Chapter 1: The Ghost in Heels
POV: Serena
The marble walls of the courtroom echoed with a profound, almost sacred silence, yet with a heavy and reverent silence, like that of a grand cathedral. And with a final, resounding thud, the judge’s gavel came down, sealing the moment with irrevocable authority.
The case was dismissed with little more than a cursory glance, ignored, downplayed, and swept aside as though it barely mattered.
Gasps rippled across the benches behind me. Then came the fury of reporters scrambling for their equipment, the prosecution trembling in disbelief, and family members cursing under their breath, as if their whispered rage could somehow undo what I had just done.
Another monster, unshackled by the very system meant to contain him, now walked free, shielded by loopholes, protected by power, and loosed back into a world that had already suffered enough.
Flashback *** I gathered my files with practiced calm, but inside something shifted—a quiet erosion. This was not the first time I had walked a client out of a fire. But today, it felt less like a victory and more like complicity.
As I stepped into the corridor, the chaos dulled behind the heavy courtroom doors. I exhaled slowly, already rehearsing the statements I would give to the press. But then her voice came back to me.
“Promise me you’ll fight for the ones who don’t have anyone else.”
My mother was whispering through cracked lips in a hospital bed, worn thin by bills we couldn’t afford and justice we never got. She had believed in the law and believed that if you worked hard, kept your hands clean, and stayed honest, the system would protect you. She died before I learned that the law doesn’t reward belief; rather, it rewards leverage.
I had entered this profession with fire in my chest. I had wanted to be the exception. Now, years later, I had become exactly what she feared: an advocate for the powerful, fluent in the language of loopholes and leverage.
Another win on paper, at least. Another notch in the firm’s record, another reason for a congratulatory email from partners who’d never step foot in the courtroom. But behind the polished surface, it didn’t feel like triumph. It felt transactional.
Only the silence in my chest—the sealed chamber where other people kept their morality.
Outside, the press swarmed like flies buzzing with questions, flashing cameras, hungry for a quote, a reaction, anything that could feed tomorrow’s headlines.
They pressed in, recording devices like weapons, eyes gleaming with anticipation as if truth could be captured in a soundbite.
“Serena Ricci, do you regret defending Lorenzo Gallo?”
I paused just briefly, but long enough for the cameras to catch it. That half-second of hesitation they'd stretch into headlines: "Ricci Shows Doubt,” “Defense Cracks," and "Gallo’s Lawyer Blinks."
I adjusted my coat, tightened my grip on the folder in my hand, and looked past the reporter without answering.
“Did you know he ordered the hit on the D’Amico twins?”
The question hit harder than it should have.
I didn’t flinch as the microphones and camera lights blinded me. I smiled faintly, as if they amused me.
“I don’t believe in guilt,” I said. “I believe in evidence. And today, there wasn’t enough.”
The headlines would write themselves:
THE DEVIL’S LAWYER WINS AGAIN.
RICCI GETS MAFIA CLIENT OFF MURDER CHARGES.
I walked away, the sound of my heels echoing against the granite steps like gunshots. Clean. Measured. Cold.
The underground storage was darker than usual. A low hum buzzed from the exposed pipes overhead as I pressed the key fob. My Porsche chirped obediently. The motion-activated lights.
That was when I saw it, not a headline. Not a camera, just her face. The mother is still there.
An envelope, thick and matte black, was tucked below the windshield wiper. My name is written in crimson ink.
SERENA.
I looked around at nothing, no footsteps or cameras. I opened the envelope carefully, and inside it was a grainy, dimly lit photograph, not in court and also not in a suit.
And that was me three years ago in court, cross-examining a witness in a double homicide case. Once I had buried the man on trial, I walked free, but this photo wasn’t just an archive.
The angle was taken from the private jury box. A seat no one had access to but me and court security.
Immediately, I double-checked the locks on my car door before sliding behind the wheel.
Keys in the ignition, one breath and then another with eyes on the mirror.
I turned it over and found another image. The paper stuck for a second, like it didn’t want to be seen. My apartment was last week.
Me, through the window captured from the street, just high enough to see past the curtains I always thought were thick enough.
My fingers trembled, but I locked it down. After that, I slipped behind the wheel and headed to the rooftop bar that sat like a tumbler crown over Naples, glittering and remote. I ordered a neat bourbon and allowed the burn to settle deep in my gut.
But the bourbon brought memories. Not all at once, just in flickers.
A man in a charcoal suit slid into the stool beside me. “You drink like a woman who just won something big.”
I offered him a glance with a flick of disinterest, calculated and sharp enough to acknowledge him but not enough to invite him in.
“I don’t win,” I said. “I erase.”
He laughed. “That sounds dangerous. Truth, consequence, doubt—that’s what I was trained to do: scrub the story clean until only the version that serves remains.
“You have no idea.”
He was attractive. His cologne was clean and expensive, and for a moment, I wanted to say yes… yes to the feeling of warmth, of weight, of a man pinning me down and making me forget the nothingness in my chest.
I let him think he might take me home. Then I whispered, “You bore me,” and walked away.
The rain started as I missed the exit. One incorrect turn, and the sky cracked open and love became punishing me.
My GPS chimed in with its regular chipper tone, looking to reroute me, and I found it irresistible that it wasn’t leading me deeper into the veins of a doomed town.
The new path twisted through the underbelly of old Naples, part of the metropolis vacationers never saw and locals pretended didn’t exist.
I turned a tight corner and slammed the brakes so hard the seatbelt carved into my collarbone.
I saw three men dragging a fourth, who didn’t look like he had much fight left in him.
Blood smeared the man's mouth, lips split and trembling. His face was a map of bruises, swollen and broken. His shirt clung to his body, soaked and torn, clinging like a second skin.
Then another man appeared, taller, broader, the one who didn't do the dragging. He opened a pair of rusted chapel doors and gestured inside without a word.
A chapel, tucked between crumbling warehouses and the rotting ribs of forgotten industry.
I should have hit the reverse; I should’ve shut my eyes and kept driving, but I didn’t.
Instead, I turned off my headlights. Let the engine idle and inch forward. Closer. Slower.
Through the shards of stained glass, what was left of it, I watched. The chapel wasn’t a chapel; it was a tomb or a stage.
It was just ropes and chains and no pews. He was tied to a post. The man standing in front of him wasn’t angry; he didn’t pace or even yell.
His face was sculpted in sharp, merciless angles, cold and focused. Beautiful in the way icebergs are majestic and deadly.
Adrian De Luca.
I knew his name. Everyone in Naples did. The heir to the De Luca empire. Whispers surrounding him are brutal.
The tied man sobbed, not loud, just a cracked sound leaking through clenched teeth.
His shoulders shook, his head bowed low as if the shame weighed more than the rope and I was just there watching them.
Adrian raised his gun and pulled the trigger without flinching, no warning, no pause and just purpose.
The sound cracked through the chapel, final and clean. It echoed off the marble-like judgment, then faded into a silence that felt deliberate. Nothing moved, not even time.
I gasped a breath I didn’t mean to take, sharp and audible. The kind that gives you away.
His head snapped toward me, eyes locked, no words. Just that split second where everything froze and I knew he hadn’t realized I was still there.
And just like that, I wasn’t invisible anymore.
We locked eyes for one electrified heartbeat, mine stuttering, his steady. Like he already knew who I was, lightning tore through the clouds overhead.
My chest was a drumline, beating too fast, too loud. I told myself he wouldn’t follow. He had a body to burn, a message to send, and a loose end to tie with wire and fire.
By the time I reached my building, the city lights were a blur through the downpour. I didn’t use the front entrance.
It is too exposed and obvious, so I cut through the alley, punched in my code, and slipped through the rear door like I’d rehearsed it a hundred times.
On unlocking my stairwell apartment, I passed four flights, skipping steps, two locks, and a fingerprint scanner. The door clicked shut behind me with a sound that usually brought comfort. But tonight, it sounded like a lie.
That word, “safe,”
Whispered by habit, not belief.
It used to mean locked doors, warm light, and familiar silence.
Now it meant to survive.
I poured a bourbon. A heavy one. My fingers trembled against the glass, ice clinking like nervous teeth. I tried to tell myself I was overreacting.
But then I felt it, not a hand, not breath, but something quieter.
Presence, not movement, not sound. Just the undeniable sense of someone else in the room.
Thick and electric, like a storm holding its breath.
Even before he spoke, I felt him before the footsteps, before the shadow and before the lie.
I turned and there he was, sitting in my velvet chair like it belonged to him. One arm draped over the back, legs spread like a king on his throne. Drenched from the storm.
Rain dripped from his coat onto my hardwood floor. A scar split the skin across his right knuckles, jagged, white, and old. His eyes didn’t blink. His breathing was too steady.
“Adrian De Luca,” the man I watched execute someone, did it like it was a morning ritual. The man Naples feared behind closed doors is now sitting in my living room watching me, like he'd always known I'd be here.
I didn’t scream; I didn’t move.
He spoke, his voice low and smooth, like silk pulled over broken glass. “Your locks are impressive,” he said. “But you shouldn’t have stopped to watch.” I swallowed, but nothing went down.
He stood slowly with premeditated intention, like violence carved into a man’s shape. Every step was soundless, but the air around him shifted, charged, heavy, and electric with something primal and patient. A lion who had already tasted blood.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said.
“Liar.”
The word left my mouth before I could stop it. His gaze moved over me. The way a predator sizes up a doe limping too close to the tree line.
“I should disappear you,” he said.
“Then do it.” My voice cracked like ice. “Or leave.”
He smiled with one side of his mouth curled, like I had just passed some unspoken test.
“You saw too much,” he murmured, stepping closer and stopping inches from me. The scent of rain and cold steel and something darker clung to him: gunpowder and sin.
Adrian whispered, “Now, you belong to me.”