Chapter Two
T he best time to learn about pain was when you were hurting too much to feel anything.
When your heart was torn out of your chest, there was nothing else for the enemy to target.
Nothing in your body that knew what it meant to fear.
All you had left was a brain that calculated the odds...plus a body that had been trained nonstop in the past three months by none other than the Prince of Killers himself.
The man had been merciless even as she had cried and screamed in front of him. But she realized now that all those seemingly endless hours of combat training were worth every second. If not for his brutal conditioning (and reconditioning), she would have been dead a long, long time ago.
Then again, maybe death was already knocking on her door, with how tonight was currently shaping up.
Every strike of her opponent was like an echo from the past—frustratingly fluid, eerily precise, and devastatingly familiar.
The way this person anticipated her every move, even the way he deflected her attacks with an almost taunting style of grace—-
She had seen someone move like this just once, when she had snuck inside the Marchettis' warehouse in downtown Boston. Her sole purpose at that time had been to cause trouble. She had wanted to give them another reason to admit they had made a mistake in taking her in.
But instead, it was the opposite, and what she had seen that day made her realize she and Giancarlo had more in common than she was willing to admit.
That was the only time she had seen Giancarlo fight.
The only time she had seen him draw and shed blood.
But instead of fearing him, she had wanted to copy his every move—possess the same icy composure he had displayed even when the odds were stacked against him.
Once was all it took, and Sarica knew she wanted to be exactly like Giancarlo when facing death.
And what she had seen that day—
No.
Don't go there.
Just don't.
This had to be someone who knew him well and long enough to mimic the way he fought.
But why, though?
Was it to simply mess with her mind?
Or could it be this person didn't even realize what they revealed with every swing of their fist?
Viktor Biancardi .
Her body shook with rage as soon as the name flashed in her mind, and the more she thought of it, the more it made terrible sense.
The Marchettis had all treated Viktor as one of them.
She herself had looked upon him as a brother.
All of them had seen him as famiglia .
But in exchange for their loyalty, Viktor had done the one thing none of them ever saw coming.
And because of him—-
Giancarlo was no longer with them.
Why, damn you? Why?
If this was truly Viktor she was now fighting against—-
I just want to know why!
Sarica knew it was foolish of her to lose control of her temper now of all times—
Why ?
But pain and grief had already consumed her sanity, and all she wanted now was to know the truth.
How could you do that?
Her fingers tightened around the knife concealed in her sleeve, its blade laced with poison.
I'm sorry, God.
She knew she was hurting Him by letting rage take over.
She knew she was slipping away farther and farther from Him as she considered doing the unthinkable.
She knew what she was doing was wrong, but—
Help me, God.
She didn't want to kill anyone, but when she thought about how this man she was fighting against could be the same person who was responsible for Giancarlo's disappearance—
Please.
Because all she could see was red even as her heart started to bleed tears.
This is not the way to avenge me, dolcezza.
Shock blazed through Sarica's body as she heard the unmistakable sound of Giancarlo's voice whispering inside of her mind.
And even though she knew this was nothing but a hallucination—
She also knew it was God answering her prayers as her mind broke free from the chains of vengeance.
Thank You.
The knife slipped from her fingers just as her opponent's full force slammed into her, sending her crashing to the ground. The impact drove the air from her lungs, stars exploding behind her eyes. She waited for her life to end, but something rough scraped against her face instead.
A blindfold?
Her captor's touch was oddly careful—-and that worried her more than brutality would have. Was this because her face was no longer hidden? Had her opponent recognized her—-and intended to ransom Sarica back to the Marchettis?
Every instinct screamed at her to stay alert as her captor bound her hands, the restraints firm but not cruel.
She struggled to keep track of her surroundings as her captor led her to the back of a vehicle. But memories of the past three months persisted in distracting her.
Only his famiglia knew the truth of what she had been doing, and because the Marchettis had agreed to play their role as coldly furious almost-in-laws to perfection, the entire world was happy to hate on her alongside them.
Night after night, all eyes were on her, a girl who shamelessly painted the town red using her missing fiancé's money.
And that was why...
None of them ever cared enough to look beyond the surface.
None of them ever cared to know what exactly she was doing inside the clubs owned by the Prince of Killers.
Because if they had—-
Then her secret would have long been exposed.
They would have known Sarica Nunez and Seijcut were one.
And that she had completely lied about her reasons for placing a bounty on Giancarlo Marchetti's head.
The people she had met as Seijcut were exactly as she imagined. People who actually had no information to give—-but because they hated the man she loved, they had wanted to work "with" Seijcut in finding Giancarlo.
They had wanted to exact revenge on him if he were ever found...
And that was why Sarica had passed them on to the Prince of Killers, and they, too, went missing the way Giancarlo did.
The vehicle hit a bump, her body swaying as her unseen driver made a turn, and with it, her thoughts swerved similarly. Viktor Biancardi's face flashed in her mind, and her fingers curled into fists behind her back.
Please, God.
Please.
Please keep me from killing him.
Tears burned her eyes as she thought of Viktor still walking around a free man while her Giancarlo, oh God...
She squeezed her eyes shut, and that was when she heard it.
This is not the way, dolcezza.
Giancarlo's beloved voice.
You cannot kill him.
Must not.
Because I cannot keep my promise to you if you're behind bars.
GIANCARLO STOOD AT the floor-to-ceiling windows of his office, the city of Kivr's capital spread before him, and beyond it, the vast desert. His reflection stared back at him: still in tactical gear, mask discarded on his desk, the silver streak in his hair gleaming under the moonlight.
For sixteen months, he had walked the razor's edge between life and death. Had done things that would haunt him until his last breath. But nothing—not the fall, not the months of rehabilitation, not even the choices that had led him here—nothing had prepared him for tonight.
Seijcut .
The name had been all everyone in the underworld could talk about for the past three months. A mysterious entity offering obscene amounts of money for information about him—-dead or alive. Two hundred million dollars total, sourced from his own inheritance to her.
He had spent weeks analyzing Seijcut's every move, every decision. The careful wording of the bounty. The way targets were chosen. How those who claimed to have killed him mysteriously disappeared, while those who offered genuine information about his survival were left unharmed.
No wonder the moves had felt familiar.
No wonder each strike had carried echoes of his own training.
Because it was her.
Sarica .
A part of him still had a hard time believing that after sixteen months of thinking they would never cross paths again—-
She was now within reach.
Locked in a room that only he could open.
And his to do however she wished.
In the sixteen months he had been away, his contact at the FBI had regularly sent reports to him about Sarica and his famiglia. It was the only thing that kept him sane. To know that they were safe. But while he was able to read the reports on his kin, everything about Sarica went straight to the file cabinet...until now.
Per che, dolcezza?
Why?
How?
The newspaper clippings scattered across his desk taunted him with glimpses of her life in the past months.
I'll make sure to wear red at your funeral so everyone knows I'm on the lookout for another sugar daddy.
Those had been her exact words.
But never had Giancarlo imagined, not even then, that she would actually be able to do it.
Until now.
He took the last unopened envelope. A collection of photos tumbled out, one of them causing Giancarlo to clench his fist until his knuckles started to whiten.
Her cheeks were flushed pink as she left the club.
But because he knew she didn't have it in her to still walk a straight line after drinking—-
Damn her.
Damn her.
Damn her.
Since Sarica had been cursed with two left feet, dancing was immediately out of the question, and so there was only one other way he could think of.
Only one way to make her heart pumping and her cheeks turning that rosy.
Only one way.
And the thought alone made him want to kill...or get himself killed.
Per che, dolcezza?
His phone buzzed, and the sound brought him back to his senses.
Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that it was God's perfect timing at work, God wanting Giancarlo to remember that neither vengeance nor anger could be of any help to him in the long run.
His phone buzzed again, and Giancarlo finally answered the call.
"I heard there was quite a plot twist in tonight's mission," Nassif drawled.
"I'll take care of her."
"And your wife?" the sheikh asked in sardonic amusement.
"I'll take care of that, too."