footsteps.

“Sleeping,” I said. My voice sounded steady. Good. “She’s… she’s mumbling a lot. Nightmares.”

“Expected,” Vincent said smoothly. He turned, holding out the mug of coffee. “You look like you need this, Ava. Black, two sugars. That’s how you take it, right?”

He knew my coffee order. The intimacy of it made my skin crawl. I walked over and took the mug. My fingers brushed his. Cold.

“Thanks, Vincent,” I said. I took a sip. It tasted like ash.

I walked past him toward the living room, toward Damen.

“Damen?” I whispered.

His eyes fluttered open. They were hazy with pain, but they sharpened when they landed on me. He tried to sit up, wincing.

“Sienna?” he rasped.

“She’s okay,” I said, sitting on the edge of the coffee table, directly between him and his gun. I needed to get close to him. I needed to block Vincent’s line of sight to Damen’s face so he wouldn’t see the realization hit.

“Vincent,” I called out over my shoulder, keeping my voice casual. “Can you find the first aid kit? I think Damen’s dressing is bleeding through. We need more gauze.”

“Sure thing,” Vincent said. I heard him open a cabinet.

I leaned in close to Damen, pretending to check his leg. I gripped his knee, digging my fingers in hard enough to hurt.

“Damen,” I whispered, barely moving my lips. “Don’t react. Do not look at the kitchen.”

Damen’s eyes locked onto mine. The haze vanished instantly, replaced by the razor-sharp focus of the don. He didn’t move a muscle.

“Listen to me,” I breathed. “Sienna spoke. She told me who sold her.”

Damen’s pupils dilated. His breath hitched.

“It wasn’t Victor,” I whispered. “Victor was just the buyer. The seller… the man inside…” I squeezed his knee harder. “It’s Vincent.”

For a second, I thought Damen was going to explode. I felt the muscles in his leg turn to stone. The rage that flashed in his eyes was so terrifying I almost pulled back. It was the look of a man whose heart had just been ripped out by his brother.

But he held it. He swallowed the scream building in his throat.

“Are you sure?” he mouthed.

“100%,” I whispered. “She recognized his voice. She recognized the suit.”

Damen closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. When he opened them, the grief was gone. Only the killer remained.

“The gun,” he whispered. “Pass it to me. Slowly.”

“Found the gauze,” Vincent called out.

I froze. His footsteps were coming closer.

“Thanks, Vincent!” I said, forcing a brightness into my tone. I stood up, blocking the gun on the table with my body. “Actually, could you get some water too? He’s dehydrated.”

Vincent stopped. He was ten feet away. He looked at me, then at Damen, then at the gun on the table behind me.

He didn’t move toward the kitchen.

The air in the room changed. The temperature dropped ten degrees. The silence stretched, thin and brittle as glass.

“You’re acting strange, Ava,” Vincent said softly. He dropped the box of gauze on the floor. His hand drifted toward his jacket.

“Just tired,” I said, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. “It’s been a long night.”

“It has,” Vincent agreed. His eyes flicked to Damen. “Boss, you look tense. Leg hurting?”

Damen stared at him. He didn’t play the game. He didn’t pretend. He just looked at Vincent with a sorrow so deep it felt heavy.

“Why, Vincent?” Damen asked. His voice wasn’t angry. It was just… broken.

Vincent went still. The mask dropped. There was no confusion, no denial. Just a cold, hard acceptance.

“She talked,” Vincent muttered, shaking his head. “I told Victor she was too dangerous to keep alive. I told him to finish it. But he liked his trophies.”

“You were my brother,” Damen said. “I trusted you with my life. With her life.”

“You were weak!” Vincent shouted, the veneer of loyalty shattering. “Three years, Damen! Three years we spent chasing ghosts! We lost territory. We lost millions. All because you were crying over a girl who was dead to the world!”

“She is my sister!” Damen roared, trying to stand up, but his leg buckled.

“She was a liability!” Vincent spat. “I did what had to be done to save the empire! I sold her to Victor to buy peace. To get our routes back. I did it for us!”

“You did it for yourself,” I said, my voice cutting through the shouting. “You wanted the chair, Vincent. You wanted him out of the way.”

Vincent looked at me with pure disgust. “And you… the waitress. You’re the one who ruined it all. You dug up the files. You put the fire back in him.”

He drew his gun.

It happened in slow motion. I saw the black metal clear his holster. I saw the barrel coming up, leveling at Damen’s chest.

Damen lunged for the gun on the table, but he was too slow, his injury anchoring him down.

I didn’t reach for a weapon. I didn’t have one on me—I had left it in the bedroom.

I grabbed the heavy ceramic mug of hot coffee from the table and hurled it.

It wasn’t a bullet, but it was a scalding projectile. The coffee splashed across Vincent’s face and eyes just as he pulled the trigger.

Bang.

The shot went wide, burying itself in the drywall inches from my head.

Vincent screamed, clawing at his burned eyes.

“Get down!” Damen shouted.

I dove behind the sofa as Vincent fired blindly again—bang, bang—shattering a vase, blowing out a window.

“I’ll kill you both!” Vincent shrieked, blinking through the burns, trying to reaquire his target.

Damen had his gun now. He rolled onto his back on the floor, aiming upward over the edge of the coffee table.

But Vincent was fast. He dove behind the kitchen island, giving him heavy cover.

We were pinned. Damen couldn’t move well enough to flank him. I was unarmed. And Vincent knew exactly where we were.

“You can’t win this, Damen!” Vincent yelled from the kitchen. “I have a team coming. You think I came here alone? They’re five minutes out. This ends today.”

Damen looked at me. His face was grey with pain, fresh blood soaking through his bandage.

“Go,” he whispered. “Get Sienna. Go out the back. Take the woods.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “We end this together. Remember?”

I looked around the room. I needed a distraction. Something to flush him out.

My eyes landed on the liquor cabinet near the kitchen entrance. It was stocked with high-proof bourbon and vodka.

“Damen,” I whispered. “Can you make the shot? If I flush him out?”

“If I see him, he’s dead,” Damen gritted out. “But I can’t get an angle.”

“I’ll give you the angle.”

I crawled toward the fireplace. There was a heavy iron poker there. And a decorative bottle of ethanol for the fireplace starter.

I grabbed the bottle.

“Hey, Vincent!” I yelled. “You said I was just a waitress, right?”

“A dead waitress!” he shouted back.

“Well,” I said, lighting a match from the mantle box. “I learned a few things in the kitchen. Like how to flambé.”

I threw the bottle of ethanol over the sofa toward the kitchen island. It smashed against the floor, splashing liquid everywhere.

Vincent laughed. “You missed!”

“Did I?”

I tossed the lit match.

Whoosh.

The ethanol fumes caught instantly. A wall of fire erupted between the kitchen and the living room, licking up the side of the island. The fire wasn’t big enough to burn the house down yet, but the sudden heat and the wall of flame panicked him.

Vincent scrambled backward, away from the heat, breaking from his cover. He stepped out into the open hallway, gun raised, coughing.

He saw me. He raised his gun.

But he forgot about the King.

Damen sat up. He didn’t rush. He didn’t spray bullets. He took one breath. He steadied his hand.

Bang.

One shot.

It hit Vincent square in the chest.

Vincent looked down at the hole in his shirt. He looked at Damen. There was no anger left in his face, just a sudden, blank surprise.

He fell to his knees. Then face forward.

He didn’t get back up.

The room fell silent, save for the crackling of the small fire and our heavy breathing.

Damen lowered the gun. He let his head drop back against the floor, closing his eyes.

“It’s done,” he whispered.

I grabbed a throw blanket and smothered the fire before it could spread. Then I walked over to Vincent. I kicked the gun away from his hand, just to be sure. He was gone. The traitor was dead.

I walked back to Damen and collapsed onto the floor beside him. I didn’t care about the blood. I didn’t care about the glass. I just wrapped my arms around him and held on.

He buried his face in my neck, and for the first time, I felt his body shake with silent sobs. He wasn’t crying for Vincent. He was crying for the betrayal, for the years lost, for the brother he had to kill to save his family.

“I’ve got you,” I whispered, rocking him. “I’ve got you.”

Six Months Later

The Chicago winter had set in, burying the city in grey slush and biting wind, but inside the penthouse, it was warm.

I stood by the window, looking out at the skyline. It looked different to me now. It didn’t look like a cage, and it didn’t look like a kingdom to be conquered. It just looked like home.

“You’re thinking too loud,” a voice said.

I turned. Damen was walking into the room. His limp was almost gone now, just a slight hesitation in his step when it rained. He looked better. The darkness under his eyes had lifted. He looked less like a wolf and more like a man.

“Just watching the snow,” I said.

He came up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist, resting his chin on my shoulder. His hands were warm. “Toby called.”

“Yeah?” I smiled. “How’s school?”

“Good. He got an A on his history project. And he wants to know if we’re coming for Christmas.”

“Are we?”

“I think we have to,” Damen said, kissing my cheek. “He threatened to tell you embarrassing stories about your childhood if we don’t show up.”

I laughed. A real laugh. It felt good.

“How is she?” I asked, looking toward the hallway.

“She’s painting,” Damen said softly.

Sienna.

Her recovery had been slow. The first month, she didn’t speak. She just sat in the garden of the safe house, staring at the flowers. But slowly, piece by piece, she had come back to us. Therapy, patience, and a lot of quiet nights just sitting together.

She wasn’t the girl she was before. She never would be. She was quieter, sharper. She flinched at loud noises. But she was painting again. She was smiling. She was alive.

And she had taken a liking to running the logistics of Damen’s legitimate businesses. It turned out, she had a mind for numbers that rivaled his.

“She’s strong,” I said.

“She learned from the best,” Damen murmured. He turned me around to face him.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet box.

My heart skipped a beat.

“Ava,” he said, his face serious. “I don’t have a normal life to offer you. You know that. My world is dangerous. It’s messy. There will always be wolves at the door.”

He opened the box. Inside was a ring—not a gaudy diamond, but a stunning sapphire, dark as the ocean, surrounded by small, sharp diamonds. It looked like a weapon and a promise all at once.

“But I promise you,” he continued, looking deep into my eyes. “I will never let you face them alone. You are my partner. You are my equal. You are the only reason I’m still standing.”

He didn’t kneel. We were past kneeling. We stood eye to eye.

“Will you marry me?”

I looked at the ring. I thought about the girl I used to be—the waitress in the cheap shoes, terrified of the world. And I thought about the woman I was now. The woman who had walked into the fire and come out holding the hand of the devil himself.

I didn’t need a white picket fence. I didn’t need safety. I needed this. I needed the fire.

“Pull that stunt again,” I whispered, smiling, “and I’ll say yes.”

Damen laughed, sliding the ring onto my finger. It fit perfectly.

“I love you, Ava Lane.”

“I love you, Damen Moretti.”

Epilogue: The New Kingdom

We didn’t leave the life. You can’t just leave. But we changed it.

With Vincent gone and the evidence from the drive, Damen dismantled Victor Hail’s remaining network. We turned it over to the Feds—an anonymous tip that cleaned up the streets better than a turf war ever could. We got out of the trafficking business. We got out of the dirtiest parts of the game.

The Moretti family still ran Chicago, but we ran it differently. We ran it with rules.

I still had nightmares sometimes. I still saw Victor’s face when I pulled the trigger. I still saw Vincent burning. But when I woke up, Damen was there, holding me, grounding me.

One night, we went back to The Monarch.

We sat in the same private dining room where we had met. The staff looked terrified when we walked in, but I smiled at them. I knew their names. I knew their struggles.

When the manager—the same one who had tried to fire me—came to the table, sweating and nervous, offering us the best wine on the house, Damen just looked at me.

“What would you like, Mrs. Moretti?” he asked.

I looked at the menu. I looked at the spot where I had stood, trembling, holding a tray.

“I’ll have the steak,” I said. “And make sure the servers get a 50% tip tonight. Put it on our bill.”

Damen grinned, raising his glass.

“To the girl who didn’t back down,” he said.

I clinked my glass against his. The crystal sang a clear, sweet note.

“To the man who was worth fighting for,” I replied.

We drank. Outside, the snow fell on Chicago, covering the grime and the blood in a blanket of white. The city was cold, but we were warm. We were survivors. We were family.

And God help anyone who tried to touch us ever again.

THE END.

—————–SUMMARY OF THE WHOLE STORY—————–

Ava Lane, a struggling waitress in Chicago, faces off against Damen Moretti, the city’s most feared mob boss, when he harasses her at her workplace. Instead of punishing her, Damen is captivated by her defiance and hires her as his personal server to help pay for her brother’s medical bills. As they grow closer, Ava discovers Damen is haunted by the disappearance of his sister, Sienna. Ava finds a connection through her late mother’s nursing records, leading them to rescue Sienna from a rival gang leader, Victor Hail. In the ensuing chaos, Ava is forced to kill Victor to save Damen. However, the true twist is revealed when Sienna wakes up and identifies Damen’s right-hand man, Vincent, as the traitor who sold her. In a final, tense confrontation at a safe house, Ava and Damen work together to defeat Vincent. Six months later, they are married, running a reformed empire, and living as survivors and partners who found love in the darkness.