QUEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD

The Vellaro Estate was eerily quiet, the kind of silence that settled like a shroud before a war. Valentina stood by the arched window of her private chambers, watching the moonlight skim across the manicured courtyard, her glass of Chianti untouched. It had been hours since Bryan stormed out after their confrontation in the cellar—where truths bled and trust cracked.

She hadn't followed. She couldn't.

Because if she did, she'd admit the one thing she couldn't allow herself to feel—fear. Not of her enemies, not even of death.

But of losing him.

A knock echoed at the door, sharp and firm.

"Come in," she said, voice steel-laced velvet.

It was Collin's, her head of security, eyes shadowed with fatigue and barely hidden urgency.

"Another message. This one came from one of our front operations near Via Carbone." He handed her a thin envelope, the Moretti seal burned into the wax—defiled. Red wax this time, not the usual black. It dripped like blood.

She sliced it open.

One sentence.

"Bring Bryan, or your empire turns to ash. —E.B."

Her fingers tightened on the paper. Elena Bianchi. Her name alone made Valentina's jaw clench with centuries of vendetta.

"What's the damage?" she asked.

Collin's hesitated. "Three men dead. One of ours taken—Matteo."

Matteo. Her most loyal courier. Barely twenty. Sweet-eyed. A boy raised within these walls.

"They took him alive?"

Collin's nodded grimly. "Security footage shows a woman—blonde, silk gloves, glass heels. Elena's taste."

A hiss escaped Valentina's throat.

"She's baiting me," she said.

"Is it working?" Collin's asked carefully.

Valentina smiled coldly. "She thinks I'll deliver Bryan like a dog on a leash."

"Will you?"

Her eyes narrowed, distant.

"No," she said, turning away. "But I'll make her wish she never asked."

⸻

Bryan sat on the edge of the weapons room table, his shirt half-unbuttoned, bruises still fresh from the earlier interrogation gone wrong. He heard Valentina's footsteps before he saw her—the confident, calculating rhythm he'd memorized like a heartbeat.

"You got my letter," he said, voice low.

"You mean the one Elena sent threatening to burn my empire if I don't gift-wrap you?"

"That one." His smile didn't reach his eyes.

"She wants you, Bryan," she said. "Why?"

He held her gaze. "We all make mistakes when we're young. Mine had a name. And legs that wouldn't quit."

Valentina didn't flinch, but her silence was louder than a slap.

"She saved me once," he admitted. "Pulled me out of a Sicilian pit with a bullet in my thigh and a bounty on my head. But that debt's been paid."

"She doesn't think so."

"Because obsession doesn't need reason. Elena doesn't want me. She wants what she thinks I became under you."

Valentina walked closer, their breath now shared air.

"And what did you become under me?"

He didn't hesitate.

"Yours."

The words hit her harder than a bullet.

"You can't mean that," she whispered.

"I mean every damn syllable."

He reached out, brushing a loose strand of hair from her face. She didn't pull away. She let him.

"You should run," she murmured. "If she gets her hands on you, I won't be able to protect you."

"Maybe I don't want protection. Maybe I want revenge."

A beat passed. Tension curled between them like smoke and gasoline.

She stepped back.

"We go tonight," she said. "No negotiation. We take the estate. We take her head."

Bryan gave a grim nod. "What about Matteo?"

"We get him back," she said, voice like a blade. "And then we send her a message of our own."

⸻

The drive to Elena's outer compound—a Renaissance villa retrofitted with armed towers and poison ivy—was silent except for the loaded thoughts each carried like ghosts in the back seat.

Niko used to ride here beside her. His absence was still a wound, still scabbed with guilt. And betrayal.

Valentina stepped out of the armored vehicle first, her coat sweeping the gravel like a queen preparing for execution—or coronation.

Elena's men stood lined across the gate, rifles in hand. But she wasn't there.

Instead, a screen flickered to life from the tower.

Elena's face appeared—lips redder than sin.

"Darling Valentina," she purred, "how bold of you to show."

"Where is he?" Valentina's voice was ice.

"Alive. For now. But I grow bored. Shall I send you a piece to prove it?"

Valentina drew her gun and fired once—into the screen.

The guards flinched, the image shorted, and chaos erupted.

Bryan leapt into the fray beside her, blades and bullets flying. They fought like poetry—bloody, relentless, synced. As if this violence was their love language.

And maybe, it was.

By the time the gunfire stopped, the gates were cracked open.

But inside still waited Elena—and the final reckoning.