Only hisfamigliaknew the truth of what she had been doing, and because the Marchettis had agreed to play their role as coldly furious almost-in-laws to perfection, the entire world was happy to hate on her alongside them.
Night after night, all eyes were on her, a girl who shamelessly painted the town red using her missing fiancé's money.
And that was why...
None of them ever cared enough to look beyond the surface.
None of them ever cared to know what exactly she was doing inside the clubs owned by the Prince of Killers.
Because if they had—-
Then her secret would have long been exposed.
They would have known Sarica Nuñez and Seijcut were one.
And that she had completely lied about her reasons for placing a bounty on Giancarlo Marchetti's head.
The people she had met as Seijcut were exactly as she imagined. People who actually had no information to give—-but because they hated the man she loved, they had wanted to work"with"Seijcut in finding Giancarlo.
They had wanted to exact revenge on him if he were ever found...
And that was why Sarica had passed them on to the Prince of Killers, and they, too, went missing the way Giancarlo did.
The vehicle hit a bump, her body swaying as her unseen driver made a turn, and with it, her thoughts swerved similarly. Viktor Biancardi's face flashed in her mind, and her fingers curled into fists behind her back.
Please, God.
Please.
Please keep me from killing him.
Tears burned her eyes as she thought of Viktor still walking around a free man whileherGiancarlo, oh God...
She squeezed her eyes shut, and that was when she heard it.
This is not the way, dolcezza.
Giancarlo's beloved voice.
You cannot kill him.
Must not.
Because I cannot keep my promise to you if you're behind bars.
GIANCARLO STOOD ATthe floor-to-ceiling windows of his office, the city of Kivr's capital spread before him, and beyond it, the vast desert. His reflection stared back at him: still in tactical gear, mask discarded on his desk, the silver streak in his hair gleaming under the moonlight.
For sixteen months, he had walked the razor's edge between life and death. Had done things that would haunt him until his last breath. But nothing—not the fall, not the months of rehabilitation, not even the choices that had led him here—nothing had prepared him for tonight.
Seijcut.
The name had been all everyone in the underworld could talk about for the past three months. A mysterious entity offering obscene amounts of money for information about him—-dead or alive. Two hundred million dollars total, sourced from his own inheritance to her.
He had spent weeks analyzing Seijcut's every move, every decision. The careful wording of the bounty. The way targets were chosen. How those who claimed to have killed him mysteriously disappeared, while those who offered genuine information about his survival were left unharmed.
No wonder the moves had felt familiar.
No wonder each strike had carried echoes of his own training.
