PART ONE
Chapter 1
15 years old
Stockholm, Sweden
I WENT DOWNHARD. MUD swallowed my hands with a cold squelch, oozing between my fingers, and my knees skidded through the filth. The impact didn’t hurt. What stung was the laughter behind me.
The cold bit into my cheeks like it had teeth. My breath fogged out in uneven gasps, mixing with the mist that rolled low through the forest like a living thing. Wet branches whipped across my arms as I stumbled forward, the red of my coat dulled with streaks of mud. The night smelled like damp moss, rotting leaves – and something older. Wilder.
I hadn’t seen the root underfoot. I barely heard the snap of a twig before I felt the shove.
I looked down instead. My hands were smeared with earth, the color of dried blood. My reflection warped in a puddle beneath me. Platinum blonde strands clung to my cheeks like wet silk. My black eyes stared back, wide and too still.
They thought sending me here would tame me.
Diplomacy.
That’s what my father said.
‘You’ll learncontrol,Francesca,’ He said. ‘You’ll learn to hold your tongue, not a blade.’
I had blood on my face when he said it. Not mine.
But he hadn’t looked at me like a father. He looked at me like I was something he hadn’t meant to create. Something he couldn’t explain to the other men in the room.
I remembered the weight in my hand. How warm it was after I pulled the trigger. HowquietI felt after.
Blood had hit the marble in bright, stuttering splashes. There were gasps.FromCapos. Men whose souls had been signed away decades ago and never blinked at horror.
But they blinked at me.
I’d made a mistake, sure. But not the one they thought.
My only mistake was letting them see what I wascapableof.
That night, I had been born again. Into the woman I was always meant to become.
I would go home soon.
And when I did… I won’t ask for power.
I will take it.
My boots dug into the frostbitten dirt as they pushed me into the clearing like an offering.
Five sons of men with too much money and too little character.
Their faces were flushed red from liquor and adrenaline. One wore a school hoodie under his varsity jacket. Another had a butterfly knife, spinning it nervously like he didn’t know what the hell he wanted to do with it – just that hecould.
“Thought we’d have a little fun with you, DeMone,” He said, smirking.
The others chuckled, but it was thin. Forced. Like they were trying to impress each other more than intimidate me.
My eyes cut from one of their hands to the others.
Bats. Knives. A hammer.
