KISSED BY DEATH, CLAIMED BY THE MAFIA KING

Isabella Moretti pov Isabella Moretti had been dead for three years, and tonight she intended to kill the man who had profited from it. The ballroom glittered with chandeliers and diamonds. Politicians drank beside men whose hands had spilled blood. A string quartet played beneath a ceiling painted with angels, while security guards watched every entrance with the blank expressions of men who knew exactly how many bodies could fit in the service lift. I adjusted the black mask over my face and kept my right hand steady around the small pistol hidden inside my clutch. Across the ballroom, Dante De Luca stood beneath a cascade of white roses, dressed in a black suit that probably cost more than the apartment where I had spent the last three years hiding. He was taller than his photographs suggested, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, and so composed that the room seemed to arrange itself around him. The King of Valeria. The man whose family had risen while mine burned. Tonight was his engagement party. By midnight, he was supposed to announce his wedding date to Vivienne Moretti—my stepsister, my family's smiling survivor, and the woman who had worn my mother's diamond earrings to the funeral of people she had helped betray. I had spent months planning this. One clean shot. One dead king. One answer for the night my father vanished and my mother died screaming behind a locked door. Then Dante looked directly at me. Not at the mask. At me. My pulse stumbled. He couldn't know. No one could know. The official records listed Isabella Moretti among the dead, and the face I wore now belonged to Isabel Vale, a discreet art consultant with an impeccable reference list and no past worth investigating. I lifted a champagne glass to hide my expression. A woman in a silver gown approached me. “You must be Miss Vale. Vivienne said you might come.” Vivienne. Of course. “I wouldn't miss an opportunity to admire the city's most expensive flowers,” I said. The woman's smile tightened. “You should be careful what you admire here.” Before I could ask what she meant, she drifted away. I watched Dante accept congratulations. His mouth barely moved when he smiled. He looked like a man who had trained himself to regard every pleasure as a possible trap. I hated that I understood the expression. A waiter passed with a tray. I took a glass, then noticed the tremor in his fingers. His eyes were fixed on Dante. A bead of sweat slid from his temple despite the cool room. He wasn't nervous about serving a mafia king. He was waiting for something. The waiter turned toward the stage. His jacket shifted, exposing the black grip of a handgun. I moved before I could think. The first shot shattered a chandelier. Guests screamed and dropped. The waiter raised his weapon toward Dante, but I slammed into him from the side. His shot tore through the white roses. My shoulder struck the floor, and the pistol skidded beneath a table. Dante's guards opened fire. The waiter fell, dragging a tablecloth and half a dozen glasses with him. The quartet stopped mid-note. For one suspended second, I stared at the dead man. Then I saw the second shooter on the balcony, his weapon trained on Dante's chest. “Down!” I shouted. Dante turned too late. I caught the front of his jacket and hauled him behind the marble bar as the bullet struck the mirror where his head had been. His body hit mine. The scent of cedar and smoke filled my lungs. He looked at me with cold, furious eyes. “You have a remarkable way of introducing yourself.” “Try thanking me after you stop being a target.” I snatched a fallen guard's weapon and fired toward the balcony. The shooter ducked. Dante's men surged up the stairs, but the assassin was already moving toward a side exit. I knew that movement. Professional. Efficient. No wasted motion. The same kind of men who had entered my childhood home. Dante caught my wrist before I could follow. “You stay here.” “I don't take orders from strangers.” “You just saved my life. Don't make me regret allowing you to keep yours.” His voice was quiet, almost intimate. It frightened me more than shouting would have. I twisted free and followed the guards anyway. By the time we reached the balcony, the shooter had vanished. A service door swung open at the far end. Beyond it, the corridor was empty except for a single black rose lying on the carpet. Pinned to its stem was a card. FOR THE GIRL WHO SHOULD HAVE BURNED. My fingers went cold. Dante appeared beside me. His gaze moved from the card to my face. “You know what this means.” “I have no idea.” “You're a terrible liar.” I turned on him. “And you're an arrogant bastard.” His expression didn't change, but something sharpened behind his eyes. He took the card from my hand and slipped it into his pocket. “Luca,” he called. A dark-haired man approached, one hand pressed to an earpiece. “The shooter escaped through the west service entrance. We found a car abandoned two streets away. Plates were stolen.” “Lock down the building. No one leaves without being searched.” Luca's eyes flicked toward me. Recognition—or suspicion—passed across his face too quickly for me to identify. Dante noticed. “You know our guest?” “Not personally,” Luca replied. “But I've seen her somewhere.” The room seemed to tilt. Dante studied me. “Name?” “Isabel Vale.” “Occupation?” “Art consultant.” “Convenient.” “I didn't realize surviving an assassination attempt required a résumé.” His mouth almost curved. “It doesn't. Saving my life while carrying a concealed weapon does.” I had forgotten the pistol in my hand. Every guard in the corridor raised his weapon. I lowered mine slowly. “The shooter was aiming at you. I was trying to stop him.” “Then why do you know how to use a gun?” “Because the world is full of men who think women should be easy targets.” For the first time, Dante looked genuinely interested. He stepped closer. I refused to retreat, although every instinct screamed that I was standing too close to a predator. “Take off your mask,” he said. “No.” His guards shifted. Dante lifted one hand, stopping them. “You can remove it yourself, or I can have security identify you. I suspect the first option will be less embarrassing.” I hated him for being right. Slowly, I untied the ribbon and lowered the mask. His gaze travelled over my face. The silence stretched. Then his expression changed. Not surprise. Not simple recognition. Shock, buried beneath years of discipline. “Impossible,” he whispered. My heart slammed against my ribs. “What?” He took a step back, looking at me as if the dead had just walked into his house. “Isabella Moretti.” I couldn't breathe. No one had called me that in three years. Not aloud. Not where anyone could hear. I reached for the gun. Dante caught my wrist before my fingers touched the handle. His grip was firm but not painful, his eyes fixed on mine. “You died in the Moretti m******e,” he said. “Then you should be happy to see a ghost.” A guard's radio crackled. Luca listened, and the colour drained from his face. “Boss,” he said slowly. “We found something in the shooter's pocket.” Dante didn't look away from me. “What?” “A photograph.” Luca held it out. I saw the image upside down first: a younger Dante standing beside his father outside a country estate. A little girl stood in the background, wearing a silver pendant shaped like a crescent. My pendant. On the back, written in red ink, were five words. THE BRIDE MUST DIE BEFORE MIDNIGHT. Dante released my wrist. Then he looked at the clock above the ballroom doors. “Get her into the car,” he ordered. “Now.” I stepped away. “I'm not going anywhere with you.” He leaned close enough that only I could hear him. “Someone just tried to kill me, Isabella. They brought a photograph of you to my engagement party, and they know you're alive. Whoever sent that message isn't finished.” His gaze dropped briefly to my pendant, hidden beneath my dress. “Unless you tell me what your family left behind, the next body they find may be yours.” I wanted to tell him I had come to kill him. I wanted to put a bullet through the heart of the man I blamed for everything. Instead, I looked at the photograph again. The little girl in the background was me. And I had never been to that estate. Not once in my life.