Ivory Sins (Empire of Sin & Blood #4)

1. Prologue

Prologue

I ’ve always known how I would die.

Not when or where—just the how. In my family’s world, death comes with a signature. Clean. Professional. A message written in blood.

But the letter sitting on my mahogany desk tonight promises something different. Something worse.

The heavy cream envelope bears no postmark, no return address. Just my name in elegant calligraphy: Olivia Bellanti, Esq. Inside, a flash drive.

My hands tremble as I insert the drive into my laptop. A video recording of myself, seven years younger, standing over a body in the rain flickers onto the screen. The timestamp reads 2:17 AM, October 15, 2017. The night I thought I had buried forever.

As the video plays, my mind goes numb with fear. The footage shows me hitting Enzo DiMartino with my car, stepping out to check on him, and then driving away in a panic.

Below the video, five words glare at me in the same precise handwriting as a caption: “Time to pay your dues.”

I should call Luca, my father, and Matteo, my brother. One word from them and an army of soldiers would materialize around me, guns drawn, ready to kill or die for the family’s princess. But they can’t protect me from this. No one can.

The DiMartino family. Their name is whispered in the darkest corners of the criminal world, a ghostly presence shrouded in rumors and fear. Known for their ruthless efficiency and brutal reprisals, they are the unseen puppeteers of the underworld. No one dares cross them and live to tell the tale.

Gruesome stories circulate—stories of enemies who disappeared without a trace, of entire families wiped out overnight, and of bodies found with chilling messages carved into their flesh.

The smart thing would be to run. I’ve got offshore accounts, false identities, everything I’d need to disappear. Being consigliere to the Bellanti syndicate taught me well. Too well.

But as I stare at the video, at the threat. Beneath it, I know running isn’t an option. Not anymore. Because the dead man in the video isn’t just any victim—he’s the son of Alex DiMartino, the enigmatic and feared leader of the DiMartino family.

My father always taught me that in our world, you’re either the hunter or the prey. What he never taught me was what to do when you’re both.

Sometimes, the only way to survive is to face the very thing you’ve been running from.

Even if it means losing everything you’ve built trying to escape it.