(Aria's POV)
His final breath fogs in the winter air as I step over his body, already moving toward my next target. Two down. Two to go.
The darkness wraps around me like a second skin as I melt through the shadows cast by the mansion's ornate pillars. My footsteps make no sound on the marble floor—Elena taught me that silence is deadlier than any weapon. The terror radiating from the dying man behind me tastes like copper pennies on my tongue, his fear feeding the hollow space where my heart should be.
Perfect, Elena's voice whispers in my memory. Feel their fear. Let it make you stronger.
I slide through the crack beneath the study door, my body becoming one with the darkness. Giuseppe's brother Vincent sits behind an antique desk, frantically loading bullets into a silver-plated pistol. His hands shake so violently he drops half the ammunition.
"Blessed bullets," he mutters, sweat beading on his forehead. "She can't touch me with blessed bullets."
I materialize behind his chair, already knowing what his last words will be before he speaks them.
"Hello, Vincent."
He spins, the gun raised, but I'm already moving. My blade finds the gap between his third and fourth ribs—the same spot Elena made me practice on mannequins until I could hit it blindfolded. Vincent's fear tastes different from his brother's. Saltier. More desperate.
"The Castellano bitch," he gasps, blood frothing at his lips. "Elena's... little monster."
"Elena's masterpiece," I correct, twisting the blade. His fear spikes, delicious and warm. "She sends her regards."
Vincent crumples to the Persian rug, his blood seeping into threads that probably cost more than most people's cars. I wipe my blade clean on his silk tie, already thinking ahead to my next target.
Tonight, you end this war. Elena's words echo in my skull as I flow back into shadow form. Tonight, you become what I made you to be.
The memory hits me like a physical blow—eight years old, standing in Elena's training room with blood on my hands for the first time. Not my blood. Never my blood.
"Why is he not moving anymore?" My child's voice sounds foreign now, innocent in a way that makes my current self recoil.
Elena's face was stone as she knelt beside me, her fingers ice-cold against my cheek. "Because mercy is the luxury of the weak, little shadow. And we are not weak."
The dead man at my feet had been a Moretti associate. Elena made me practice on him for hours until my small hands could grip the knife properly, until I stopped flinching when the blade went in.
"The Morettis took everything from us," she continued, washing the blood from my fingers with water that smelled like roses. "Your parents. Your future. Your choice to be anything other than this. They made you into a weapon, Aria. I'm just sharpening the blade."
But I remember my parents differently—warm hands, soft voices, laughter that filled our old apartment. Elena's version of history tastes like lies, but I learned long ago not to question the woman who controls my life.
The memory fades as I slip through the mansion's corridors, following the scent of fear toward the wine cellar. Marco Moretti thinks he's hidden himself well among the vintage bottles and stone archways. His terror is so thick I can practically see it in the air, purple and pulsing like a heartbeat.
He's crouched behind a rack of 1947 Bordeaux, a .45 clutched in both hands. Twenty-three years old, Elena's intelligence files said. Engaged to a human girl who doesn't know what her fiancé really is. The girl will be a widow before sunrise.
I materialize directly in front of him, and Marco's scream dies in his throat as he sees me.
"Please," he whispers, the gun shaking. "I have money. Information. Whatever Elena wants..."
"Elena wants you dead."
My blade finds his heart before he can pull the trigger. His fear transforms into something else in his final moments—relief, maybe. Or resignation. The Moretti men know this day was always coming.
Two down. One to go.
No...three down. Giuseppe was first, in his study surrounded by photographs of his grandchildren. Then Vincent in the library, bleeding out onto his accounting ledgers. Now Marco in the wine cellar, his blood mixing with spilled Bordeaux.
Only Dante remains.
I find him in the old man's private study, kneeling beside a body I didn't leave there. Silvio Moretti, the family patriarch, lies peacefully in his leather chair as if he simply decided to take a nap. No wounds, no blood.
The family's psychic abilities don't make them immortal.
Dante's shoulders shake with silent sobs as he grips his grandfather's cold hand. He's younger than I expected—maybe twenty-three, with dark hair that curls at his collar and olive skin that would be beautiful if not for the grief etched into every line of his face.
"I'm sorry, Nonno," he whispers. "I couldn't protect them. I couldn't protect any of them."
I step into the light, my blade already raised. Dante doesn't turn around, but his body goes rigid. He knows I'm here. Probably felt me coming.
"Dante Moretti." My voice sounds hollow in the book-lined room. "Elena Castellano sends her regards."
He finally looks at me, and I see my own death reflected in his dark eyes. But instead of fear, I taste something else entirely, sorrow so deep it makes my chest ache. This is what Elena warned me about. The moment when empathy makes you weak.
"Do it quickly," he says, releasing his grandfather's hand. "I don't want to run."
I raise the blade higher, muscle memory guiding my movements. One thrust between the ribs. Clean. Efficient. The way Elena taught me.
But then I make a mistake.
I look deeper into his mind.
Five years old, crying at his mother's funeral while his father stands stone-faced beside the grave. "Morettis don't cry, boy. Tears are for the weak."
Eight years old, learning to block out other people's thoughts because his psychic abilities make him hear things no child should hear. The weight of everyone's secrets crushing down on his small shoulders.
Fifteen years old, watching his father beat a man to death for disrespecting the family. The taste of bile in his throat as Marcus forces him to watch, to learn what power really means.
Twenty years old, discovering that his first girlfriend was planted by a rival family to extract information. The hollow ache in his chest when he realizes he can't trust anyone, can't let anyone close enough to hurt him.
The same isolation. The same manipulation. The same choice stolen away before we were old enough to understand what was being taken.
My blade wavers in my grip.
"You're hesitating," Dante says softly. His eyes meet mine across the room, and for a moment, I see not an enemy but a mirror. "Why are you hesitating?"
The question hits me like a physical blow. I don't hesitate. I've never hesitated. Hesitation is weakness, and Elena carved weakness out of me with surgical precision years ago.
But looking at Dante Moretti, seeing the boy he was in the man he became, I understand something that makes my blood run cold.
We're the same.
Two weapons forged by families who value power over love, control over choice. Two children shaped into killers by people who never asked what we wanted to be.
"Run," I whisper, lowering my blade.
Dante's eyes widen. "What did you say?"
"Run." The word tastes like treason on my tongue. "Run, and don't look back."
He stares at me for a heartbeat longer, and I see the exact moment he realizes I mean it. That the Castellano assassin is letting him live. That tonight, mercy has found its way into the heart of a weapon.
"Why?" he asks.
I don't have an answer. Or maybe I do, and it's too dangerous to speak aloud.
Dante rises slowly, never taking his eyes off me. He moves toward the window, and I don't stop him. He climbs onto the sill, and I don't raise my blade. He looks back one last time, and I see something in his gaze that will haunt me forever.
Understanding.
Then he's gone, vanished into the Chicago night, and I'm alone with the old man's body and the taste of my own damnation.
For the first time in my life, Aria Castellano has failed.