Chapter 2 - THE WOLF’S ROSARY
The cold night air hit my face like a wet towel as the assassin dragged me into the alley.
My rubber-soled work shoes scrambled for purchase on the wet cobblestones. I didn't scream. Screaming wasted oxygen. Instead, I remembered the sheer mass of my own body. For years, I had been taught to shrink, to apologize for the space I took up, to tuck my elbows and make myself small.
Not tonight.
I let all my weight drop at once. Two hundred and forty pounds of dead weight.
The man holding me wasn't prepared for the sudden shift. He stumbled forward, his grip slipping from my mouth to my collar. In that split second, I drove my elbow backward. Hard.
It connected with his ribs. A sickening crunch echoed in the narrow alley.
He grunted, his grip loosening just enough. I spun around, grabbing the heavy cast-iron skillet I always left by the kitchen door for scrap food. I swung it with everything I had. It connected with the side of his skull, and the man crumpled to the pavement like a discarded sack of flour.
My chest heaved. I stood over him, my uniform torn, my apron stained with alley grease.
"Claret!"
The kitchen door burst open. Vincent stood in the frame, his charcoal suit jacket gone, his white dress shirt rolled at the sleeves. He held a sleek black handgun, his chest rising and falling as his frantic eyes locked onto me.
He looked at the unconscious man, then at the iron skillet in my trembling hand. A look of pure, unadulterated awe washed over his face. He didn't see a fat waitress in distress. He saw a warrior.
"Are you hurt?" he demanded, closing the distance between us in two long strides. His hands hovered over my arms, wanting to touch me but asking silent permission.
"I'm fine," I gasped, dropping the pan. "He said... he said something about the Vela line. The ghost of the Vela line."
Vincent’s jaw tightened. The awe vanished, replaced by a cold, terrifying calculation. He knelt beside the unconscious man and rummaged through the killer's pockets.
"Vincent, what is going on?" I demanded. "Why did your father look at me like I was the devil? What did my grandmother teach me?"
"She taught you the language of the true kings," Vincent muttered, pulling something from the man's jacket.
He stood up and held it out under the pale glow of the streetlamp. It was a heavy, tarnished silver rosary. But instead of a crucifix, the beads ended in a crude, ancient crest—a snarling wolf wrapped in thorns.
My breath caught in my throat. I reached into my own shirt, pulling out the exact same crest on a delicate silver chain my Nona Katarina had made me swear never to take off.
"You're a Vela," Vincent said, his voice thick with an emotion I couldn't place. "The bloodline my father supposedly wiped out forty years ago."
He grabbed my hand, his grip warm and urgent. "We have to go. Now."
"Go where?" I pulled back slightly. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me the truth."
"Claret, my father's men will be out here in thirty seconds. If they find you, they will kill you." Vincent looked deep into my eyes. "I swear on my life, I will protect you. But we have to move."
I looked at the rosary, then at the man on the ground. I nodded once.
Vincent led me to a sleek black sedan hidden two streets over. We drove in silence, the neon lights of Chicago painting his sharp profile in flashes of crimson and gold. I watched his hands grip the steering wheel, knuckles white.
"My father didn't build his empire," Vincent finally spoke, not looking away from the road. "He stole it. From a family in the old mountains. The Velas."
"My grandmother," I whispered.
"Katarina Vela was the rightful head of the syndicate," Vincent confirmed. "She vanished the night Salvatore slaughtered the rest of your family. He's been terrified for forty years that a Vela heir would return."
We pulled into the underground garage of a luxury high-rise. Vincent led me to a private elevator.
When the doors opened into a sprawling, glass-walled penthouse, I felt entirely out of place. My uniform was a mess. But Vincent didn't care about the mud on his pristine rugs. He walked straight to a massive oak desk, unlocking a drawer.
He pulled out a faded, sepia-toned photograph and handed it to me.
I stared at it. It was my Nona Katarina, young, beautiful, and fierce. Standing next to her was a young Salvatore Russo. But that wasn't what made my blood run cold.
In my grandmother's arms was a little girl, maybe three years old, wearing a small silver bracelet.
"That's my mother," I breathed, touching the face of the child who would grow up to die in a mysterious car crash when I was a baby.
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"Look closer," Vincent said softly.
I flipped the photograph over. On the back, written in my grandmother's jagged scrawl, were the words: For Salvatore, a father's shame.
