The night the fire took his mother, Hayden Moretti became something else.
Not a child.
Not a victim.
Not even a boy.
Something colder.
Something broken.
Smoke poured through the corridors of the Moretti estate like a living thing—alive, wild, and hungry. The marble floor beneath Hayden's bare feet had gone warm, too warm, and in the distance, glass shattered under pressure. He couldn't see much past the flames curling up the staircase, but he could *hear* her.
His mother.
Screaming.
Begging.
Then—nothing.
"Let me go!" Hayden shrieked, flailing against the steel grip wrapped around his chest. "She's still in there—*Papa, please!*"
But Enzo Moretti, the man feared across continents as *Il Lupo*—the Wolf of Rome—held his son back with one arm. His face was carved from stone. Not a flicker of emotion. His tailored suit was streaked with soot, his jaw clenched so tight it looked painful.
"She's dead," Enzo said, voice like gravel and ice. "You will not go in there."
"But I can save her—"
"You will not *die* with her," he hissed, dragging Hayden back, away from the rising inferno. "You are my legacy. You will learn."
The heat licked at their skin as the second floor collapsed inward with a scream of metal and flame. The silk curtains his mother loved disintegrated into ash. Her piano—a grand white Bösendorfer—exploded in a shower of burning keys and splinters.
Hayden stopped struggling.
His small fists dropped to his sides as he watched his home, his *world*, melt.
And then—gunfire.
Men swarmed the courtyard—his father's soldiers, sharp and precise. Others followed behind, chaotic and unmarked. There had been no warning. No time to prepare.
The Nicholas family had made their move.
Hayden saw the man himself—*Alexander Nicholas*—forced to his knees on the burning front lawn, blood dripping from his nose, face swollen. He wasn't screaming. He was laughing.
Next to him, a girl was crying. Struggling.
She was his age. Maybe a little younger. Blonde hair. Red bow. A smudge of ash on her cheek. Her legs kicked at the guards as they shoved her toward the armored car. She turned once, eyes locking with Hayden's.
And for a moment, the world stopped.
Tears streaked her soot-covered cheeks. She looked terrified. Helpless.
*Innocent*.
And it disgusted him.
Because *her* father had done this. Because she got to live while his mother was still burning.
He never forgot her face.
---
The next morning, the church was full of people Hayden didn't know. Associates. Politicians. Women in black hats dabbing fake tears from their eyes. They whispered as he walked down the aisle beside his father, too small for the suit he wore, too silent for the storm raging in his chest.
The casket was closed.
The priest said things about heaven and peace. Hayden wanted to scream. There had been no peace. No mercy. His mother's face, when they pulled her from the rubble, had been unrecognizable.
He stared at the coffin until his eyes burned.
And when it was over, when the mourners were gone and the marble crypt door sealed behind them, he stood before her tomb and whispered the first promise of his life:
"I will make them pay."
Not with bullets. Not with mercy.
With ruin.
With loss.
With love.
---
The years that followed didn't heal him—they sharpened him. Hardened him.
He was sent to a private military boarding school in Switzerland before his tenth birthday. There were no phone calls. No holidays. Just silence. Hayden never cried. Never questioned. He simply *obeyed*. And when his instructors told Enzo he was too quiet, too cold, too focused, Enzo simply replied:
"Good."
By fifteen, Hayden spoke four languages and could disarm a grown man in under ten seconds.
By seventeen, he was operating in the shadows of his father's empire—handling money laundering routes, sitting in on high-level meetings, ordering his first execution.
By twenty-two, he was a ghost in the global underworld. The youngest Moretti heir in history with full command of Rome's southern operations. His penthouse overlooked the Colosseum. His security detail could rival most presidents.
But none of it mattered.
Because he didn't want power.
He wanted *her*.
Ana Nicholas.
The girl from the fire. The daughter of his mother's killer. The child who cried while Hayden watched his world burn.
He searched for her for years. The Nicholas family had gone underground after the attack. They'd changed names, disappeared into different cities, different countries. But he found her.
Of course he did.
She was living in London under a new identity—Ana Vega. Studying art. Volunteering at museums. Drinking oat milk lattes and painting sunsets like her past had never existed.
She looked different now—older, softer, the red bow replaced with delicate gold hoops and a nose freckled by sun. But the eyes were the same. And so was the innocence.
He watched her for two years.
Learned everything.
What made her laugh. What made her flinch. The way she smiled at children but tensed around strange men. He learned the exact moment she let her guard down walking home from the gallery. He memorized her key code. Her favorite bottle of wine. The password to her laptop.
She had no idea who he was.
But she would.
Soon.
---
That night, Hayden stood alone in his penthouse. Rome glittered below him like a bed of coals. A glass of scotch sweated in his hand, but he hadn't touched it.
His eyes were fixed on the television screen.
Flight 1428.
London to Rome.
*Landed*.
She was here.
Ana was coming home. Back to the city her father destroyed. Back to him.
He opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out the old photograph. His mother, smiling, holding a birthday cake. "For my Hayden" was scrawled in delicate cursive on the back.
He stared at it for a long moment. Then slid it into the inner pocket of his jacket.
Not for memory.
For *fuel*.
Because revenge was no longer a plan.
It was a hunger.
And Ana Nicholas?
She was the flame he would use to burn the past alive.