Chapter 1
ELENA
The warehouse reeked of gunpowder.
Not just the faint scent of it—but thick, suffocating clouds that burned the inside of my nose and coated my tongue in bitterness.
The metallic tang of blood clung to the air. It soaked into the concrete, into the splintered wood of shattered crates, into the torn fabric of the life I’d been barely clinging to for the past two months.
My hearing aid buzzed violently in my left ear.
A sharp crackle.
A high-pitched whine.
Then distortion.
I flinched, instinctively pressing a hand to it as if I could force it to cooperate.
The world of sound was already fragile for me. Now it came in broken fragments—muffled echoes, dull booms, the vibration of gunfire traveling through the soles of my bare feet.
I couldn’t hear clearly.
But I could feel everything.
The tremors in the ground.
The rush of bodies moving.
The heat of chaos closing in.
War had come to my prison.
“Easy... easy,” Dario’s voice reached me in uneven waves, distorted but recognizable.
Two strong hands steadied me—one on each side.
Dario stood at my right, his dark curls plastered to his forehead with sweat and grime. Blood streaked across his jaw, not all of it his.
His grip on my arm was firm but careful, as though I were made of glass. Ethan held my left, lean and tense, his sharp eyes scanning every shadow.
They were breathing hard.
We all were.
Behind us, Luca, Marco, Nico, and Vito moved in formation, weapons still raised, boots crunching over debris.
They looked like something pulled straight from a battlefield—clothes torn, faces smeared with soot and blood, expressions carved from stone.
They were not my blood brothers.
But they were mine.
My foster brothers. My protectors. My family.
For two months, this warehouse had been my cage.
Cold concrete walls. Rusted metal beams. No windows. No sunlight. Only flickering bulbs that hummed overhead like dying insects.
