THE WOLF'S OBSESESION

PROLOGUE --- Six Months Before the Capture Opening Hook: Dante De Luca had been waiting for this moment for twenty-two years. The warehouse smelled of rust, blood, and something burning. Dante stood in the shadows, watching the man who had killed his father pace a cage of his own fear. The man—Vladimir, his name was Vladimir, though the name didn't matter—had been hiding in Buenos Aires for two decades. He'd grown soft. Fat. Forgettable. Dante had found him anyway. "You're the Wolf," Vladimir whispered, his accent thick with terror. "I've heard stories." "Then you know why I'm here." Vladimir dropped to his knees. Begged. Offered money, information, his firstborn child. Dante listened to all of it with the same expression he'd worn since he was twelve years old, hiding in a closet, counting the stabs that killed his father. Seventeen. He'd never forgotten the number. "I don't want your money," Dante said quietly. "I don't want your information. I don't want your child." "What do you want?" Dante stepped forward. The light caught his face—the scar above his eye, the darkness beneath his expression, the absolute stillness of a man who had stopped feeling anything a very long time ago. "Justice," he said. "My father never got his. I'm collecting it for him." He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. Vladimir died badly. They always did. Afterward, Dante stood over the body and felt nothing. Not satisfaction. Not relief. Not even the hollow echo of grief. Just nothing. The same nothing he'd felt after every kill for twenty-two years. His phone buzzed. A text from his uncle Marco: The Rossi girl. Tomorrow night. Don't be late. Dante wiped his hands on a rag and walked out into the Buenos Aires night. He didn't know it yet, but that text would end him. Or save him. He wasn't sure which was worse.