(Dante's POV)
I taste my own death on the wind. The shadow standing over Nonno's corpse should have killed me by now. Instead, she's staring at me like she's seeing a ghost.
Her blade hovers three inches from my heart, but what terrifies me isn't the steel—it's the storm of emotions radiating from her mind. For twenty-three years, I've never felt anything from a Castellano except cold hatred. Now waves of confusion, recognition, and something dangerously close to mercy crash against my psychic barriers.
"Dante Moretti." Her voice sounds hollow, mechanical. "Elena Castellano sends her regards."
I turn slowly, keeping my hands visible. The woman in front of me isn't what I expected. She's young—maybe my age—with dark hair pulled back and eyes that should be empty but aren't. There's something broken in her gaze, something human fighting against the weapon Elena created.
"Do it quickly," I say, releasing Nonno's cold hand. "I don't want to run."
The words are true. I'm tired of running from a war I never chose, tired of being Marcus's disappointment, tired of the constant weight of other people's thoughts in my head. Maybe death will finally bring silence.
But she doesn't move. Her blade trembles—actually trembles—and the emotional chaos in her mind intensifies. I catch fragments of memory bleeding through our connection: a child's hands covered in blood, Elena's cold voice, training rooms that smell like fear and death.
The same rooms. The same voice. The same stolen childhood.
Jesus Christ, she's just like me.
"You're hesitating," I say softly, unable to keep the wonder out of my voice. "Why are you hesitating?"
Her mind fractures open, and suddenly I'm drowning in her memories. Five years old, watching Elena slice a man's throat. "This is what happens to those who show mercy, little shadow." Eight years old, learning to walk through darkness while other children played with dolls. Fifteen years old, making her first kill while Elena watched with approval. Twenty-one years old, becoming the perfect weapon while something deep inside her screamed for release.
The blade wavers in her grip, and I realize I'm holding my breath.
"Run," she whispers.
The word hits me like a physical blow. In all my visions of the future, I never saw this moment. The Castellano assassin, Elena's masterpiece, telling her target to escape.
"What did you say?"
"Run." Her voice cracks on the word. "Run, and don't look back."
I stare at her, searching her face for deception, but her mental shields are crumbling. I see everything, the war between the killer Elena made and the woman fighting to survive underneath. The recognition that we're both weapons in other people's hands. The impossible choice she's making.
"Why?" I ask.
She doesn't answer, but I feel the truth in her mind: Because you're like me. Because I see myself in your eyes. Because maybe mercy isn't weakness after all.
I rise slowly, my psychic abilities screaming warnings about trusting a Castellano. But the woman in front of me isn't just a Castellano, she's something Elena couldn't completely destroy. Something human.
I move toward the window, expecting her to change her mind, to remember her training. But she stays frozen, her blade lowered, her mind a battlefield between duty and compassion.
I climb onto the sill and look back. "What's your name?"
"Aria." The word slips out before she can stop it.
"Aria." I taste the syllables, commit them to memory. "Thank you."
Then I'm gone, dropping three stories to the garden below and rolling to absorb the impact. My psychic abilities map the paths through the estate, showing me where the guards are, where the cameras point, where the shadows run deepest.
I should head for the main gate, but something makes me pause at the edge of the garden. I reach out with my mind, searching for Aria's emotional signature. She's still in Nonno's study, still staring at the spot where I stood. Her confusion has crystallized into something sharper—fear. Not of me, but of what she's done.
The sound of footsteps echoes from inside the mansion. Male voices, urgent and angry. The cleanup crew has arrived, and they're going to find three bodies and one missing target.
I force myself to move, slipping through the estate's grounds like a ghost. My psychic training kicks in, Marcus made sure I could navigate hostile territory even as a child. The memory surfaces unbidden: eight years old, practicing on homeless people in the subway tunnels.
"Feel their minds, boy. Find their weaknesses. Everyone has a pressure point."
I'd thrown up after the first session, disgusted by the way I could make a grown man bark like a dog with just a thought. Marcus had made me do it again until I stopped flinching.
"Morettis don't show weakness. We exploit it in others."
The same brutal conditioning. The same theft of innocence. No wonder Aria recognized something in me—we're products of the same machine, just different models.
I reach the estate's outer wall and vault over it, landing in the alley beyond. The Chicago streets stretch before me, familiar and foreign at the same time. How many times have I walked these sidewalks knowing the Castellanos were hunting me? How many times have I tasted death in the wind?
But tonight feels different. Tonight, death looked me in the eye and chose mercy.
My psychic abilities are in overdrive, picking up emotional signatures from across the city. Fear from the Moretti safe houses, word of the attack is spreading. Rage from the Castellano compound, something has gone wrong with their perfect plan. And underneath it all, a thread of confusion that leads back to the mansion I just escaped.
Aria is still there. Still wrestling with what she's done.
I duck into an abandoned warehouse, one of a dozen safe houses Marcus established throughout the city. My hands shake as I activate the security system, and I realize I'm in shock. Not from the near-death experience, from the moment of connection with someone who shouldn't exist.
Castellanos don't show mercy. They don't hesitate. They don't look at their targets like they're seeing themselves in a mirror.
But Aria did.
My phone buzzes with an encrypted message: Status report. Now. - M
Marcus. I stare at the screen, trying to figure out how to explain that I'm alive because our enemy's greatest weapon developed a conscience. He won't believe it. Hell, I barely believe it myself.
The warehouse door explodes inward, and Marcus strides through the wreckage like an avenging angel. His psychic presence fills the room, pressing against my mental barriers with familiar authority. Behind him, three of his most trusted enforcers spread out to block the exits.
"You're alive," he says, his voice flat with suspicion. "How?"
I straighten, forcing my face into a mask of calm. "She missed."
"Shadow-walkers don't miss." Marcus circles me like a predator, his mind probing for weaknesses in my defenses. "They've been killing our family for three generations. Elena's assassin doesn't make mistakes."
"Maybe she's not as perfect as Elena thinks."
"Bullshit." Marcus stops directly in front of me, his eyes boring into mine. "I can smell the lie on you, boy. What really happened in that room?"
I meet his gaze steadily, reinforcing my mental shields. "She had me dead to rights. Blade at my throat, nowhere to run. Then something spooked her, maybe she heard your enforcers coming. She hesitated for a second, and I took the chance to escape through the window."
Marcus's psychic pressure intensifies, trying to crack my defenses and read the truth directly from my mind. I've had twenty-three years of practice resisting him, but he's stronger than me, more experienced. Sweat beads on my forehead as I fight to keep my memories locked away.
"You're hiding something," he says finally, stepping back. "But we don't have time for games. Half the supernatural community thinks you're dead. The other half is wondering why you're not."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Disappear. Go to the Detroit safe house and stay there until I figure out what went wrong tonight." Marcus turns toward the door, then pauses. "And Dante? If I find out you're lying to me about what happened in that room, I'll make you wish the Castellano bitch had finished the job."