Page 17 of Watch Me Burn

CATERINA

G rowing up under Giovanni Mortelle wasn’t childhood. It was war in a designer suit.

I learned early that love was a luxury reserved for those who played his game, and I was just another piece on his board. Every cold smile, every calculated word he threw around—it all hammered home the fact that I was nothing more than a tool to be used.

My eighth birthday burned itself into memory. Most little girls get dolls or stuffed animals. I got a lesson in loyalty.

Father led me into his study. Nothing good ever happened behind those heavy doors. The oak door shut with finality that made my heart race. A man knelt on the Persian rug. One of our drivers. Marco’s father.

His face was a mess of bruises, one eye swollen shut, the other barely holding onto awareness.

“Do you know why Antonio is here, tesoro ?” Father’s voice was too soft. The kind of gentle that always came before something cruel.

I shook my head, unable to look away from Antonio’s eyes. They were so sad, resigned.

“He took something that wasn’t his.” Father began to circle him, slow and deliberate. “In our world, Caterina, loyalty is everything. Without it, we have nothing. Once trust is broken, it stays broken.”

He placed a pistol in my hands—small, cold, impossibly heavy. I didn’t understand why I was there, why he was saying these things to me.

My hands trembled so badly I could barely hold it steady. The safety clicked off with a sound that lodged itself in my spine.

Father watched me like he was proud. Like I was finally becoming what he’d always wanted.

“Point it at him,” he said. “Learn what it feels like to hold power.”

So I did. Because I always did what I was told.

Even as something inside me begged me to run.

I didn’t pull the trigger that day.

Giovanni did that himself after taking the gun back, but the message was clear. In the Mortelle family, weakness was not tolerated. Betrayal was answered with blood. And I was expected to carry on that legacy.

After he pulled the trigger, I didn’t cry. Didn’t scream.

I just stared at the blood.

And he stared at me.

“Remember this,” he said. “Love is earned through obedience. Respect is earned through fear.”

Even then, just a kid, I felt it. That sharp, hot anger. Watching him crush anyone who got in his way, I made a vow: I would never become him.

I’d tear down the empire he built, brick by brutal brick.

So when I discovered I had a taste for retribution, I leaned into it. Quietly. Purposefully.

Now, every time I silence a predator—one more trafficker, one more rapist—I tell myself I’m doing what he never would: cleaning up the world.

Maybe that makes me just as broken.

But at least I’m aiming my darkness in the right direction.

My first kill wasn’t planned. I was seventeen, slipping through the labyrinth of my father’s world with practiced invisibility.

I’d mastered the art of being present but unseen, absorbing information while remaining a ghost. That night, I overheard one of Father’s associates discussing his “merchandise”—twelve girls, none older than fifteen, being shipped to buyers across the country.

Something broke inside me.

The careful walls I’d built to contain my rage crumbled in an instant.

I followed the associate home that night. Watched through his window as he ate dinner, made a phone call, settled in to watch television. So ordinary. So human. As if the monstrous things he’d done had left no mark on him.

The knife I carried was meant for protection. Father’s idea, another birthday gift. But that night, it became something else. A tool for justice. For retribution. For play.

I still remember the shock in his eyes when he opened his door to find me there. The confusion as I pushed past him into his home, right as he realized what was happening.

“You’re Giovanni’s little girl,” he’d said, backing away. “Did your father send you? He usually calls for me if there is an urgent matter.”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t explain the fire burning through my veins.

The blade slid through flesh easier than I expected. A grunt. The wet snap of cartilage. Then nothing but silence. I didn’t feel powerful. I felt empty. Cleansed. Like all the rage had finally found its voice.

He died with a question on his lips. And twelve girls were spared their fate.

I vomited in his bathroom afterward, shaking so hard I could barely stand. But beneath the horror was something else.

A sense of rightness.

Of purpose.

I cleaned the scene meticulously, leaving no trace of my presence. When Father mentioned the man’s disappearance days later, his eyes swept over me without a hint of suspicion. I was still just his obedient daughter. His perfect, pliable tool.

His worst nightmare in training.

Little did he know I had found my own mission.

There are nights I stand alone in the rain, letting it soak through me like penance, letting the memories rise.

Sometimes, I think about the life I never got—a simple one, untouched by blood and guilt. For a fleeting second, I can almost see it: a world where I could let my guard down, peel off the mask of the monster I’ve become.

But the storm always returns. And with it, the truth.

This was my choice.

I’m the one who became the fix. Even if it means I’ll carry the ghosts of what I’ve done for the rest of my life.

My mother might have saved me from this path. She was the only softness I ever knew and she died in a house full of wolves. Glimpses of her still cling to me: the scent of her perfume, her hands weaving braids into my hair, her voice low and gentle as she sang me to sleep.

Then pneumonia took her when I was only a child. Or, that’s what I was told. I’m not sure I’ll ever believe that version.

She was the last light in my world of darkness.

After her funeral, I burned my emotions beneath cold fire. Because Father had pulled me aside, his grip painfully tight on my small shoulder.

“Mortelles don’t show weakness. Remember that.”

So I learned to bury my emotions beneath layers of cold fire. To observe instead of feel. To calculate instead of care. I became what he wanted, on the outside, at least. The perfect daughter. The heir to his bloody throne.

But inside, that little girl who lost her mother never stopped screaming.

What would she think of me now? The lives I’ve taken, the blood I can’t wash off. Would she see justice in it? Would she be proud?

Or would she see that I’ve become the monster I swore to destroy?

I’d like to think she would understand. See the power I took back in a world built to strip it from me. The work I’m doing that no one else dares to do.

Maybe there’s something good in that.

Marco is the only one who knows the truth. The only one who’s seen both sides of me. His father’s execution became his inheritance—a lifetime of service to the Mortelle family. But unlike me, Marco found a way to maintain his humanity. To do what was necessary without losing himself completely.

“You’re not him, Caterina,” he tells me sometimes, when the darkness threatens to swallow me whole. “You never could be.”

I want to believe him. I need to believe him.

But then I see my reflection. Those cold eyes staring back, the calculated precision with which I end lives, the numbness spreading through my veins—and I wonder.

Every step I take in the darkness is a step away from the little girl who once craved warmth and care. Now, I’m just a shadow, a relentless force against the tide of evil. Even if I have to drown my own humanity to do it.

But sometimes, in the quiet, stolen moments, when no one’s watching, I let myself imagine another life.

A fantasy.

One where I wake up without blood on my hands. Without the weight of constant vigilance.

No exits to check. No faces to scan for threats.

Just space to exist. To breathe. To be.

I caught a glimpse of that while I was Via, and with Zoe.

Her friendship was like touching something clean after years of crawling through rot.

Zoe saw Via—a name, a mask, but still closer to the girl I might’ve been.

She laughed with me. Trusted me. Believed in something that felt real.

It was so easy to pretend.

And I ruined it by using her to get to her brother.

Turned her into just another piece on the board in a game she didn’t even know she was playing.

The night Aaron saw me at Untamed, everything changed. He saw the truth, what I’m capable of and who I am. What I could still do. He should’ve killed me in that dark forest. Could have called the police. Exposed me right away to his friends but he didn’t.

He didn’t retreat. Didn’t flinch.

He kept my secret—whether out of fear or something else, I still don’t know.

It wasn’t fear in his eyes. It wasn’t admiration, either.

Understanding.

Two predators circling each other, both aware of what the other could do.

Aaron shouldn’t affect me like this.

He’s the enemy. The loose thread I failed to cut.

The reason I’m in this mess to begin with.

And yet, when he looked at me—truly looked—there was no panic, no judgment.

Only restraint.

Only power, held tight behind his eyes like a weapon not yet drawn.

Now I’m about to marry him.

Not for love, not for redemption, but survival.

It should feel like just another move in the game.

Another mask to wear.

So why does it feel like something more dangerous than all of that?

Why does it feel like the one person who could destroy me…is the only one who sees me?

Why does it wake my body like nothing else ever has?

Maybe it’s because, for the first time, I don’t have to pretend.

He knows what I am.

Has seen the worst of me, and still holds his ground.

There’s a strange kind of freedom in that.

To be known completely, without needing to hide the parts I’ve spent my life burying.

I’ve never had that. Not until now.

I tell myself it’s all strategy.

Marrying Aaron Jackson buys me time.

It keeps my father at bay while I finish the work no one else will do.

Whatever I feel—this pull between us—is just an inconvenience. A side effect.

But in those quiet hours before dawn, when everything slows and the truth creeps in…I wonder.

If maybe it’s more.

If this arrangement could become something I’ve never dared imagine?—

A bond forged not through lies, but through the unspoken things we both carry.

It’s not safe to hope.

It never has been.

Tonight, Zoe met my eyes and I let her drown in the lie. Told her I’m marrying her brother for reasons I can no longer say aloud. I saw the confusion, the hope in her face flicker. And I snuffed it out with a smile.

This is the life I chose.

I deal in shadows. I destroy the rot no one else wants to touch.

But now, for the first time in a long time, I’m not alone in it.

And that terrifies me more than anything.

Because needing someone?

That’s the quickest way to lose everything.