The rain fell like it was hired to wash away sins.
Veronica Moretti stepped out of the black car and onto the cemetery gravel, her heels sinking into the wet ground like it was trying to swallow her whole. Men in dark coats stood in stiff lines, their heads bowed under umbrellas, their loyalty just as manufactured as their mourning.
The casket was already lowered. Too fast, she thought. They didn't even wait for her.
"Typical," she muttered.
From the moment she stepped back into New York airspace, everything about her father's death felt wrong. The press called it a heart attack. The family whispered "peaceful." But the way her uncle Carlo avoided her gaze at the wake—and the presence of two rival dons at the burial—told her all she needed to know.
This wasn't an end. It was a beginning.
She moved through the crowd like a ghost, all sharp cheekbones and black silk. A Moretti by blood, but not by nature—at least that's what they liked to believe. The girl who ran away to Paris. The soft one. The scholar.
She stopped at the casket. No priest. No words. Just silence.
"Hi, Dad," she whispered, barely audible. "Sorry I'm late. You know how customs can be."
Someone behind her chuckled. Low, familiar.
She turned.
And there he was.
Luca Romano.
The boy who once walked her home after school, then disappeared with a gun and a mission. Older now. Broader. Sharper around the edges. Dressed in black like he never took it off.
She hadn't seen him in five years. And she didn't have to ask who he was working for now—because he wore betrayal like a second skin. The Romano crest on his lapel was subtle, but not for her. It was a message.
She raised an eyebrow. "Wrong side of the grave, Luca."
His lips twitched, the ghost of a smile she used to know. "Still got that sharp tongue, huh?"
"I've had time to sharpen it."
He nodded toward the casket. "I'm sorry, Ronnie."
"Are you?" she asked, stepping closer. Close enough to smell the rain on him, the danger that always clung to him like smoke. "Because the last time I heard your voice, you were telling me you couldn't choose me over them."
"I didn't come to fight."
"Good," she said. "Because I came to win."
Luca looked at her, really looked. And for a second, something in his eyes cracked—guilt, maybe. Or regret. She didn't care.
"Whatever this is," he said quietly, "it's not just grief. You're here for more than a goodbye."
She didn't answer.
Because he was right.
She wasn't here for closure. She was here for names, for answers, for the blood that belonged to her family. For the empire her father built—now trembling on the edge of collapse.
And Luca, whether he knew it yet or not, was going to help her take it all back.
She turned away, heels clicking like gunshots on stone. The storm was picking up, heavy and electric. Her hair whipped across her face, and behind her, the crowd was already beginning to thin—faded loyalty retreating with the rain.
But not Luca.
He stayed.
Watching.
Waiting.
Like he always did before the fire started.