Heartbeat in the Crossfire

AMARA

The photos haunt me long after the lights of the club fade into the dark.

I sit on the edge of the bed Moretti had given me. Expensive sheets, shadows bleeding through the half-closed blinds. The photos sit on the nightstand, taunting me. I hadn't even tried to sleep. How could I?

My father. Moretti's father. Side by side in crisp suits, smiling like the world was theirs to carve apart.

What the hell have I walked into?

No matter how I tried to shove it down, the memory and the fear, the brittle shreds of trust I'd started to let in...my mind kept looping back to the same brutal truth.

I don't know who I'm fighting for.

And I don't know if Dante Moretti has been lying to me since the moment I walked through his door. He lied to me all those years ago. Our fathers knew each other, and he never mentioned it.

But there's one thing I do know. Something my father taught me long before the Valenti name became a curse: In this world, you don't break. You don't beg. You wear the mask until it becomes your skin.

By the time a sharp knock sounded on the door, I'd put the photos back where I found them, smoothed the sheets, and fixed my face into something cold and unbothered. A mask made of steel and spite.

The door creaks open.

Luca steps in, gives me a nod. "Boss wants you. War room."

My lips twitch into the faintest hint of a smile, polished and untouchable. "Lead the way."

I don't flinch when we pass bloodstains in the hall. I don't look back.

The 'war room' wasn't what I expected.

No long mahogany table. No sleek tech. Just a wide back office with bare walls, battered chairs, and a scattering of maps, phones, and printed photos littering the surfaces. The smell of gun oil clings to the air.

Moretti stands at the head of the mess, arms crossed, dark eyes pinned to a map. Five of his men flanked him. Luca, Marco, and others whose names I haven't caught yet.

And now me.

I take my place near the door, my back straight and my face unreadable. Every eye cuts to me. Marco sneers openly. Whatever. He doesn't have to like me. He just has to do his job.

Moretti speaks without looking at me. "We have partial camera footage and three separate sightings within the last twenty-four hours. Luca?"

"She's ex-Stonemont cartel. Did time in Juarez. She's not a shooter," Luca says, "but she's smart. And careful. She doesn't leave a trail unless she wants to be found."

"Which means," Moretti murmurs, "this was deliberate."

"She's bait," I say softly before I can stop myself.

Eyes swing my way.

I lift my chin. "The courier, the watch, the signature. It's too messy. Black Scythe doesn't make mistakes unless they want us chasing shadows."

Marco scoffs. "And I'm supposed to take your word for it?"

"Maybe not," I reply coldly. "But if this was about killing me, I'd already be dead. It's about drawing us out. They want us chasing the wrong thing while they move on something bigger."

A pause.

Then, to my surprise, Moretti nods. "She's right."

The words dropped like stones in the silence.

"Luca," he orders. "Double our surveillance on the Vargas leads, but pull back our visible presence. Quiet eyes only. Marco, take the safehouses offline. We're not handing them soft targets."

"What about me?" I ask, meeting his gaze.

A flicker of something unreadable passes through his expression. "You stay in it," he says at last. "We do this together."

For the first time, the room shifts. Not warm. Not friendly. But something like respect. Or at least the start of it.

The streets of the city bleed silver under the streetlights as Moretti's black SUV pulls to a slow stop near the docks. One of the last places Isobel Vargas had allegedly been spotted.

I sit in the passenger seat, my hands resting carefully on my lap. My mind is a tangle of strategy and suspicion. The photos of my father feel like a lead weight in my chest, but I force the memory down, burying it beneath the sharper edge of survival.

"This is reckless," I mutter as Moretti cuts off the engine.

"Welcome to my world," he says flatly, adjusting the cuffs of his dark jacket. "If Vargas is setting a trap, we won't walk straight into it."

"Right," I muse. "We'll just circle it, flirt with it a little, see if it flinches."

His mouth twitches into the ghost of a smile, making my heart race for reasons that have nothing to do with fear. "Something like that," he says.

We move together. Him with lethal precision, and me with careful steps. Our shoulders brush once in the dark, a flash of heat in the cold air, and for a breathless second, I'm not sure which danger is worse. The gunfire or him.

The warehouse is dark, the door slightly ajar. Every instinct in my body screams wrong.

Inside, we find nothing. No Vargas. No brother. Just an old wooden chair, a fresh cigarette still burning in an ashtray. A small velvet box resting dead center on the floor.

Moretti's hand shoots out when I move, stopping me mid-step. "Don't," he says sharply.

One of his men approaches, scanning for wires. None.

Moretti crouches, flipping open the box with gloved fingers.

In the box is a silver cufflink.

My breath catches. Lorenzo's. I've seen that same cufflink a million times. It has his initials etched into the surface. My dad bought them for him when he turned eighteen, and he wore them with every single suit.

My stomach turns cold. "It's his," I whisper.

Before Moretti can respond, a sharp clack splits the air. Glass shatters somewhere nearby. A warning shot.

Moretti is on me instantly, dragging me down behind a rusted crate as two more cracks ring out. Suppressed fire. Close.

"Stay down," Moretti growls, already signaling to his men. Calm, lethal, controlled.

My pulse roars in my ears as the first real bullets of this twisted game start to fly.

The gunfire stops as quickly as it started.

By the time Moretti's men clear the perimeter, the shooters are gone. Ghosts in the night. No bodies. No footprints. Just the lingering scent of gunpowder and the cold echo of the shots still ringing in my bones.

I stay low until Moretti's hand catches my wrist, steady and firm, pulling me to my feet. His touch burns through the adrenaline still thrumming beneath my skin. For one dizzy heartbeat, I don't pull away. His fingers linger half a second too long before he lets go.

"You good?" he asks, his voice low.

I nod sharply. "I'm not made of glass."

His eyes flicker over my face as if weighing the truth of it before he releases me. "This wasn't a hit," he murmurs. "It was a message."

I look down at the cufflink still clutched in his gloved hand. The silver glints under the cracked warehouse lights, delicate and cruel.

"A message saying what?" I ask tightly. "That my brother's alive? That they've got him? Or that he's already dead?"

"That they're watching," he says quietly. "And they knew we'd come here."

A chill creeps down my spine.

We drive back to the club in tense silence, the city blurring past in shadows and broken neon. By the time we reach the club, I feel the weight of exhaustion and disappointment pressing behind my eyes. But my body is still wired with unease.

Moretti dismisses the others once we're inside, but I catch Marco's lingering eyes. Still suspicious. Still waiting for me to slip. I don't.

When the door to Moretti's office finally clicks shut behind us, I speak.

"They're not going to stop," I say flatly. "They know I'm back. They're using him to pull me in deeper."

He holds my gaze. "Then you stay where you're safest," he says. "With me."

The words hum between us, low and dangerous, thick with something unspoken. His voice is calm, but his eyes...those dark, unreadable eyes...don't waver from mine.

The words shouldn't shake me. But they do.

Because for a brief, terrifying moment, I want to believe him.

I can't sleep. Again.

Even back in my bedroom, with the door locked and my back to the wall, my mind won't shut down. The cufflink haunts me...the weight of it, the impossible hope buried in my chest, and the unspoken things in Moretti's voice when he said: Stay where you're safest. With me.

I don't know how much time has passed before the knock came.

Three sharp raps. Urgent.

I was already on my feet when one of Moretti's men, a younger one I barely recognize, opens the door, breath short, face pale.

"Boss needs you. Now."

My pulse spikes. "What happened?"

He doesn't answer. He doesn't have to.

The club is eerily quiet when I reach the ground floor. Moretti stands near the entrance, his face carved in stone. Marco and two others flank him. The air smells sharp. Metallic.

It takes me half a second to see it. A small black box, no bigger than a jewelry case, sits on the marble floor. Right in front of the club's main doors.

Why is it always a fucking box?

Moretti's eyes cut to me. "It's for you."

My stomach drops. One of the men kneels, scanning the box for wires. Nothing.

I move closer, but Moretti holds out an arm, silent, protective, until the all-clear is given. Then with two gloved fingers, he lifts the lid.

The world narrows.

Inside, laid out with a sickening precision, was a single severed finger. Roughly cut, fresh, the nail still intact.

My breath catches. For one long, shattering second, my knees nearly give out.

A tiny scrap of paper was folded beneath the finger.

Move one more piece, and he bleeds.

The room sways. My heart thuds against my ribs, my vision swimming. And in the deafening silence, I feel it.

This isn't just a message.

It's a declaration of war.