The sun didn't rise over Chicago that morning; it simply bled through the gray clouds, turning the skyline into a silhouette of jagged teeth. Desderia didn't go back to her studio apartment. She didn't go to her morning shift at the cafeteria. Instead, she sat in the back of a blacked-out SUV, her cleaning uniform replaced by a silk blouse and slacks that had been delivered to the penthouse with terrifying speed.
They fit perfectly. He knows my measurements, she thought, a shiver crawling down her spine. He probably knows my blood type and my third-grade teacher's name, too.
Carter sat in the driver's seat, his eyes constantly scanning the mirrors. He hadn't spoken a word since they left the hotel. He was a wall of muscle and professional silence.
"Where are we going?" Desderia finally asked, her voice sounding thin in the plush interior.
"The Estate," Carter replied. "The Boss doesn't do business in hotels when things are... messy. We're going to the ground."
"I have a Constitutional Law seminar at noon," she said, though she knew how ridiculous it sounded.
Carter actually let out a short, dry bark of a laugh. "Forget the seminar, kid. You're in a different kind of school now. One where the final exam involves staying alive."
The SUV pulled through a set of massive iron gates on the outskirts of the city, winding through a forest of manicured pines until a limestone manor appeared. It looked like a fortress disguised as a palace. This was the De Cruze Estate—the heart of an empire built on the bones of the fallen.
Mario De Cruze was waiting for them in a library that smelled of old leather and expensive scotch. He wasn't wearing a jacket now; his white shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms corded with muscle and a strange, faded tattoo on his inner wrist—a small, stylized bird rising from flames.
He didn't look like a killer anymore. He looked like a king.
"Sit," he commanded, not looking up from a file on his desk.
Desderia sat in a velvet chair opposite him. She felt small in this room, surrounded by thousands of books she couldn't afford and a man she couldn't understand.
"You think you're here because I'm afraid of what you saw," Mario said, finally closing the file. He leaned back, his green eyes pinning her to the seat. "You think I'm keeping you close to silence you."
"Aren't you?" Desderia challenged.
"If I wanted you silent, you'd be in the river with the man from the penthouse," he said flatly. The bluntness of it made her stomach flip. "I'm keeping you here because you're the first person in three years to mention the name Alice Moretti to me without trembling."
Desderia flinched at the mention of Alice's full name. "What do you know about her?"
Mario slid a thin manila folder across the mahogany desk. "Alice Moretti wasn't just a girl from the foster system, Desderia. She was a runner. A low-level courier for the De Silva family. She specialized in moving 'delicate' packages—mostly information—between the docks and the downtown hotels."
"No," Desderia whispered, shaking her head. "Alice was a waitress. She was saving up for nursing school. She hated the gangs."
"She lied to you," Mario said, his voice devoid of pity. "She loved you, I suspect, and she wanted to keep you clean. But she was drowning in debt to the De Silvas. She tried to double-cross them by selling information to my organization. My men... they didn't know she was a double agent. They thought she was a setup."
Desderia felt the air leave her lungs. The room felt like it was spinning. "You're saying your people... you killed her?"
"I didn't order it," Mario said, his jaw tightening. "It was a street-level mistake. An enforcer named Rico thought she was wired. By the time I found out, she was gone."
Desderia stood up so fast her chair screeched against the floor. "You monster! You sit here in your silk shirts and your billion-dollar house, and you talk about her life like it was a clerical error!"
She lunged for the desk, her hand swinging in a blind arc of grief and rage. Mario moved with a speed that shouldn't have been human. He caught her wrist mid-air, his grip like a steel manacle. He didn't pull away; he stood up, drawing her closer until she was forced to look up into the storm of his eyes.
"I am a monster," he hissed, his face inches from hers. "But I am the monster that can give you the man who pulled the trigger. Rico is currently hiding under the protection of the De Silva family. The police won't touch him. The law you study so diligently won't even find his address."
He leaned in closer, his voice a ghost of a whisper. "Do you want to cite statutes with him, Desderia? Or do you want to see him suffer?"
Desderia's breath was ragged. Her wrist hurt, but the pain in her heart was worse. She looked at Mario—the man who represented everything she hated, yet held the only key to the justice she craved.
"Why are you doing this?" she choked out. "Why help me?"
Mario's expression softened, just for a heartbeat, into something that looked dangerously like regret. "Because I know what it's like to watch your world burn and have no one to blame but the shadows. Because eighteen children died in a fire twenty years ago, and I have spent every day since then becoming the fire."
He released her wrist. "You'll stay here. You'll work as my legal researcher—finding the holes in my rivals' legitimate businesses so I can swallow them whole. In exchange, I will bring you Rico. And when the time comes, I will let you decide his fate."
Desderia looked down at her hand. It was shaking. She thought of the law books back in her apartment—the theories of "due process" and "blind justice." They felt like fairy tales now.
"I won't kill him," she said firmly.
"We'll see," Mario replied.
The next few days were a blur of high-intensity research. Desderia was given an office that was larger than her entire apartment. Carter brought her stacks of documents—financial records, shipping manifests, and land deeds.
She was a natural. Her brain, sharpened by the desperation of poverty and the rigor of her LLB studies, found patterns where Mario's seasoned accountants found nothing. She found a series of shell companies linked to the De Silva family that were laundering money through a chain of dry cleaners.
But as she worked, she felt Mario's presence everywhere. He would appear in the doorway at 2:00 AM, holding a cup of tea he had made himself, watching her work with an intensity that made her skin prickle.
"You're working too hard," he said one night, leaning against the doorframe.
"I'm doing what you're paying me for," she replied, not looking up from a spreadsheet.
"You're trying to drown out the sound of your own conscience," he countered.
Desderia finally looked up. "And what do you do to drown out yours, Mario?"
He walked into the room, his footsteps silent on the rug. He reached onto her desk and picked up a small, silver letter opener, turning it over in his hands. "I don't have a conscience, Desderia. It burned in the St. Jude's fire. All I have is an objective."
"And what is the objective?"
"The total eradication of the Red Blood," he said. His voice was cold, but his eyes were burning. "They think they own the underground. They think they can kill the innocent and call it business. I am going to show them that the boy they left for dead is the one who will bury them."
Desderia watched him, and for the first time, she didn't see a mob boss. She saw a wounded child hiding behind a wall of titanium.
"My best friend, Carter... he was there too," Mario continued, his voice unusually distant. "We promised each other that we would never be victims again. That we would own the world so it could never hurt us."
"You can own the world and still be a victim of your own hate, Mario," she said softly.
He looked at her then—really looked at her. The silence in the room stretched, thick with things neither of them was ready to say. For a moment, the gap between the billionaire killer and the poor law student vanished.
Then, the moment was shattered by a frantic knocking at the door. Carter burst in, his face grim.
"Mario, we have a problem."
Mario's mask was back in an instant. "What?"
"The De Silvas. They've gone to the Red Blood. They're claiming we broke the peace treaty by hitting their shipment. The Sanchez family just called a summit."
Mario's eyes darkened. "The Sanchez family... They're coming out of the woodwork."
"There's more," Carter said, glancing nervously at Desderia. "Marcus De Silva was spotted at the university today. He was asking questions about a girl. He knows about Desderia."
Mario turned to Desderia, his expression unreadable. He walked over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. His grip wasn't violent, but it was possessive.
"It seems our little arrangement just got more complicated," Mario said. "Marcus De Silva doesn't just want Rico back. He wants you."
Desderia felt a cold wave of dread. She had thought she was the one investigating the monsters. She hadn't realized the monsters had been watching her all along.
"Why me?" she whispered.
"Because," Mario said, his voice dropping to a dangerous growl. "He knows that you're the only thing in this world I might actually be willing to burn a treaty for."