Serena POV:

My mother grabbed my arm, her nails biting into my flesh like small, sharp teeth.

"Do you have any idea what I sacrificed for you?" she cried, her voice a weapon of practiced manipulation. "If you don't do this, Leo is a dead man. You owe us this."

She was trying to fashion a leash for my neck, to hand the end of it to a violent old man.

I looked at Leo.

He was hunched over his phone, his thumbs moving in a mindless dance across the screen, utterly detached from the transaction of my life being conducted for his benefit.

The sight of him, so placid and unconcerned, opened a floodgate of bitter memory.

I remembered the night a rival gang's firebombs turned our house into an inferno; my mother had seized Leo's hand and fled, leaving me to the smoke until a neighbor pulled my limp body from the wreckage.

I had spent my whole life working in the *Famiglia* sweatshops just to keep this family afloat.

With a surge of something cold and hard, I wrenched my arm from her grasp.

I would not be a pawn on their board any longer.

I walked into my tiny bedroom and pulled a battered duffel bag from under the bed.

I hastily packed my few items of clothing.

At the bottom of my drawer, my fingers brushed against a worn, hardback book.

It was a copy of *Jane Eyre*.

Dante had given it to me ten years ago.

"Read it," he had said, his gaze piercing through my adolescent defenses. "See how she kicks open the door to her own cage."

He had been the sole point of light in the suffocating darkness of my world.

I placed the book in my bag as if it were a holy relic and zipped it shut.

I walked out of the apartment without looking back.

That night, I moved into a heavily guarded *Famiglia* safehouse designed for lower-tier associates.

The room was bleak, containing nothing but bare gray walls and a single cot, but it possessed the one luxury I craved: a lock on the door.

The next morning, I reported to the syndicate's legitimate front headquarters, where I worked in the public relations department. Those years buried in PR had taught me more than press releases. I had memorized every financial report that crossed my desk, studied the architecture of every syndicate business that used our front company as a screen.

The Consigliere handed me a heavy DSLR camera and a thick file.

"The penthouse," he ordered. "I need a profile and photographs of the new Chief of Operations for the casino magazine."

I took the private elevator to the top floor, a knot of cold dread tightening in my stomach.

I walked into the massive office, where floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of the city's glittering sprawl.

Then, I froze.

Dante was sitting behind a massive mahogany desk.

He looked up, and his gaze pinned itself to the hollow of my collarbone with the precision of a scalpel. I could feel the physical weight of it.

"Drop the formalities, Serena," he murmured, his voice a low vibration that seemed to travel up my spine. "Need I remind you we once shared a desk at the academy?"

My hands trembled as I lifted the camera.

I began to shoot, the mechanical click of the shutter unnaturally loud in the quiet room. The flash illuminated the unforgiving planes of his jaw, the lethal grace in his posture.

Every time I looked through the lens, his unwavering scrutiny felt like a physical touch.

When I stepped forward to show him the digital screen, he studied the captured images, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smirk of dark satisfaction.

Then, leaning back in his leather chair, he steepled his fingers.

"You will attend Elena's birthday celebration at the club this weekend," he said, his tone making it an order, not an invitation.

I gripped the camera, my knuckles straining against the plastic.

"No," I said, forcing the word through a tight throat. "I have syndicate duties. I cannot."

Dante stood up, the casual air of authority evaporating, replaced by something far more dangerous.

He rounded the massive desk, closing the distance between us until the scent of expensive cologne, a clean, sharp fragrance of cedar and leather, enveloped me.

His voice turned to ice.

Looking down at me from his considerable height, he named my decade of careful avoidance for what it was.

"Ten years, Serena," he whispered, the sound a razor against my skin. "Tell me, why do you recoil from me as if I were a contagion?"