She leaned forward again, eyes blazing. “And I don’t care how important or popular she thinks she is. I don’t care who she helps or how many sob stories she’s attached to.”
Her voice dropped, sharp and spoiled and cruel.
“I want her handled.”
Her father finally stood, towering over the desk. He stepped closer, close enough that most people would’ve shrunk back.
Jenna didn’t.
“You’re asking for attention,” he said quietly. “This woman’s visibility could bring complications.”
Jenna scoffed. “Then make it quiet.”
She crossed her arms, chin lifting. “You always taught me that problems don’t get sympathy. They get erased.”
Abeat.
Another.
Then he reached out, brushing an invisible speck of dust from her shoulder. A fatherly gesture. A warning disguised as affection.
“If I do this,” he said, voice low, “there’s no undoing it.”
Jenna smiled.
“Good.”
She turned toward the door, heels clicking, already satisfied. “I just want my life back. Izzy back. Everything in its place.”
She paused at the doorway, glancing over her shoulder.
“Oh—and Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Make sure she knows,” Jenna said softly, “that she should’ve stepped aside when she had the chance.”
Then she walked out.
And behind her, the door closed with a sound that felt very much like a sentence being passed.
Jenna Lionetti was born into a world where loyalty mattered more than love and power mattered more than mercy. She never knew a version of life without money, without fear, without men who lowered their voices when her father entered a room. From the moment she couldwalk, she belonged to the Lionetti name—and the weight of it wrapped around her like silk and steel.
She was an only child. Not by accident, but by design.
Her parents ruled together. Manetto Lionetti and Julia DeLuca—high school sweethearts turned partners in an empire built on money laundering, drugs, and trafficking that stretched farther than most people dared to imagine. Julia was not a silent wife tucked away behind diamonds and charity luncheons. She was sharp, calculating, and respected. Feared, even. If Manetto was the muscle, Julia was the mind. And Jenna watched everything.
Her childhood was indulgent on the surface—private schools, chauffeurs, closets filled with designer clothes she outgrew before she could wear them twice. But underneath the luxury was constant vigilance. Armed men. Secured gates. Conversations that stopped when she entered the room. She learned early that safety was never guaranteed, only enforced.
The night her mother died split her life clean in two.
Jenna was eight years old when the hit came. An attempted assassination meant for her father, sloppy and desperate. The kind that happens when someone wants a crown they haven’t earned. Julia had stepped infront of Manetto without hesitation. One bullet. One moment. Gone.
They told Jenna her mother was brave. A hero. A queen who died protecting her king.
What they didn’t say—what no one ever said out loud—was that the world had taught Jenna a lesson that night: love is a liability.
After Julia’s death, Manetto became ruthless in ways even his enemies noticed. But with Jenna, he softened. Overcorrected. She became untouchable. His priority. His weakness—and everyone knew it.
