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Chapter One

Dante

I watch the surveillance feed flicker across the wall-mounted screens, cold blue light washing over my knuckles as I clench my fist tight enough to whiten bone. Rain lashes the bulletproof windows of my London safe house, but I barely register the storm outside.

My focus, my entire fucking being, is locked on my brother accepting the crown I've coveted since childhood.

Luca, the favored son.

Luca, our mother's darling.

Luca, standing where I belong.

"Rewind it," I command, my voice like gravel over steel. "Show me again."

Marco, my favored lieutenant obeys without question, fingers dancing across the keyboard. The footage reverses: dignitaries retreating backward through ornate doors, champagne flowing upward into crystal flutes, and Luca's hand onherback.

I lean forward, a predator catching scent of blood.

I focus on the woman at my brother's side.

Bianca Sutton. Now Bianca Ravelli.

The fuckingmaidwho somehow bewitched my brother into marriage… and now stands crowned as his queen ofmyempire.

But it's the slight swell of her stomach, visible when she turns to the side, that makes my jaw clench until teeth threaten to crack.

An heir. My brother's first seed, already growing inside her.

Memory claws its way forward. My father's study, sixteen years ago. The smell of cigar smoke and expensive scotch. His voice like a blade.

"The Ravelli line will run through Luca, not you. You're too volatile, too unpredictable. You must learn that a blade without a handle cuts the one who wields it."

I fight the images, but all I can see is my fourteen-year-old self, standing ramrod straight, refusing to show the wound his words carved.

"I'm stronger than he is, father. I've proven it time and time again."

"Strength without control is weakness, Dante."The dismissal in his eyes was worse than any bullet wound I've encountered since."Your brother understands power. You understand only violence."

I blink away the memory, rage crystallizing into something colder.

"Fuck," I breathe, studying Bianca's face on screen. She isn't what I expected. Not cowering behind Luca but standing beside him, chin lifted, eyes watchful. There's an intelligence there that irritates me. Like she's assessing the threats, cataloging weaknesses.

One of my men shifts nervously in the corner. "Well, it looks like your brother got lucky, yeah? Your old man drops dead, and he slips right into—"

I move before the sentence finishes.

One heartbeat I'm seated; the next, I have him pinned against the fucking wall, my forearm crushing his windpipe.

"My father," I enunciate with deadly precision, "wasmurdered. By that whore my brother married."

His eyes bulge, face purpling as I increase the pressure on his throat. The room falls silent except for the desperate scratching of fingernails against my sleeve.

"I—didn't—" he gasps.

"Choosing words poorly in this organization," I continue conversationally, as if discussing the weather rather than slowly suffocating him, "has consequences."

As his struggles weaken, my gaze catches on something protruding from his jacket pocket—a child's drawing, crayon-bright against the black fabric. A stick figure family beneath a yellow sun.