GIANNA POV
The phone screen glows at 2:17 AM.
Sofia: finally escaping that boring funeral of a party?
Gianna wants to laugh but her jaw hurts from smiling at people who peaked in college. She types back while the FDR Drive unfolds empty and black beneath her headlights. The city asleep. The world soft and muted. Just how she likes it when nobody's watching.
Five minutes away. Never doing that again.
The alumni event was her father's idea. "Network," he'd said that morning, the word falling from his mouth like a command. Network, as if she were a business proposition instead of his daughter. As if she were supposed to care about connecting with people who would only see the DeLuca name and calculate what it was worth.
She'd worn the dress he'd approved. The shoes. The diamond that cost more than most people's cars. She'd smiled the way he'd taught her. Composed. Controlled. Invisible.
The music on her radio shifts from indie pop to jazz. Her chest tightens. She reaches for the dial to change it but her hands stay frozen on the wheel.
This is what boredom feels like when you're twenty-six years old and your entire life is a prison built from protection.
The highway is almost empty. She passes an 18-wheeler that rumbles past like a sleeping giant. Lights from distant buildings reflect off the water. She's done this drive a thousand times. Penthouse apartment to charity events to airports to family dinners to nowhere that matters.
Her father keeps her sheltered. Her father keeps her safe. Her father keeps her.
She's sick of being kept.
The car ahead slows. Then stops.
Gianna taps the brake. No traffic report. No accident notification on her phone. Just a sedan three car lengths ahead with its hazard lights off, stopped for no reason on an empty highway at 2 AM.
She checks her mirrors. The truck is gone. No other cars. Just her and whoever decided to park in the middle of the road.
She almost turns around.
The shadows move fast.
There's a moment where Gianna registers what's happening but her brain doesn't catch up. A figure appears at her driver's window. Then another. Then three more materializing from the dark like they were always there, waiting.
She slams on the accelerator.
Nothing.
The car doesn't move. The engine dies with a wheeze and then silence. Her fingers fly to the door lock. The button won't depress. She tries again. Again. The system is dead.
"No no no—"
The window explodes inward.
Her scream gets cut off by a hand on her throat that doesn't squeeze, just holds, just reminds her that she's not in control of anything. Not her car. Not her breath. Not this moment.
They pull her through the window frame. Glass catches the fabric of her dress, her skin. She feels blood but doesn't feel pain. Adrenaline is a strange drug. It makes everything hyper-clear. The efficiency of their movements. The way they don't speak. The way one man already has her wrists while another moves toward her legs.
This is planned.
This is practiced.
"Let me go," she says and her voice sounds like someone else's.
Nobody answers. There's no negotiation. No explanation. Just four men moving in coordinated silence while she thrashes against them and realizes with ice-cold certainty that thrashing doesn't matter.
They're bigger. Stronger. Prepared.
She is not.
They throw her toward the van and her hands catch the edge of the door. She tries to grip it, to pull away, but someone grabs her ankle and drags her inside. She lands hard on the metal floor. The wind gets knocked from her lungs.
The door slams closed.
Darkness.
Not just regular darkness. The kind that happens when they drop the hood over her head and pull it tight. She can't see her own hands. The material smells like rubber and someone else's sweat. Not hers. Not yet.
Her heart is screaming.
The van lurches forward and she slides across the floor. Her body hits the side panel. Pain registers somewhere far away. She tries to find her breath but her lungs won't cooperate. Is this what panic feels like? This spiraling, drowning sensation where she can't tell if she's actually screaming or if it's just happening in her head?
They don't restrain her. They don't speak. The van moves through the city and she counts the turns trying to track where they're going. Left. Right. Left. Some instinct she didn't know she had is cataloging information. She remembers something her father said once during a phone call she wasn't supposed to be listening to. Memorize. Never trust you'll get out unless you remember how to get back in.
The van stops.
Hands grab her. They're not rough now. Just efficient. They walk her forward and down. Down. Down. The air gets colder. Damper. They smell concrete and something metallic. Blood maybe. Or just old water.
A basement.
Her brain screams at her to fight now while they're moving her. This is the moment. This is when heroes in movies make their move.
But she's not in a movie.
And she's not brave like that.
The hood rips off.
Her eyes adjust to fluorescent lighting that feels like staring into the sun. She squints. Everything is white and painful. The basement is bare. Concrete walls. A single metal chair. And sitting in that chair, waiting like he's been there the whole time, is a man in an expensive suit.
He's young. Too young for someone running an empire. Maybe early thirties. Dark eyes. The kind of handsome that makes people forget to be afraid for half a second. She's seen his photograph before. Her father kept them hidden in the study. Photos of his enemy.
Matteo Corsini.
He looks at her the way someone might look at a chess piece before moving it across the board. Clinical. Detached. Evaluating.
"Sit," he says.
His voice is quiet. Just one word. But every man in the room moves to obey him. The violence in that voice isn't shouting or threats. It's just a fact. He speaks and the world rearranges itself around what he wants.
She sits.
Gianna's legs are shaking so hard she can barely stand but when she lowers herself into the chair, she keeps her spine straight. She doesn't know why. Maybe because her father taught her that appearing weak gets you killed. Maybe because the fear is so complete that there's no point in hiding it so she might as well hide her fear instead.
Matteo Corsini steps closer. He's close enough that she can smell his cologne. Something expensive. Something that shouldn't exist in a basement that smells like concrete and metal and her own terror.
"Your father violated an agreement," he says. "People died. That was a mistake."
She doesn't respond.
"He has seventy-two hours to restore the territories he took. If he doesn't, you die. It's not personal. It's business."
The words are casual. Like he's explaining a restaurant reservation instead of her execution.
He waits for her reaction. She realizes he's waiting for tears. For begging. For the performance of a hostage breaking apart.
So she doesn't cry.
Instead she looks directly at him and says the first true thing that comes to her mind.
"If you were going to kill me, you would have done it already."
Something flickers behind his eyes.
"So let's skip the threats and talk about what you actually want."
The silence that follows is louder than any scream. The men around her stop moving. Stop breathing. Matteo Corsini stares at her like she's just said something impossible.
Like she's just changed everything.
His mouth curves into something that might be a smile. Might be something darker.
"Interesting," he says.
And in that single word, Gianna understands that she's just made the biggest mistake of her life.
Or the best move.
She has no way of knowing which.