The night was sharp and bitter when Adriana slipped from the safehouse window. The woods stretched before her like an endless maw, branches clawing at the moonlight. Her heart pounded, every step carrying her farther from Damian’s reach, farther from the suffocating walls that pressed his vow into her skin.
She didn’t look back.
If she had, she might have seen the wolf watching.
---
By dawn, the city was awake with blood.
A Rossi shipment had been intercepted in the harbor, its crates of weapons set ablaze. A Moretti car was riddled with bullets in retaliation, the bodies of two men left sprawled across cobblestones like broken dolls. Word spread faster than fire: the war had begun in earnest.
Adriana kept to the alleys, her hood pulled low. The streets were no longer safe for anyone
