Married To The Mafia Devil

The air down here smells like blood and cigarette smoke. I press myself deeper into the shadows along the warehouse wall, watching the cage at the center of the room like it's a theater stage and I've paid for the best seat in the house. Which, in a way, I have. The cover charge to get into Dmitri's underground fight club is steep enough to keep out the curious and stupid, but not so high that it scares away the kind of people who enjoy watching men beat each other half to death for entertainment. My kind of people. Or at least, they used to be. The crowd roars as a fighter—some muscle-bound i***t with a shaved head and prison tattoos crawling up his neck—lands a brutal hook to his opponent's jaw. Blood sprays across the cage. The smell of it cuts through the smoke, metallic and warm. I don't flinch. I stopped flinching at blood a long time ago. "Ladies and gentlemen!" The announcer's voice crackles through a sound system that's seen better days. He's standing just outside the cage, microphone in one hand, the other gesturing wildly like he's introducing a Broadway show instead of an illegal bloodsport. "Thirty-seven fights! Thirty-seven wins! Give it up for your undefeated champion—Viktor the Breaker!" The crowd loses its mind. Men in expensive suits thrust their fists in the air. Women in designer dresses scream like they're at a concert. Money changes hands faster than I can track. The odds are heavily in Viktor's favor, which makes sense. Nobody bets against a sure thing. Except me. I move ahead, emerging from the darkness and into the flickering fluorescent glow that makes everyone in this place appear half-alive. My black coat sweeps past my calves as I walk, Valentino if anyone's looking, though I doubt they will once they witness what I'm about to do. The hood of my coat remains on, hiding the majority of my face. I like it that way The betting table is set up near the cage, manned by one of Dmitri's guys—a thick-necked Russian with gold teeth and suspicious eyes. He's currently taking bets from three drunk Wall Street types who probably think slumming it in an underground fight club makes them dangerous. I wait. Patience is something I learned the hard way, in places much worse than this. When the Wall Street boys finally stepped away, laughing too loud and reeking of alcohol, I stepped up to the table. Gold Teeth looks me over with the kind of lazy assessment men give women they don't consider threats. His mistake. "Betting's closed in thirty seconds, sweetheart," he says in accented English, already looking past me for the next customer. I reach into my coat and pull out a small black pouch. The kind banks use for coins, though what's inside is worth considerably more. I set it on the table with a soft thud that somehow cuts through the noise around us. "One hundred thousand," I say. My voice is steady and clear. Not a request. "Against Viktor." That gets his attention. His eyes snap to the pouch, then to me. "You're joking." "Do I look like I'm joking?" He stares at me for a long moment, trying to see past the hood, trying to figure out if I'm crazy or stupid or both. Then he reaches for the pouch, fingers working the drawstring open. The ring tumbles out onto the table. It isn't especially big or flashy. A basic gold signet ring featuring a family emblem etched on the surface—a crowned lion rampant, grasping a sword. Ancient realm. Wealth from previous generations. Ancient blood. Very old blood. Gold Teeth goes completely still. I watch him process it, watch the recognition sink into him like a physical blow. The color drains from his face. Around us, the noise of the club continues—shouting, laughing, the wet thud of fists against flesh—but at our little table, everything has gone silent. "Where did you get this?" His voice is barely a whisper. "It's mine." "That's impossible." He's not looking at me anymore. He's looking at the ring like it might explode. "The De Lucas are dead." I hear the words repeated around us as other people notice what's on the table. The whispers spread like wildfire through the crowd. De Luca. De Luca. The dead family. The murdered family. The family that was wiped off the face of the earth eight years ago in a single night of blood and bullets and screaming. My family. I reach up and push back my hood. The warehouse goes silent so fast it's almost funny. Every head turns toward me. Every conversation dies mid-sentence. Even the fighters in the cage pause, sensing the shift in the room's energy. I stand there in the sickly fluorescent light and let them look. Let them see what they thought was dead and buried. I have transformed since I turned sixteen. My face has lost its smoothness, transforming into something more rigid, more defined. My long dark hair now cascades in waves over my shoulders instead of the tidy bob my mother always insisted on. My eyes remain unchanged—deep brown, nearly black in this light, and piercing enough to unsettle adult men. I am my father's daughter, after all. "Serafina De Luca," someone breathes. I don't bother looking to see who. They're all thinking the same thing anyway. The crowd erupts. Not in cheers this time, but in chaos. People shove toward the betting table, toward me, everyone talking at once. The fighters in the cage are completely forgotten. Even Viktor the Breaker is pressed against the chain link, staring at me like I'm a ghost. Maybe I am. Gold Teeth is on his feet now, backing away from the table, from me, his hand moving toward his waistband, where I'm willing to bet he's got a gun tucked away. But he won't use it. Not yet. Not until he knows what I want, why I'm here, and whether I'm a threat or an opportunity. The crowd parts like the Red Sea, and a man steps through. I know him instantly, even though I've never met him face-to-face. Antonio Castellano's enforcer. Six foot four, shoulders like a linebacker, with a scar running from his left eye to his jaw—courtesy of a knife fight in Rikers, or so the stories go. He's wearing a suit that probably cost more than most people's cars, and his expression is carefully neutral. Professional. He stops a few feet away from me, close enough to talk but far enough that neither of us feels immediately threatened. The crowd presses in around us, but no one's stupid enough to get between us. "Serafina De Luca," he says. His voice is surprisingly quiet for such a large man. "You're supposed to be dead." I smile. It's not a nice smile. I haven't smiled nicely in eight years. "I got better." For a moment, nobody moves. Nobody breathes. The enforcer's hand reached toward his gun, then stops. He's calculating, weighing options, and trying to figure out if killing me right here, right now, is worth the fallout. It's not. We both know it. He reaches past me and picks up the ring from the table, holding it up to the light. The lion crest catches the fluorescent glow, throwing distorted shadows across his face. "This is original," he says, and it's not a question. "Obviously." "The Five Families will want to know you're alive." "I'm counting on it." He pockets the ring. I don't stop him. That ring is a message, a calling card, and a declaration of war wrapped up in gold and old promises. He can deliver it for me. Save me the trouble. "The bet stands," I say, nodding toward the cage. "One hundred thousand against Viktor. That ring is collateral enough, I think." Gold Teeth looks like he's going to be sick, but he nods. What else can he do? You don't refuse a De Luca. Even a dead one. Especially a dead one who just came back. The enforcer studies me for another long moment, and I let him look. Let him see that I'm not afraid. Let him see that I walked into a room full of criminals and killers wearing my family name like armor, betting money I probably don't have on a fight I might not win. Let him see that I'm not the scared sixteen-year-old girl who ran from a burning mansion with blood on her hands and murder in her wake. I'm something much worse now. "Welcome back, princess," he finally says, and there's something almost like respect in his voice. Almost. Then he turns and walks away, disappearing into the crowd. The noise returns slowly—whispers at first, then normal conversation, then the usual chaos of the fight club reasserting itself. But everything's different now. Everyone's watching me from the corners of their eyes, whispering behind their hands, pulling out phones to make calls to people who need to know that the impossible just happened. The De Luca heir is alive. I turn back to the cage, where Viktor is staring at me with confusion and something that might be fear. Good. He should be afraid. Not of me directly—I didn't come here to fight—but of what I represent. Of the fact that the underworld just tilted on its axis and nobody knows which way it's going to fall. The referee blows the whistle, and the fight resumes. Viktor loses in the third round. I collect my winnings—two hundred thousand in cash, plus my ring, which the enforcer has already returned to the betting table because he's smart enough to know that keeping it would be a declaration of war—and I walk out of the warehouse into the cold New York night. Behind me, I can hear the whispers starting again, spreading like fire through the underground. By morning, every family will know. Every soldier, every capo, every don from here to Chicago will hear the same impossible story. Serafina De Luca is alive. And she just announced herself in the most public, reckless, unmistakably De Luca way possible. I pull my hood back up and disappear into the shadows of the city. Above me, the skyline glitters with a thousand lights, indifferent to the small dramas playing out in the darkness below. This city took everything from me once. My family. My innocence. My life. Now I'm taking it back. Every last piece.