The Heiress of Winter

Chapter 3

(Vincenzo's POV)

Pain is a persistent creditor. It demands payment in every breath, every twitch of a muscle. But even the searing heat in my side wasn't as irritating as the four walls of this attic.

I, Vincenzo Moretti, the man they call the Liquidatore in the backstreets of Palermo, was being held captive by a five-foot-nothing girl and the smell of fermenting dough.

I tried to sit up, the wooden cot groaning under my weight. My Beretta was gone—hidden by the girl, Charlotte. She had tucked it inside a flour sack, thinking she was clever. I could smell the gun oil through the grain.

Cazzo. My father's words echoed in my head

: "A Moretti without his weapon is just a target."

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. The world tilted. The room spun like a carousel. My side felt like it had been stitched with barbed wire. I made it two steps before my knees buckled. I hit the floor with a heavy thud, the vibration rattling my very teeth.

The door flew open.

Charlotte stood there, her hair a messy halo of dark curls dusted with white powder. She looked like a disgruntled forest sprite. She had a rolling pin in one hand and a look of pure fury in her almond eyes.

"You... stay! Bed!" she shouted, pointing a floury finger at the cot.

"I have... affari... business, Charlotte," I rasped, trying to push myself up. My pride was bleeding worse than my wound. "I cannot hide in a bakery while my enemies breathe."

"Business can wait. You die, no business," she retorted.

Her English was jagged, but her tone was universal. It was the tone of someone who had survived enough to know that dead men don't collect debts.

She grabbed my arm, trying to hoist me up. She was so small, yet she moved with a desperate strength. But as she pulled, her foot slipped on a patch of loose flour. She gasped, her body pitching forward.

I caught her. Instinct took over where my strength failed. I pulled her against my chest to steady her, my hand wrapping around her narrow waist.

Time stopped.

The scent of her hit me—vanilla, yeast, and a hint of the cheap, floral soap she used. It was so clean. So innocent. It made the blood on my hands feel heavier than it ever had before.

She froze, her heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I looked down, and for a second, I forgot about the hitmen. I forgot about the Moretti legacy. I just saw the way the morning light caught the gold in her brown eyes.

"You are... very bossy for a baker," I murmured. My voice was lower than I intended, a rough vibration between us.

Her face turned a shade of red that would have put a Sicilian sunset to shame. "And you are... very stubborn for a dead man. Ang kulit talaga," she muttered, turning away to hide her blush.

She shoved me back onto the bed with a huff. To keep me quiet, she pulled a warm, buttered croissant from her apron pocket and thrust it at me.

"Eat. Quiet," she commanded.

I looked at the pastry. In Sicily, I ate off gold-rimmed plates. Here, I was being bribed with bread. I took a bite. The butter melted on my tongue—rich, salty, and warm.

"Good?" she asked, her eyes searching mine.

"Better than my father's threats," I admitted.

She smiled, and for a moment, the dark attic felt like the brightest place in Switzerland.

(Third Person POV)

The fragile peace of Bäckerei Alpenrot was shattered at 9:00 AM.

A low, rhythmic rumble vibrated through the floorboards—the sound of heavy engines. Two black Mercedes SUVs, their windows as dark as obsidian, slid into the snow-covered curb outside.

Charlotte, peeked through the frosted slats of the attic window. Her breath hitched. Three men stepped out. They wore long, black leather coats that screamed "Milanese muscle." They didn't look like tourists looking for chocolate; they looked like they were looking for a body.

"Vincenzo," Charlotte whispered, her voice trembling. "Men. Black coats. Looking."

The transition in Vincenzo was terrifying. One second he was a wounded man eating a croissant; the next, he was a predator. The warmth left his eyes, replaced by a cold, gray stillness. He reached into the flour sack, his hand emerging with the Beretta.

"s**t! Stay here. Don't make a sound," he commanded, his voice a lethal whisper.

"No! They will kill you!" Charlotte hissed, grabbing his sleeve.

Downstairs, the bell above the door jangled—not a light tinkling, but a violent crash.

"We are looking for a man," a voice boomed, the Italian accent thick and arrogant. "Tall. Dark hair. Carrying a wound. We know he came this way."

"I sell rye and sourdough, not information!" Helga's voice rang out, sharp and defiant.

"Get out of my shop before I call the police!"

CRACK!

The sound of the glass display case shattering echoed up the stairs. Charlotte winced as if she had been hit herself. That glass was Helga's pride.

"I will ask again, old woman," the man growled. "Where is he?"

Vincenzo stood, his face a mask of stone despite the crimson bloom spreading across his bandage. He started for the stairs.

Charlotte saw the way he stumbled. He wouldn't make it. He would be dead before he hit the bottom step. A strange, fierce protectiveness surged through her—a fire she had spent eighteen years suppressing.

"Stay," she commanded Vincenzo. Her eyes flashed with the same desperate light she had when she finally jumped out of that window in Tondo.

She didn't go for the stairs. She went for the kitchen's internal service lift—a small, manual pulley system for moving heavy sacks of flour.

(Third Person POV)

The men in the shop were shoving Helga toward the back wall. One of them, a brute with a scarred lip, was reaching for a heavy mixer to smash.

"Hoy! Alis kayo dyan!" (Hey! Get out of there!)

The shout came from the kitchen. The men turned, guns half-drawn

Charlotte appeared in the doorway, but she wasn't empty-handed. She was lugging a twenty-kilogram bag of extra-fine powdered sugar. With a grunt of effort, she heaved it onto the industrial fan used to cool the ovens.

The fan was on high.

She sliced the bag open with a bread knife. POOF! A massive, blinding white cloud of sugar and flour erupted into the room, turning the bakery into a blizzard of white. The men coughed, blinded and choking on the fine dust.

"What the hell?! I can't see!"

Charlotte didn't stop. She grabbed a stack of hot, heavy metallic baking sheets. Using them like lethal frisbees, she slid them across the polished floor.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

One man tripped, his shins catching the edge of the burning hot metal. He went down with a howl of pain. Charlotte was a whirlwind of fury. She grabbed a rolling pin and swung, connecting with the wrist of the man holding Helga.

"Bitawan mo siya!" (Let go of her!) she shrieked.

The man with the scarred lip grabbed Charlotte's hair. He yanked her back, his grip cruel and familiar. For a second, Charlotte wasn't in Switzerland. She was back in the kitchen in Tondo, feeling Aling Rosa's hand.

"Papatayin kita, bata ka!" the man hissed in Italian, raising his hand to strike her.

BANG.

The sound was deafening in the small space. A bullet whistled through the white haze and found its mark in the man's shoulder. He screamed, releasing Charlotte as he slumped to the floor.

Vincenzo stood at the top of the stairs. He was leaning heavily against the railing, his face white as the flour on the floor, but his hand was steady. His eyes were the coldest things in the room.

"Touch her again," Vincenzo said, his voice like the grinding of tectonic plates, "and the next one goes through your eyes."

The remaining two men, realizing they were outmatched by a ghost and a baker girl, grabbed their wounded comrade. "This isn't over, Moretti!" they spat, retreating through the shattered front door. The Mercedes SUVs screeched away, tires smoking against the ice.

(Charlotte's POV)

The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the sound of the wind whistling through the broken windows and Helga's ragged breathing.

I looked at the floor. My beautiful bakery was ruined. Sugar and glass were everywhere.

But my eyes went to the stairs. Vincenzo was sliding down. The gun clattered to the floor as he collapsed, his hand clutching his side. The white flour on his shirt was turning a brilliant, terrifying red.

"Vincenzo!" I screamed, slipping on the sugar as I ran to him.

I caught him just before his head hit the floor. He was so heavy, so cold. I pulled him into my lap, my hands shaking as I tried to put pressure on the wound.

"You... stupid!" I sobbed, the tears carving tracks through the flour on my face. "Why you fire gun? You almost die!"

Vincenzo looked up at me. His breathing was shallow, his heartbeat a faint drum against my leg. He reached up, his fingers trembling, and wiped a smudge of powdered sugar from my forehead.

"They touched you," he whispered.

That was it. That was his reason. He didn't care about the mission or the Moretti name in that moment. He only cared that someone had laid a hand on me.

"No one... touches my piccola rosa," he breathed, his eyes fluttering shut.

I felt a sob rip through my chest. My whole life, I had been touched with hate. I had been touched with anger. I had been touched to be broken. And here was this man—this dangerous, beautiful monster—who had bled to make sure no one touched me again.

"We have to clean this," I whispered, looking at the ruins of our sanctuary.

"Charlotte," Vincenzo's voice was fading, his strength spent. "The war... it is here. You should... run. While you can."

I looked at Helga, who was already picking up the rolling pin, her face set in a grim line of survival.

Then I looked at the man in my arms. I thought of the name 'Gaventi' on my passport—a name I didn't understand, but a name that felt like it was finally waking up.

"No more running," I said, my voice echoing in the quiet bakery. "I am not... garbage. I am not... nothing."

I looked into Vincenzo's fading gaze. "You stay. I stay. We fight."

(Third Person POV )

While Charlotte tended to Vincenzo in the back, Helga stood at the shattered front window. She wasn't looking for the police. She was looking at a silver fountain pen left on the floor by one of the intruders.

She picked it up. On the side, engraved in delicate, lethal script, was a crest: a lion entwined with a rose.

Helga's breath hitched. She looked back at the girl in the kitchen—the girl she had taken in out of pity.

"Gaventi," Helga whispered to herself, her eyes wide with a realization that chilled her more than the Swiss winter. "The lost daughter of the lion."

She looked at Vincenzo, the Moretti heir. Two ancient bloodlines, destined to tear each other's throats out, were currently huddled together in a pile of flour and blood.

In that moment, Helga knew. The peace of Interlaken was over. The Alps would not be high enough to hide them.

Deep in the mountains, a phone rang.

"We found him," a voice reported in Italian.

"But he is not alone. There is a girl. A girl who fights like a Gaventi."

On the other end of the line, a man in a dark villa in Sicily poured a glass of red wine.

"Then the prophecy is true. Bring me my son. And bring me the girl's head. The Morettis do not share the world with roses."