That night, my soul was pulled by an unseen force, inexplicably tethered to Lev.

I materialized in the corner of his penthouse overlooking the Chicago skyline.

City lights poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting fractured shadows across the sterile apartment. It was a world away from the warm, chaotic, garlic-scented kitchen of the Moretti estate where we used to hide.

Katya was waiting for him on a white leather sofa. She was the niece of Sergei Tarasov, the boss of the Russian Bratva, and Lev’s new fiancée.

Katya possessed everything I lacked.

She was tall, blonde, and utterly ruthless, raised from the cradle in a blood-soaked mob family. She didn't fear violence; she reveled in it.

When Lev walked in, looking thoroughly exhausted, Katya practically pounced on him.

"Lev, darling," she purred, tracing his jawline. "You look terrible. Did that old Italian give you a headache?"

Lev poured himself a neat whiskey, ignoring her touch. "Vincenzo is stubborn. It's a genetic defect in his bloodline."

Katya rolled her eyes and walked over to the coffee table.

She picked up a velvet jewelry box and handed it to him. "I brought you a gift to celebrate taking over the South Side. A custom platinum money clip. I noticed you always keep that filthy, beat-up Zippo in your breast pocket—it ruins the lines of your suits. It's time for an upgrade."

Lev’s expression instantly darkened.

His hand instinctively shot to his chest, his fingers brushing the fabric right over his heart, feeling the hard outline of the silver lighter.

It was the only thing I had ever given him.

Five and a half years ago.

Back then, Leo was just a street soldier working for my father, and I was the untouchable Mafia princess.

We had been seeing each other in secret for months.

On his twenty-first birthday, I pooled together my allowance and bought him a solid silver Zippo.

Too terrified to let a jeweler see my name next to his, I bought a metal engraving kit and did it myself.

I stayed up all night in my bedroom, squinting under the desk lamp, meticulously carving his name into the metal,

right next to a tiny, crooked little star.

By the time I finished, my fingers were blistered and bleeding.

When I snuck into the greenhouse to hand it to him, exhausted and sporting heavy bags under my eyes, he looked at that lighter like it was the Holy Grail.

He pulled me into the shadows, cupping my face with his rough hands, and kissed the dark circles under my eyes.

"Clara, you shouldn't have worn yourself out for me," he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. "I'm a nobody. You don't owe me a damn thing."

"I wanted to," I replied, resting my head against his chest. "I want you to carry a piece of me wherever you go."

Back in the penthouse, Katya tried to reach into Lev’s pocket to fish out the lighter.

Lev suddenly seized her wrist with a sudden, terrifying ferocity.

"Don't touch it," Lev warned, his voice dropping to a deadly, glacial whisper.

Katya yanked her hand back, rubbing her wrist, her bruised ego flaring. "Why do you even keep that piece of junk? It’s broken, yet you guard it like it's a holy relic."

Lev pulled the lighter from his pocket.

His thumb gently stroked the crooked lettering I had engraved.

Watching him, I realized he was trembling. The impenetrable mask of the ruthless mob boss cracked—if only by a millimeter—revealing the broken boy underneath.

"I keep it because I hate it," Lev stated, his face blank. "I keep it to remind myself of a lesson I had to learn the hard way."

"What lesson?" Katya asked.

"That love is a liability," Lev said softly. "I used to be their dog. And the only person I trusted... the woman who gave this to me... when The Commission came for my head, she called me a beggar and threw me to the wolves."

"She betrayed me. She abandoned me."

He gripped the lighter so hard his knuckles turned stark white.

"I keep it to keep the hate alive. Every time I touch it, I remember how she humiliated me. How she told me I was worth absolutely nothing."

I collapsed onto the Persian rug, clutching my stomach as if I’d been gutted.

"I had to do it, Leo."

I sobbed, knowing full well he couldn't hear me.

"If they knew I loved you, they would have tortured you to get to my father, then made him execute you himself. If I didn't break your heart, you would have stayed and died."

"I had to make you hate me so you would survive."

"Who is she?" Katya snapped, a flash of psychotic jealousy in her eyes. "Give me a name, Lev. I'll send my hitters. We’ll skin her alive."

Lev snapped the lighter shut and pressed it back over his heart.

"No. No one touches her but me. I don't want her dead. I want her to suffer. I’m going to bleed her family dry until she has no choice but to crawl out of whatever rat hole she’s hiding in."

"And when she begs me to spare their lives... I will utterly destroy her."

The next morning, Lev escalated the war.

He headed down to the basement of a Syndicate-owned warehouse down by the docks. That was where my mother, Rosa Moretti, was being held.

My mother was no fragile trophy wife. Before marrying my father, she had been the daughter of a master counterfeiter in Palermo.

She possessed golden hands that could forge masterpieces. But she was sixty-two now, and her health was failing.

Lev had locked her in a damp, windowless cell that reeked of mildew and copper patina.

Under the harsh glare of an industrial desk lamp, my mother squinted through a jeweler's loupe, etching microscopic serial numbers onto steel plates for counterfeit hundred-dollar bills.

The Syndicate demanded a hundred flawless plates a week. It was precision work meant for laser machinery, not an old woman suffering from arthritis.

When Lev entered the room, flanked by two armed guards, my mother didn't even pause her work. The only sound in the room was the scrape of her etching tool against the steel.

"Mrs. Moretti, the quality of the last shipment slipped," Lev said casually, leaning his shoulder against the concrete wall. "My distributors in New York found flaws in the watermarks."

My mother finally set down her tools. She pulled off the loupe and looked at him.

Her once-bright hazel eyes were clouded over. The endless hours under the glaring lights were rapidly blinding her.

"Go to hell, Lev," my mother said. Her voice was as dry as dust, but her tone was unapologetically cold.

Lev chuckled, though there was zero humor in it. "Is that how you speak to a guest? I remember a time when you used to bake bread for me when I was starving. You used to bandage my cuts."

"I used to think you were human," Rosa shot back, tilting her chin up. "Now I see you're just a rabid dog we made the mistake of letting inside the house."

Lev’s smile vanished. The psychological warfare wasn't working. He needed the Morettis to break. He needed them to curse my name and beg for mercy to justify his blinding rage.

But they refused to give him the satisfaction.

Lev snapped his fingers. Yuri, the hulking guard, stepped forward. He grabbed my mother's silver hair and slammed her face hard onto the steel table.

"Let her go!" I shrieked, lunging forward to claw at Yuri's eyes, only for my fingers to dissolve into thin air.

I wailed, "Mom! Mom, please, just tell him I'm dead! Please!"

But I knew she wouldn't.

Before driving to the docks that fateful night, I had sworn my family to secrecy.

I told them that if Lev ever found out I died for him, the guilt would utterly destroy him.

He had endured a lifetime of abuse; if he knew his survival was bought with my blood, he would put a bullet in his own head.

Even while being tortured, my mother was honoring my dying wish.

Yuri drew a hunting knife from his belt and forced my mother's left hand flat against the steel plate.

Lev stepped up, towering over her.

"Where is Clara?" he demanded, his voice devoid of emotion, terrifyingly hollow.

"Where is that coward of a daughter of yours? Tell me, or you lose a finger. Every day you refuse, you lose another piece of yourself."

My mother turned her head, resting her bruised cheek against the freezing steel surface.

She looked up at Lev. She didn't cry, and she didn't tremble. She looked at him with the fierce, heartbreaking pity of a mother watching a terminally ill child.

"My daughter is in a place you will never reach," Rosa whispered. "She is untouchable. She is ten times the man you are."

A violent flash of agony crossed Lev’s eyes. He gave Yuri a single nod.

The enforcer brought the heavy pommel of the knife down hard, followed by the blade.

The sickening crunch of severing bone and cartilage echoed in the cramped room.

My mother let out a blood-curdling scream. Her body convulsed, but she clamped her jaw shut, refusing to give Lev what he wanted—she wouldn't beg for mercy.

I collapsed beside her, sobbing hysterically, trying vainly to press my ghostly hands over her bleeding stump to stop the hemorrhage. "I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so, so sorry. I didn't want this. I thought I was saving you."

Lev stared at the blood. His chest he heave sharply, a complex storm of emotion flickering across his face before he ruthlessly suppressed it.

He walked over to a small cot in the corner where my mother’s few meager belongings were kept.

He picked up her purse and dumped its contents onto the floor.

A delicate pearl rosary spilled out, clattering crisply against the concrete.

My rosary. The one my father had given me for my First Communion.

Lev froze.

He slowly bent down and picked it up.

He remembered it. I used to wrap it tightly around my knuckles whenever I was nervous.

He stared at the strand of pearls, his thumb gently brushing over the silver crucifix.

For a fleeting second, Lev the Syndicate boss disappeared, and I saw the Leo who used to hold my hand in the dark.

But then, the delusion of betrayal poisoned his mind once again. He assumed my mother kept it as a memento of a daughter who was off living a life of luxury in hiding.

"Damn it!" Lev snapped the rosary with a violent flick of his wrist.

The string broke, sending dozens of white pearls scattering across the filthy basement floor, rolling right into my mother's pooling blood.

My mother gasped, tears finally spilling from her clouded eyes. "No... my baby..."

"Unless you tell me where she is," Lev hissed, his voice trembling with unhinged fury.

He stomped hard on a pearl, crushing it under his heel. "The debt doubles. If you won't give up her safehouse by tomorrow morning, I take another finger. Yuri, clean her up."

Lev turned and stormed out of the room, leaving me kneeling in the blood.

The final confrontation erupted two days later.

Lev had become increasingly agitated and volatile. The dark circles under his eyes were clear signs of extreme sleep deprivation.

His obsession with finding me was eating away at him like a parasite.

He decided it was time to break the only person who could put up a real fight: my brother, Dominic.

Dominic was waiting for him in the ruins of our family's old speakeasy.

A week prior, the Syndicate had raided the place, smashing the mahogany bar and shattering the mirrors.

Dominic stood dead center in the wreckage.

He was twenty-eight, built like a middleweight boxer, and possessed the deadly, cold precision of a master sniper. In his right hand, he gripped a customized 1911 pistol.

Lev walked in alone, locking the heavy oak doors behind him. He unbuttoned his suit jacket, revealing the shoulder holster beneath.

"You're a dead man, Tarasov," Dominic growled, aiming his pistol squarely at Lev’s chest. "I should have put a bullet in your skull the day my father dragged you out of that alley."

"We fed you, put clothes on your back. I treated you like a brother, and we covered for you! And this is how you repay us? Torturing an old man and butchering my mother?"

"Your mother made her choice," Lev roared back, his eyes wild. "Covered for me? Bullshit! You all looked down on me. I was just a stray dog you kept for amusement. And your sister... to save her own skin, she sold me out to The Commission the second things got hot."

"You arrogant, ignorant son of a bitch!" Dominic bellowed. "You don't know the first thing about Clara."

"Then enlighten me!" Lev screamed, drawing his own weapon with lightning speed.

The gunfight was deafening, bullets tearing through the remnants of the speakeasy.

Dominic was a dead-eye, but Lev fought like a man with a death wish. Once their magazines ran dry, the shootout devolved into a brutal, primal brawl.

They crashed through overturned tables, trading bone-shattering blows.

Dominic landed a heavy right hook that shattered Lev’s nose, but Lev swallowed the agony and drove his knee fiercely into Dominic's ribs. Lev had spent five years clawing his way up through the bloodiest corners of the Russian underworld; his fighting style was purely lethal.

Grappling on the floor, Lev managed to draw a tactical karambit knife from his belt. In one horrifyingly precise arc, he slashed deeply into the tendons and muscle of Dominic's right arm—his shooting arm.

Dominic screamed in agony, his weapon clattering to the floor.

The blade bit down to the bone, leaving him permanently crippled.

The arm was practically severed.

He collapsed back against the splintered bar, clutching his ruined arm as blood pulsed rhythmically onto the floorboards.

Lev stood over him, chest heaving, blood streaming from his broken nose. He wiped his face, staring down at my brother with absolute contempt.

"Pathetic," Lev spat. "You used to be the untouchable Dominic Moretti. Look at you now. You can't even protect yourself, let alone your family."

Lev snapped his fingers toward the back door.

The heavy iron door swung open, and Yuri walked in, dragging a small figure by the hair.

It was Mia. My eight-year-old baby sister.

She was in her pajamas, barefoot, and covered in grime. Her face was bruised, her eyes wide with sheer terror.

She was crying hysterically, screaming Dominic's name.

"No! No! Leave her out of this!" I shrieked, flying across the room to place myself between Yuri and my little sister.

But I remained entirely unseen—a phantom made only of memories.

"Let her go!" Dominic rasped. Dragging his profusely bleeding arm, he tried to crawl forward, but a Syndicate thug kicked him right back to the floor.

Dominic screamed in pure rage, "Lev, you coward! She's a little girl! She loved you! She used to draw pictures for you, you sick bastard!"

Lev’s face twitched.

He looked at Mia, and for a fraction of a second, I saw profound disgust flash in his eyes. He hated what he was doing.

But his trauma, his desperate, clawing need to force me out of hiding, overpowered his humanity.

Lev crouched in front of Mia. He extended a large, bloodstained hand and slowly wrapped his fingers around her slender, fragile neck. He didn't squeeze, but the threat was unmistakable.

Mia gasped, freezing like a trapped rabbit.

"Call her," Lev told Dominic, his voice low and blood-chilling.

"I know you have a way to reach her. Call Clara. Make her come out of hiding. Make her walk through those doors right now, or I swear to God, Dom, I will snap this little girl's neck."

Mia whimpered, struggling to breathe as Lev’s thumb pressed against her windpipe. Her face began to flush red.

"Tell him, Dom!" I screamed, dropping to my knees beside my brother, phantom tears streaming endlessly down my face. "Break the promise! Please, just break it! Save her!"

Dominic stared at Mia's panic-stricken face.

He looked at the monster Lev had become. In that agonizing moment, he realized there was no reasoning with a man driven completely insane by grief and perceived betrayal.

"Fine!" Dominic's voice was hoarse with pain, desperation, and utter defeat. "Fine, you want her?! You want the truth, you psycho?! Let her go, and I'll tell you!"

Lev’s eyes widened slightly. He loosened his grip on Mia's neck, letting her gasp for air, but he didn't pull his hand away. "Where is she, Dom?"

Dominic slumped against the bar, tears mixing with the blood and sweat on his face.

His chest heaved as he prepared to deliver the killing blow that would utterly destroy Lev Tarasov.

"She's not in hiding," Dominic choked out, his voice a guttural rasp. "She didn't run off to Europe. And she didn't sell you out to The Commission."

"Stop stalling with your lies—" Lev began.

"Listen to me!" Dominic roared, slamming his good hand against the floor.

Lev’s mouth twitched, and he fell silent.

"When The Commission found out you were Sergei's bastard son, they put a million-dollar bounty on your head. Clara found out."

"She knew you would never leave without her. She knew if you stayed, you were a dead man. So she staged that fight. She said those vicious things to break your heart, just so you would get on that boat to Moscow and never look back."

Lev froze.

The air seemed to instantly vanish from the room.

The arrogant posture of the mafia boss evaporated, replaced by a chilling, deathly silence.

"What are you talking about?"

"She knew The Commission wouldn't stop until they had a body," Dominic wept, his defenses utterly shattered. "They were waiting at Pier 39."

"So, after she chased you away... she put on your leather jacket. She took your wallet. She got into your Chevy, and she drove to the docks."

Lev’s hand slipped completely away from Mia's neck.

He slowly stood up, his face draining of all color until he looked like a corpse. His lips parted, but no sound came out.

"She crashed through the barricade," Dominic continued, looking up at Lev with eyes full of pure hatred and unbearable sorrow. "She took a sniper round to the shoulder, and then... she set the car on fire. To make sure the body was burned beyond recognition. To make sure they thought the Russian street rat was dead."

"No..." Lev whispered, the word barely squeezing past his lips. He stumbled back a step. "No, no. That's a lie. That's a fucking lie."

"She's dead, Lev!" Dominic screamed, his voice echoing off the exposed brick walls of the ruined bar.

"She died five years ago! She burned to ashes, just so you could live!"

"We kept the secret so you wouldn't blow your own brains out from the guilt!"

"But look at you! Look what you've done to the people she died to protect!"

"Why did you ever come back?!"