Chapter 1 1

Isabella POV

The scent of expensive leather and Victoria's cloying Chanel perfume couldn't mask the stench of my reality. I sat in the back of the Russo family's stretch limousine, my hands resting on the cheap manila envelope containing the only possessions I had left after five years in federal prison.

Victoria slid a crisp, legal document across the polished walnut table. Next to it sat a one-way ticket to Geneva and a black, untraceable credit card.

"Sign it," she demanded, her voice trembling with a mixture of disgust and poorly hidden terror. The Art Deco onyx bracelet on her wrist clinked against the wood. "A blood oath of exile. You renounce the Russo name, you maintain *Omertà*, and you disappear. Or I have an Enforcer fit you for concrete shoes in the Hudson before midnight."

Mia leaned forward from the opposite seat, intentionally catching the dim cabin light on the massive diamond on her left hand. "Gavin says hello, by the way," she smirked, her voice dripping with venom. "He picked this out himself. He thought you'd prefer Europe to a coffin, but honestly, I don't care either way."

I didn't flinch. The girl who would have cried at their betrayal died on the cold concrete floor of a cell five years ago. I looked at Victoria's perfectly manicured hands, noting the slight tremor she couldn't control. She wasn't here out of power; she was here out of fear. She was terrified I would expose how she and Gavin Conti had framed me to secure their pathetic alliance.

I leaned forward, my worn combat boots planting firmly on the velvet carpet.

"You think a piece of paper and a plane ticket erase five years in a cage?" I whispered, my voice as cold and sharp as a surgical scalpel. I locked eyes with my stepmother. "This isn't over, Victoria. A *Vendetta* is owed. I am going to take everything from you."

Victoria's face drained of color. She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound was instantly obliterated by a deafening roar of tearing metal.

A massive, kinetic force slammed into the right side of the limousine. The three-ton armored vehicle was violently shoved across the asphalt, the tires shrieking in protest. Victoria's crystal champagne flute shattered against the partition, golden liquid and glass shards raining down on us like shrapnel.

I braced my forearms against the roof, my muscles-honed from years of brutal prison fights-absorbing the shock. Through the sudden spiderweb cracks of the bulletproof window, I saw them: three heavy, unmarked black SUVs moving in a flawless, aggressive tactical formation.

They hit us again.

The limousine spun wildly. Up front, the Russo driver-a low-level Associate who had clearly never seen real combat-was hyperventilating. He screamed uselessly into his radio, his hands slipping off the steering wheel as panic consumed him.

My mind raced, calculating the angles and the force. This wasn't a sloppy Conti hit. This wasn't a warning. The precision, the sheer power of the assault-this was a coordinated, military-grade extraction. Someone with absolute authority wanted me, and they were tearing through the Russo family to get me.

And if I left my life in the hands of this weeping driver, we were all going to die on this highway.