The moon hung low, slicing through the villa's bars like a silver sickle.
Serena waited until the guards' footsteps faded. Then, she slid the scalpel from under her mattress.
Its rusty edge shimmered faintly, whispering promises her shaky hands couldn't ignore.
The grate beneath her bed screeched as she pried it open, raspy as a dying breath.
Damp air surged up—rotting lilies and cold stone. She crawled into the dark.
The catacombs swallowed her whole.
Her phone's flashlight wavered, casting jagged shadows on walls lined with niches.
Bones stared from the dark, femurs stacked like firewood, skulls tangled in cobwebs.
Her father's words burned in her mind: 12th rib. Moonrise.
She counted arches, each step crunching gravel.
At the twelfth, she stopped.
A child's skeleton lay curled in the niche, tiny fingers wrapped around nothing. The ribs arched like a cathedral, one snapped and fused wrong.
Gabriele.
Tucked inside the bones was a tin soldier, its green paint chipped away.
Etched into the base in her father's handwriting: "For the boy who loved pirates."
Footsteps echoed.
Serena grabbed the soldier. Its jagged edge bit into her palm.
The grate clanged as she scrambled back into her room—
"Looking for ghosts, moglie?"
Vittorio stood in the doorway, a shadow with ice-cold eyes. His shirt hung open, revealing a fresh bullet scar above his heart.
She hid her hand behind her back.
"I—I couldn't sleep."
In three strides, he was in front of her.
His scent—gunpowder and citrus—closed in around her.
"What's in your hand?"
"Nothing."
He chuckled, low and sharp. Then he pinned her to the wall, her spine pressed to cold stone.
"Liar."
Her fingers uncurled.
The tin soldier glinted in the light, its bayonet chipped.
Vittorio froze. For a breath, his mask cracked—pain, raw and wild, flashed in his eyes.
Then his grip tightened around her wrist.
"Where did you get this?"
"The crypt. Your brother's—"
He slammed her hand into a skull resting on the dresser.
Bone bit her skin.
"His name dies on your tongue."
Her breath hitched.
The hollow sockets stared at her.
He leaned closer, voice a poisoned whisper.
"You want secrets? Here's one: Gabriele begged me to save him. And I watched."
The villa's alarm shattered the silence.
Vittorio dragged her downstairs past guards with rifles.
Dawn spilled through the gates, painting a crumpled shape on the gravel.
The maid lay broken like a doll, her apron stiff with dried blood.
A blackened rose bloomed from her lips.
Serena gagged.
"Why—?"
Vittorio crouched beside the corpse, slicing the maid's sleeve open with his stiletto.
A tattoo wrapped around her arm—numbers, coordinates, and a crude map of Marseille.
"This is your doing," he said coldly.
"No!"
He seized her chin, forcing her to look.
"The Gallo Clan doesn't leave roses. You did."
Her blood ran cold.
Luca.
A guard burst in, breathless.
"Don Marchetti—the boy. He's gone. They took him."
Vittorio stood, knuckles white around the blade.
"You want to play savior?"
He shoved the knife into her hand.
Its hilt was slick with blood.
"Then earn it."
The map blurred as she traced a familiar street in Marseille.
A brothel.
Her mother's old haunt.
Somewhere, Luca screamed.
Somewhere, a clock ticked.
And in Serena's clenched fist, the tin soldier dug its bayonet into her skin—drawing blood, or a promise.