Chapter 5 The Ghost with Red

Catalina's POV

Catalina never believed in ghosts.

Not until she became one.

The world thought her dead-cremated, scattered, erased. Her name scrubbed from databases, her face removed from archives, her file closed in every intelligence and mafia network from Italy to Dubai. But she hadn't died in that fire. She had clawed her way out of it, broken and bloodied, with nothing left but vengeance and a half-burnt photograph.

She stood now in the backroom of a decaying speakeasy tucked beneath Venice's cracked bones. Time hadn't touched the walls here, nor the velvet drapes that sagged from the ceiling. Smoke curled lazily under golden lamps, mingling with the scent of spilled gin and lies.

Across from her, a man in a bloodstained shirt shook in his bindings. His lips trembled like they might forget how to lie.

"I didn't know who she was," he whimpered. "I was just delivering a message. That's all. A letter from a girl named Chiara Romano."

Catalina stirred the ice in her glass with a silver blade-one small enough to pass as jewelry, sharp enough to pierce a rib.

"And you handed it off... to a stranger?"

"She told me it was confidential," he said quickly. "That it had to reach someone named Catalina. I didn't ask questions. I swear."

"But someone did," Catalina murmured. "Because now, Chiara is dead."

She rose from her seat, heels whispering over worn marble tiles. Slowly, she circled the man like a wolf deciding where to bite.

"Do you know how she died?" she asked softly.

He swallowed. "Throat... slit."

"Execution style," Catalina said. "Clean. Professional. No hesitation."

She stopped behind him, leaned down until her breath kissed his ear. "Which means someone close delivered the death sentence."

He shivered. "I don't know who."

"Then try harder," she whispered. "Before I ask differently."

"I heard... I heard she'd been meeting secretly with someone in her inner circle. A woman. She'd been trying to help Alessia get out."

Catalina stilled.

That name again.

Alessia Romano.

Daughter of the devil. Or maybe, the daughter of another kind of prisoner.

She stepped away, thoughtful. Her fingers grazed the edge of a photograph tucked into her coat pocket.

"I believe you," she said finally.

The man sagged in relief.

"But that won't save you."

He looked up, alarm flaring in his eyes. "Wait, what-?"

She turned away and snapped her fingers.

Two shadows stepped from the corners of the room-silent, masked, armed.

"Take him to the docks," she ordered. "And drop him in the canal."

"Catalina, please-"

"You led them to her," she said without turning around. "Even if you didn't mean to. That's enough."

The sound of dragging, muffled pleading, and then silence followed. She lit a cigarette with a shaky hand, exhaling slowly through red lips.

It was starting again.

The cycle.

The blood.

The old hunger.

Catalina had spent the last five years hiding in shadows, pulling strings, rebuilding what Dante Moretti had tried to destroy. But no matter how far she ran, the past stalked her.

And his name was always the sharpest ghost of all.

Dante.

God, how she used to love him.

The first time she met him, she was twenty-one and stupid. He was already a king in waiting-ruthless, impossibly handsome, with a smile that could cut glass. She had been working in intelligence then, playing both sides between mafiosi and Interpol. She thought she could tame him.

He'd kissed her like a man tasting freedom.

And then, just when she thought he might love her...

He sold her out.

To protect his father's legacy.

To silence her betrayal.

To prove no woman would ever come before the Moretti name.

Her own blood had soaked into the concrete that night. She still remembered how cold it had been-how quiet her screams sounded against the roar of fire.

Dante had watched.

And walked away.

Now, he was engaged to Alessia Romano-the daughter of the man who had issued the original order to kill her.

The irony didn't escape her.

She opened her clutch and pulled out the last surviving copy of the one thing that could burn Dante's empire to ash: a small silver USB drive.

Inside it was the video. The one that showed Dante and his father ordering the slaughter of a diplomat's family in Paris. The one that proved Dante didn't just inherit bloodlust.

He created it.

Catalina had spent years hiding this, waiting, watching. She hadn't used it yet because timing was everything.

And now, Alessia Romano has that timing.

A girl with fire in her bones and rebellion in her eyes. A girl desperate enough to reach out to a dead woman for help. A girl who didn't yet know that her fiancé was the very devil she feared.

Catalina sealed the USB in a thick envelope, marking it with a single elegant "A."

Then she kissed the seal with her red lips.

"You want out, little princess?" she whispered. "Then let me show you the door... and the demons behind it."

She handed the envelope to a courier with one instruction: Deliver it directly to Alessia Romano. No substitutions. No delays.

Then she returned to her private suite above the speakeasy, locking the door behind her.

For the first time in years, she allowed herself to hope.

To believe this might be the beginning of Dante's fall.

To imagine a world without his shadow.

She poured herself a drink, raised it to her lips...

And froze.

There-by the window. Movement.

She reached for her dagger, but a figure stepped from the shadows-tall, masked, deadly.

Before she could scream, a gloved hand clamped over her mouth.

"Should've stayed dead," the intruder growled in her ear.

She thrashed, kicked, bit-but it was no use. The world spun, darkness surged, and Catalina collapsed against the intruder's chest as everything went black.

Somewhere, far above the speakeasy, the envelope meant for Alessia Romano was intercepted by an unknown hand... and replaced with one that bore Dante's seal.