Total pages in book: 42
Estimated words: 38942 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 195(@200wpm)___ 156(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38942 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 195(@200wpm)___ 156(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
KLEAH
I built a quiet life far from the world of power and violence. Then a dangerous stranger appears with impossible news—I'm the secret sister of a vanished crime lord, and now his enemies want me dead.
Gabriele Bronzetti offers protection the only way he marriage. His name, his power, his ring on my finger.
I accept with one he doesn't touch me unless I ask.
I never expected to want to ask.
GABRIELE
I made a promise to protect what Viktor Biancardi valued most—his hidden sister.
She lives in light while I exist in shadow. She deserves better than being dragged into my world of power plays and vendettas.
But as threats circle closer, I find myself willing to burn cities to ash to keep her safe. What began as obligation has become possession—and I protect what's mine.
* No cliffhangers. No cheating. HEA guaranteed.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
THE AIR FELT DIFFERENT at three in the morning—denser somehow, like the darkness itself had weight. The woman's fingers moved across her keyboard with practiced precision, her face illuminated only by the blue glow of her monitor. Behind her, the venetian blinds cast prison-bar shadows across her apartment walls.
She'd been scanning the dark web for hours, running automatic alerts tied to specific encryption patterns—the digital fingerprints of Viktor Biancardi. The man was a ghost, practically a myth in certain circles—brilliant, brutal, and now gone without a trace. But she remained vigilant, honoring the debt she owed him. A debt of blood.
Her screen suddenly flashed, and her body went rigid.
Someone had breached the protected servers. Someone had found what Viktor had spent a fortune to hide.
"No," she whispered, fingers flying across the keyboard as she tracked the leak to its source.
There it was. DNA records. Medical reports. Birth certificates. All uploaded less than thirty minutes ago to a hidden forum frequented by information brokers, mercenaries, and killers.
"Kleah Martell," she whispered, the name heavy on her tongue.
The screen showed a woman with soft eyes and gentle hands that worked with wax and fire. A craftsman. An artist. Viktor's secret half-sister—the one he'd protected from afar, never revealing himself to her.
She studied the DNA marker that matched Viktor Biancardi's paternal line with 99.8% certainty, now exposed for anyone with the right connections to find.
The woman leaned back, her face grim. This wasn't just information. This was a death sentence in a world where bloodlines determined who lived and who disappeared. She needed to act fast.
She couldn't remove the leak—it had already been downloaded seventeen times by users with masked IPs. But she could fulfill her promise to Viktor. She could contact the one person he'd trusted to protect his sister if anything ever happened.
With determined keystrokes, she began composing a letter.
AT 5:47 AM, SHE SLIPPED into a post office near the waterfront, wearing oversized sunglasses despite the early hour darkness. The small package in her hands felt heavier than it should, weighted with consequence.
Inside was a single letter, sealed with red wax—old-fashioned, perhaps, but appropriate given the contents. No return address. Just a name scrawled in precise handwriting:
*Gabriele Bronzetti*
She knew his villa overlooked the Mediterranean on one side and the mountains on the other. She knew he'd left the family business—officially, at least—three years ago. And most importantly of all, she knew he was the one Viktor had chosen, and this, the reason why a blood debt must be collected.
The woman dropped the package into the outgoing mail slot and walked away without looking back. Some debts required payment. Some secrets demanded witnesses.
ACROSS THE ATLANTIC, in a Manhattan penthouse that took up the entire fifty-second floor of a steel and glass monument to wealth, another woman set down her phone with trembling hands.
Valentina Biancardi—sister to Viktor's father, keeper of the family fortune since her nephew's unexplained absence—stared out at the skyline with hard eyes.
"You're certain?" she asked, not bothering to turn toward the man who stood in the shadows behind her.
"The DNA report is authentic," he confirmed. "Some hacker put it on the dark web three hours ago. It's been viewed seventeen times already."
Valentina's manicured nails tapped against the marble countertop, the rhythm steady as a ticking clock. For thirty years, she had maintained control of the Biancardi empire through a delicate balance of fear, respect, and carefully placed bullets.
"A sister," she said, the word acid on her tongue. "A legitimate half-sister."
The implications hung in the air between them. If Kleah Martell was recognized as Viktor's blood—if she could lay claim to even a fraction of the Biancardi holdings—the power Valentina had cultivated for decades would crumble beneath her Louboutins.
"Find her," Valentina said, voice dropping to something barely above a whisper. "Make it look like an accident." She picked up her glass of red wine, swirling it gently before taking a slow sip. Blood-red liquid caught the light as it moved. Family. Such an inconvenient thing when it involved sharing.
THE VILLA WAS QUIET when the mail arrived, filtered sunlight spilling across terracotta tiles. The housekeeper placed the day's correspondence on the antique desk in Gabriele Bronzetti's study, pausing only briefly at the unmarked envelope with its peculiar red seal.
It sat there, waiting. Innocent as a blade before it cuts.
Some debts are repaid in blood. This one ends in fire.
Chapter One
KLEAH
THE SCENT OF MELTING wax fills my little shop, warm and comforting like a childhood memory. I inhale deeply, letting the familiar notes of honey and cedar ground me as I work. Some people have coffee to start their day. I have this—the ritual of heating my tools, selecting the perfect wax blend, waiting for that precise moment when everything reaches the ideal temperature.
Too cold and the wax cracks. Too hot and it loses definition.