Chapter 1 The Return

Valentina

The wheels hit the tarmac with a groan that rattled through my chest.

Welcome home, Valentina.

Except no one in this country knows that name. The only two people who did have been dead for ten years.

The seatbelt light dings. Passengers stand, stretching, chattering in a dozen accents. I stay seated, fingers curled tight around the handle of my leather bag. My pulse is a steady drumbeat—measured, deliberate. Ten years of planning, and it all starts here.

New York.

The city my parents fled to save me. The same soil they bled into years later.

The cabin smells like recycled air and cheap perfume, but for a second, my mind is elsewhere.

A flash.

A coffin too small for a body.

My mother’s trembling hand pressing a red rose against the white lid.

My father’s voice: She’s gone.

But I wasn’t.

I blink, and the memory of the home video of my own funeral dissolves like fog on glass. The line to exit shuffles forward. My passport—under the name Valentina Rossi—feels heavy in my pocket, as if it remembers every lie it was built on.

When I step off the plane, the air is colder than I expected. I pull my coat tighter and keep walking, heels clicking against tile like the ticking of a clock counting down to his end.

Matteo Genovese.

The man who slaughtered my family. The man who thought the Maranzano bloodline ended that night.

He doesn’t know I lived, doesn’t know I even existed in the first place. Just as my parents had planned.

You see, when I was born, they faked my death—a stillborn baby. Then they hid me away in another country to protect me from all their enemies.

Matteo doesn’t know I’ve been preparing for this day since I was fifteen. He doesn’t know he’s already mine.

I lift my chin, sliding through the crowd toward baggage claim, toward the life I built from ashes. My reflection catches in the glass wall—dark hair, red lips, a face my father once called angelic.

Fitting, since angels can be avengers too.

“Welcome to New York,” a voice over the intercom says.

Welcome to hell, I think.

Because this is where Matteo Genovese’s kingdom burns.

The crowd thickens around baggage claim. Tourists with rolling suitcases and locals with dead eyes. I keep my expression neutral, controlled. Valentina Rossi doesn’t flinch, doesn’t sweat, doesn’t look over her shoulder.

But inside, every nerve is electric.

I’ve run this scenario in my head a thousand times. The first step of a long game. The entry. The deception. The fall.

“Miss Rossi?”

The man’s voice is crisp, practiced. A driver in a black suit stands near the exit, holding a sign with my alias.

Good. Right on schedule.

He’s not my ally. He’s a name on a list given to me by someone who knows someone—people who move in the gray spaces between crime and survival. My handler made the arrangements.

If Matteo’s men run background checks, they’ll find what I want them to:

European citizenship. Dual passport. Quiet wealth from “import business.”

Nothing that screams revenge.

The driver takes my bag and leads me outside. The blast of winter air hits like a slap. The city hums with chaos—sirens, horns, life layered over rot.

I inhale deeply.

It smells like corruption and gasoline. Like home—even though it was never actually mine. It was my parents’ home, and the strong connection I had with them makes New York feel like home.

Even though they hid me in a different country, they visited me once a month for five days without fail. My parents loved me.

The car is sleek, black, tinted. I slide inside, running my fingers across the smooth leather. My reflection stares back from the window—cold, collected.

But behind my calm, there’s something darker.

The child who watched news of her family’s death reported across the world.

The girl who heard the screams echo through the walls—her own screams of a painful loss.

The woman who rose from their graves.

“Straight to the hotel, Miss Rossi?” the driver asks.

“Yes,” I say. “And take the long way. I want to see the city.”

He nods.

The skyline bleeds into view—steel and glass like jagged knives cutting into gray clouds. I watch it, silent, as memories flicker behind my eyes.

The funeral that wasn’t.

The massacre that was.

My mother’s voice whispering lullabies in Sicilian.

Videos of my brother that I never had the chance to meet.

My father sitting me on his lap telling me the story of my birth—how I came almost a month early, on Valentine’s Day. How my mother’s water broke at a fancy restaurant and how, even in labor, she was the best-dressed woman in the room. Then three hours later I was born, and they named me Valentina.

Every memory is a scar I learned to polish into armor.

When the car stops at a light, I catch sight of a headline on a passing newsstand: GENOVESE INDUSTRIES EXPANDS INTO INTERNATIONAL TRADE.

Of course he does.

Power breeds power. Blood feeds it.

My lips curve faintly. “Enjoy it while it lasts, Matteo.”

The driver glances at me in the mirror, uncertain whether I spoke to him. I don’t bother clarifying.

We arrive at the hotel—a five-star tower overlooking the East River. Discreet, expensive, and forgettable. Perfect.

Inside, marble floors gleam like ice. I check in under the name Rossi, sliding my forged ID across the counter with steady fingers. The clerk doesn’t question a thing. People rarely do when you dress like money and carry yourself like danger.

When the elevator doors close, I exhale for the first time in hours.

The suite is pristine. Too pristine. I scan it automatically—mirrors, vents, under the bed, behind the curtains. No bugs, no cameras. Old habits die hard.

I toss my coat over the chair and stand by the window. The city sprawls beneath me like prey waiting to be hunted.

My phone buzzes on the table. Unknown number. One new message.

Welcome back, Lenti. The game’s begun.

My pulse stutters, then steadies.

Only one person alive calls me that.

My guardian—the man who raised me, trained me, turned me into what I am. He must’ve known I’d land safely.

I type a reply.

Always was your best student.

Then I set the phone down, open my suitcase, and pull out a small velvet box. Inside is the ring I’ve kept hidden for ten years—a simple gold band with the Maranzano crest engraved inside.

I slip it on. Not for sentiment. For war.

“Let’s burn his world down,” I whisper to the city lights.

A siren wails somewhere in the distance, thin and keening. Fitting soundtrack for a resurrection.

Tomorrow I will walk into a room full of men who think they already own everything. Tomorrow I will sit at a table where fortunes are lost on a flick of a wrist—and I will lose on purpose to get close.

Tonight, I sleep in a stranger’s bed under a name that is not mine. Tomorrow, I will be the virus that brings his empire to its knees.

Welcome to New York, Valentina.