AT THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, MY HUSBAND HUNG ME FROM THE CEILING BEAM AND WHPPED ME 30 TIMES, JUST BECAUSE I HAD STAINED HIS MISTRESS'S CLOTHES. I CALLED MY FIVE GANGSTER BROTHERS: "MAKE HIS ENTIRE FAMILY LIVE A FATE WORSE THAN DETH."

The heavy oak door of the guest bedroom clicked shut, and the lock turned from the outside.

In the darkness, I pressed my back against the wall and slowly slid to the floor. My wrists were purple, ringed with raw abrasions where the industrial zip-ties had bitten into bone. My back felt as though a branding iron had been dragged across it thirty times. Every breath tasted of iron and dust.

Downstairs, the music had resumed. Through the floorboards, I could hear the faint, buoyant laughter of two hundred black-tie elites sipping champagne in the grand ballroom. To them, my torture was not a crime; it was high-society theater, a private discipline enacted by Adrian Vale to remind a stray dog of her pedigree.

I looked at my left wrist. My vintage platinum watch—a gift from my brother Dante disguised as an antique piece—was still intact beneath the dried blood. The tiny crimson indicator on the bezel had blinked steadily throughout the entire ordeal.

Audio. Video. Biometrics.

Every word Adrian had spat at me. Every gloating smirk Vanessa Crowe had cast beneath my suspended body. Every mocking comment from his mother, Eleanor, and the recording Marcus had taken on his phone. It was all captured in uncompressed, high-definition resolution, already cached into an encrypted cloud server.

I dragged myself across the plush carpet toward the walk-in closet. Beneath a floorboard behind the shoe racks lay a satellite burner phone—hardwired to bypass the estate’s cellular scramblers.

My fingers shook as I punched in the eleven digits.

The line connected without a tone.

"Anna?"

Luca’s voice was low, rasping with the quiet authority of a man who commanded empires from the shadows.

"Luca," I said. My voice wavered only once, a small crack in the dam. "I need all five of you."

A heavy silence followed. Across town, in the penthouse overlooking the Hudson, I could picture Luca standing by the floor-to-ceiling glass, his eyes narrowing, his hand tightening on the receiver.

"Tell me," he said.

"Adrian hung me from the ballroom ceiling beam tonight. In front of two hundred guests. He gave Vanessa a riding crop. Thirty strikes." I exhaled, the pain flaring across my spine. "He locked the doors. His mother laughed. His brother filmed it."

On the other end of the line, the ambient sounds of the city seemed to die. Luca’s breathing became deathly steady. When a Moretti shouted, they were angry. When a Moretti spoke in a whisper, they were preparing a massacre.

"Are you safe right now?"

"Locked in the third-floor west wing," I replied. "They think I’m an orphan without a dime. They think my family was a myth."

"Your family was never a myth," Luca said softly. "Matteo, Dante, Leo, and Marco are already on their way to my office. We will not kill him quickly, Anna. A bullet is mercy. We are going to strip Adrian Vale down to his skin, tear his name from every building in this state, and make his entire bloodline beg for the ground to swallow them."

"I don't just want him ruined, Luca," I whispered, feeling the cold fury crystallize in my chest. "I want him to watch everything he ever built turn into ash while he stands powerless to stop it."