The city woke slowly after the storm.

Glass glittered in the streets like fallen stars, and the scent of rain still clung to the air — clean, deceptive, almost too peaceful. The world didn’t know what it had survived last night.

But Lucia did.

From her balcony, high above the wet skyline, she watched the sunrise through a thin veil of smoke curling from her cigarette. She wasn’t a woman easily undone, yet there was a tremor in her fingers — one she disguised with elegance.

Beneath her silk robe, faint bruises marked her ribs where Dante’s men had nearly cornered her. Nearly. She smiled at the memory. They had...