Chapter 1- Rain, Blood, and Black Cars
Rain hammered against the windows hard enough to shake the glass.
I flinched anyway.
“Stop acting scared all the damn time,” my father snapped from the kitchen.
The smell of whiskey and cigarette smoke wrapped around the trailer like poison. I stood near the sink with my arms crossed tight over my chest, trying not to breathe too loudly. Trying not to exist too much.
That usually worked best.
“You hear me, Sophia?”
“Yes.”
Too soft.
The crash of a bottle against the wall made me jump. Glass exploded across the linoleum floor.
“Yes, sir,” I whispered quickly.
My little brother sat curled on the couch under a blanket, pretending to sleep. He’d learned young that pretending kept you alive longer in this house.
Dad staggered closer, boots crunching over broken glass. His eyes were bloodshot, face red with rage and alcohol.
“You think you’re too good for this family now?” he hissed.
“No.”
“You been sneaking around with boys?”
“No.”
His hand gripped my jaw so hard pain shot through my skull. “Then why the hell are men asking questions about you?”
My stomach dropped.
Questions?
Nobody asked about me.
Nobody cared enough to.
“I-I don’t know.”
But suddenly my mind flashed back two weeks earlier.
The black SUV parked across the street from the diner where I worked the late shift.
A man sitting inside it every Thursday night.
Watching.
At first I thought he was waiting for someone.
Then I realized he only appeared when I did.
He never came inside. Never spoke to me. Just sat there while rain slid across tinted windows.
The third week, I’d walked out after midnight with my paycheck stuffed in my apron pocket and found one of the cooks staring at me strangely.
“That guy keeps asking about you,” he’d muttered.
My blood had gone cold. “What guy?”
“The one outside. Big dude. Scar near his eye.”
I remembered forcing a laugh. “Probably a creep.”
But the cook had shaken his head slowly.
“Nah. Creeps look at girls like they wanna sleep with them.”
His expression had darkened.
“That man looked at you like he was deciding whether or not to kill somebody.”
After that, little things started happening.
A customer grabbed my wrist too hard one night and got dragged out of the diner before I could even react.
The landlord suddenly stopped threatening eviction over late rent.
Dad’s gambling debt collector disappeared after showing up at our trailer screaming three nights in a row.
I should’ve realized then.
Somebody had been cleaning up problems around me.
Watching me.
Choosing me.
“I said I DON’T KNOW!”
The slap came so fast my vision blurred sideways.
My brother whimpered from the couch.
“Shut him up,” Dad barked.
I stumbled backward, hand against my burning cheek, and hurried toward Grayson before things got worse. They could always get worse.
That was the terrifying part.
I knelt beside him, brushing curls from his forehead. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
A loud knock hit the trailer door.
Three sharp pounds.
Dad froze.
Another knock came, calmer this time. Controlled. Dangerous.
Every instinct in my body screamed.
Dad grabbed the pistol from the counter. “Stay here.”
He yanked open the front door.
And everything changed.
Three men stood outside dressed in black. Rain rolled off them in sheets. The one in the middle was massive—tall, broad shoulders, dark coat, black gloves.
But it was his eyes that made my breath catch.
Cold.
Not drunk cold.
Deadly cold.
My father lifted the gun instantly. “Who the hell are you?”
The tall man didn’t even glance at the weapon.
“Viktor Moretti,” he said calmly.
The name hit the room like a bomb.
Even my father paled.
I’d heard that name whispered before. Everybody had. The Moretti family owned half the city and buried the other half.
Mafia.
Real mafia.
Dad tried to straighten. “You got the wrong house.”
“I don’t think I do.”
Viktor’s gaze shifted past my father.
Straight to me.
My skin went ice cold.
And suddenly I understood.
The SUV.
The questions.
The feeling of being watched every time I walked home alone.
He had known where I lived the entire time.
My father laughed nervously. “Whatever debt you think—”
“She comes with us.”
Silence.
Then Dad actually smiled.
A horrible, greedy smile.
“How much?”
My stomach twisted.
No.
No no no.
Viktor didn’t answer immediately.
He simply studied my father with the same expression a king might give something rotting beneath his shoe.
“She wasn’t supposed to survive this long here,” he said quietly.
The room went still.
My father frowned. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
One of Viktor’s men shifted beside him. “Boss…”
But Viktor kept staring at me.
“She caught my attention six months ago,” he said. “Security footage from one of my clubs.”
I blinked in confusion.
I’d never been inside a club like his.
As if reading my mind, he continued.
“You were outside in the alley behind it. Feeding a stray dog from your own dinner.”
Memory slammed into me.
Freezing weather. My only meal from the diner wrapped in napkins. A starving black dog shaking beside a dumpster.
I’d fed him anyway.
Viktor’s voice lowered.
“You were hungry. Bruised. Exhausted. But you fed the animal before yourself.”
A strange heaviness settled in the air.
“You know what most people become after prolonged suffering?” he asked softly.
Nobody answered.
“Cruel.”
His eyes locked onto mine.
“You didn’t.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Why would a man like him notice something so small?
Why would he care?
Viktor stepped closer, his polished shoes crunching over broken glass.
“Then I had you looked into.”
Fear coiled in my stomach.
“You had me followed?”
“Yes.”
The honesty somehow terrified me more.
“I know your father gambles.” Another step. “I know he drinks away grocery money.” Another. “I know you hide bruises beneath long sleeves.” Another. “And I know you’ve been trying to save enough money to take your brother and run.”
My chest tightened painfully.
Nobody knew that.
Nobody.
My father’s face twisted with fury. “You spying bastard—”
“You should thank me,” Viktor interrupted coldly. “Because if another man in this city had noticed her first, she would already be dead.”
The room fell silent.
Viktor’s attention dropped briefly to the fading bruise near my collarbone peeking above my hoodie.
Something dangerous flickered in his eyes.
Not lust.
Violence.
Pure violence.
“One of my men asked why I cared,” he said softly.
His gaze lifted back to mine.
“I told him I didn’t.”
A beat of silence.
“Then I found myself checking reports about you every morning.”
My pulse stumbled.
Every morning?
“I knew what time your shifts ended. Which streets you avoided walking home. Which customers made you nervous.” His jaw tightened slightly. “I knew you kept a pocketknife in your apron and pretended not to cry in the employee bathroom.”
Heat flooded my face—not embarrassment.
Exposure.
Like this man had quietly stepped into every hidden corner of my miserable life without permission.
And somehow saw all the things nobody else ever noticed.
My father lifted the gun again. “Enough of this psycho shit.”
Viktor didn’t even look at him.
“She’s leaving.”
“You can’t just take my daughter.”
Viktor finally glanced at him.
The temperature in the trailer seemed to drop ten degrees.
“You sold that right the first time you hit her.”
Then he moved.
Fast.
Viktor took the pistol from Dad’s hand so quickly I barely saw him move.
A sickening crack echoed through the trailer.
My father screamed, collapsing to his knees clutching his wrist.
I gasped.
Viktor looked down at him like he was nothing.
“You raised a hand to something that belongs to me now.”
Belongs.
The word should’ve terrified me.
Instead, shamefully, horribly—
I felt safe.
My father wheezed on the floor. “Take her then!”
Grayson started crying.
“No.” I rushed toward the couch. “Please—please don’t leave him here.”
Viktor’s gaze shifted to my little brother.
For the first time, emotion flickered across his face.
Not softness.
Calculation.
He crouched in front of Grayson, who immediately shrank back.
Smart kid.
“What’s your name?” Viktor asked.
“…Grayson.”
“You hurt?”
Grayson shook his head too fast.
A lie.
Viktor noticed too.
His jaw tightened.
Then he stood and looked at one of his men. “Take the boy.”
Dad’s head snapped up. “Wait—”
“You sold one child,” Viktor said quietly. “You don’t get to keep the other.”
The room fell silent except for the storm outside.
I stared at him.
Nobody had ever stood up to my father.
Nobody.
Viktor looked at me again. “Get your coat.”
I should’ve run.
Should’ve screamed.
Should’ve fought.
Instead, my hands trembled as I grabbed my hoodie from the chair because somewhere deep down, beneath years of bruises and fear and exhaustion…
I knew staying here would kill me eventually.
Outside, the rain soaked through my shoes instantly. One of the black SUVs waited with headlights glowing through the storm.
Viktor opened the back door for me.
I hesitated.
“What are you going to do to me?”
He studied my face for a long moment. Not like a man looking at a woman.
Like a man examining damage.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
I touched my lip without realizing it.
“I asked you a question.”
“And I heard it.”
Lightning flashed across his face.
“You’ve spent so long surviving monsters,” Viktor said softly, “you don’t know what one actually looks like yet.”
Fear crawled down my spine.
I should’ve gotten back out of the car.
Instead, I climbed in.
And the devil shut the door behind me.
