Chapter One

Bane

“You’re telling me Vittorio Sorrenti’s daughter is wandering around my territory, and she’s still breathing?”

I thumb through the stack of threatening letters on my desk, and each one crumples a little more as I process what’s being said to me. My beta, Rook, stands rigid across the room, looking like he just chewed up an entire barbed wire fence and swallowed it whole.

“She is,” Rook’s jaw ticks like it always does when he has bad news. “She’s been in the city for a few days now. Our men spotted her on the east side, right near the docks.”

Great. Right in the heart of where I run every inch of this place.We practically have a Silver Howl flag waving on every rooftop over there. I drop the letters, lean back in the chair, and scrub my hand down on my face. "Did anyone have the bright idea to grab her and, I don’t know, deal with it?”

"She was surrounded." Rook crosses his arms deliberately. “Girl had two bodyguards, all firepower and attitude.”

“So? You’re a shifter who’s personally torn through townhouses for fun. You couldn’t knock out a couple of meatheads?

Rook scoffs, clearly unimpressed with my default sarcasm. “They weren’t human, Bane.”

I straighten in my chair. “What?”

“They were wolves.”

The minute the words leave his mouth, something tightens in the pit of my gut. Like a steel hook getting snagged into muscle and twisting deeper.Shifters? Near the docks? And they’re her bodyguards? Since when the hell was Vittorio working with wolves? The bastard hates our kind with venom. What’s changed?

“And it gets worse,” Rook brushes a piece of dust off my window ledge as though he’s just making friendly small talk and not feeding me a bite of apocalypse. “They had no pack scent.”

“What does that mean?”

“They weren’t tied to any existing pack around here. If they’re wolves brought in by the Sorrenti's themselves, it means either the scumbags have been turning rogues… or Sorrenti’s done some dirty deal for them. Either way, it’s a problem.”

A serious problem.My fists flex on my thighs. I don’t even realize I’m clenching them until I hear Rook clear his throat. He can feel the rumble of my wolf, riding just below the surface. It’s a predatory instinct, this need to protect my territory, my pack, from the slightest threat. And this daughter waltzing around under my nose with supernatural backupthat's not a fucking small threat.

Aria Sorrenti walked into my territory like she had some kind of diplomatic immunity card to wave in my face. Like her blood isn’t the only reason my men have graves. She’s living proof of why Vittorio Sorrenti deserves to bleed, thread by thread, for what he’s done.

“Where is she now?” Rook gestures vaguely toward the window. “According to intel, she’s near the old metallurgist factory off Fifth. It seems like she is poking her head around old territories her father used to use for smuggling.”

Old places her father used. Places I’ve already conquered. And she’s just… wandering around those ghosts like they still belong to her family?I don’t think so. "You think she’s here to run operations?"

Rook shrugs. “Could be sniffing around for information. Or she’s bait. With Sorrenti? It’s hard to say.”

“Bait…” I kick my chair back, standing abruptly. For a second, the sound of my heartbeat fills my ears, gone louder than anything else in my office.She’s bait, and I’m already taking it, aren’t I?

But here’s the thing. Vittorio Sorrenti crossed too many lines for this to be a wait-it-out situation.

Normally, I’d let her walk her pretty head right out of town and not blink twice. Except, I suddenly have this deep-seated urge to watch her.

“Send the scouts,” I say flatly. “Bring her in.”

Rook’s eyebrow twitches. “You sure?”

"I'm not playing games," I growl under my breath. "We bring her in. She’s a liability until I know what the hell she’s doing here."

Rook snatches his phone from his pocket and relays the orders without another word.

What are you really going to do with her?My wolf asks.

I don’t have an answer for that just yet.

But the idea of not knowing something, especially something tied directly to Vittorio, pisses me off enough to act now, and figure it out later."