Chapter 12
After that, I started training. Harvick used to hate me holding a gun or even gripping a steak knife too tight. Said it didn’t suit me. Said I looked too soft for violence. Said he’d always protect me so I wouldn’t have to stain my hands.
What a fucking joke.
Now I train every morning before the sun breaks the sky, and again before midnight when the ghosts crawl back into my bones. Peter handles most of it himself, but sometimes he sends in his men–quiet, brutal, efficient. The kind of men who kill before they blink.
I’ve learned to keep my hands steady while cleaning a Glock. Learned how to knock a man out in under ten seconds with nothing but a pen. My body is still healing, sure but my mind… my mind is a weapon now.
“Again,” Peter barked from across the dirt yard, tossing a knife at my feet.
I picked it up and spun it once between my fingers before hitting the dummy right where the jugular would be.
One of his men whistled low. “Shit. She’s deadlier than us now.”
“Girl’s got a mean aim,” said another, arms crossed, a smile tugging at his lip. “Didn’t ever flinch.”
“She don’t blink, she don’t breathe when she strikes,” the third guy muttered. “Real widowmake type.”
“Boss, we gotta keep her,” the youngest one joked. “She makes us look like amateurs.”
Peter chuckled under his breath, arms folded like a proud war general watching his prized soldier rise from the dirt. “She’s not your teammate,” he said. “She’s your warning.”
I didn’t smile, but I looked at him, breathing hard. “I want more drills. You said body conditioning
next.”
He nodded. “You’ll get it. But you better keep that fire, Aria.”
He used my new name like it had always belonged to me.
Aria Velenza.
A woman with no grave to visit and no husband to bury. A ghost with skin. A shadow with blood in her mouth.
I wasn’t Danica Monroe anymore. Danica was sweet. Danica forgave. Danica waited at the altar while her fiancé faked a helicopter crash for a dying whore.
Aria doesn’t wait.
Aria sets the fucking match.
That night, I sat in the corner of the old estate cellar with a metal basin full of old photos and burned every last trace of what he gave me. The letters. The Polaroids. The notes he used to leave on the mirror. I fed them to the flames one by one until all that was left was ash.
And when it was done, I stood and left everything behind except for the one thing I bought for
4:48 pm D
myself under my new name.
A black opal ring. Oval–cut. Sharp. Quietly deadly. Nothing flashy, but it shimmered like smoke caught fire.
I slid it onto my middle finger. No one gave me this. No man bent a knee. No vow attached.
It was mine.
And I whispered, “No one will ever put a ring on me that I can’t take off again.”
I walked back upstairs. Didn’t look back. Danica died in that fire. And Aria? She’s just getting
started.
–
My first mission was in Rovetta.
A weapons meet. Private auction. Strict invitations. High–value arms trade masked as a champagne–soaked art gala. Peter sent me in as a buyer with forged ties to the Velenza underworld, wearing the name I now bled.
I walked in through a sea of smoke and velvet, heels clicking like gunfire on marble, wearing a black silk gown that hugged my frame like vengeance and carried a whisper of perfume no one could trace. My hair was curled and colored darker than coal, lips a bloody red, and eyes laced with shadows.
Everything about me screamed power, and still, I felt the eyes cut into me like blades. Dealers. Guards. Men who smelled of blood and mercury. No one trusted anyone in a room like that–and that’s exactly how I liked it.
Then I saw him.
Cassian Vale.
He leaned against a marble pillar like he carved it himself, wearing a black suit with no tie, sleeves rolled just enough to show veins that meant he either fought or lifted bodies. There was a long scar under his right eye, and the way he watched the room… it was cold. Surgical. Like he had counted exits, measured threats, memorized weak spots. He didn’t look at me like a man
looks at a woman.
He looked at me like a sniper sights a target.
Our first words were barbed. And brief.
“You’re late,” he said without even glancing my way as I approached the private table.
‘Time moves differently when you’re important,” I replied coolly, sliding into the seat across from him. “You’ll learn that if you survive long enough.”
He finally turned his eyes to mine. They weren’t curious. They were reading me.
“Pretty bold for someone walking into Rovetta’s territory without backup.”
I tilted my head. “I thought this was neutral ground.”
He gave a half–shrug. “Rovetta’s neutral. The men running this event? Not so much.”
I leaned forward, elbows on the table, smirk ghosting my lips. “I’m not scared of people like you.”
He stared hard for a second too long, then said something that sent a chill down my spine.
pm
“Funny,” he muttered, voice low like a gun cocking, “you move like a Ferrante… but burn like a
Velenza.”
My blood ran cold.
I hadn’t told a soul I was born a Monroe. No one here knew Peter Monroe was my brother. And
Aria Velenza? She wasn’t supposed to exist outside the alias files Peter created.
I kept my face still. Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe too loud.
“You profiling me, Mr. Vale?” I asked calmly, voice wrapped in silk and iron.
He didn’t answer. Not directly. Instead, he reached for his drink, and that’s when I saw it.
A tattoo.
Black. Sharp. Etched into his forearm like a brand.
The Ferrante crest–but not the one I knew. Not the serpent devouring its tail like Harvick bore or his back. No, this was a falcon. Wings spread. Eyes sharp.
A different branch. But still blood.
