Prologue
“Let us go!” Vivienne shouted, pulling Elijah behind her. Gunshots split the storm outside, thunder echoing their violence. Her cries were silenced, replaced by trembling sobs of a child too young to understand.
Exoielle’s tiny hand shook as she touched her mother’s body, warm blood staining her palms.
“Vivienne! No!” A man’s voice thundered through the chaos. He dropped on his knees, clutching Vivienne and desperately reached for Elijah’s hand. The room spun with grief, broken only by the wail of sirens.
Blue lights flooded the doorway. Police stormed inside, guns raised, voices sharp. The man has no strength to resist, but keeps on calling Elijah and Vivienne’s names until his throat is raw.
Beside her, Exoielle’s father, Leo, sobbing, “He killed them… he killed Vivienne, my woman. He killed Elijah, my son. A child, murdered… by the Astorias. They’re ruthless.”
Exoielle clung to him, her tears mixing with his. She didn’t yet understand loss, but she understood the name.
The Astorias.
It was the name that stole her mother. The name that buried her brother. The name her father whispered with grief until it became her own.
But, she did not yet know that one day, fate would bring an Astoria back into her life — not as her enemy, but as her heart’s greatest threat.
