CHAPTER ONE – THE ORDER

"You don't send a man like me to clean up a mess, Papa. You send me to bury it."

Marcos De Luca stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of the penthouse, a glass of neat scotch untouched in his hand. Below, the city stretched out like a glittering lie-glass towers and blinking lights trying to hide what everyone knew but never said aloud: that the De Luca family owned half of it, and fear owned the other half.

His father didn't flinch. Didn't even blink.

Alessandro De Luca, the old lion of the family empire, sat behind a black marble desk, his fingers steepled, expression unreadable. The man could order a massacre and sip espresso in the same breath. He looked at Marcos like one looks at a sword. Cold. Sharp. Purposeful.

"A journalist has been asking questions about the shipping docks. She's getting too close."

"Then pay her off," Marcos said, shrugging. "Isn't that how we keep things quiet?"

"Tried."

"Blackmail?"

"She doesn't scare easy."I haven't see anyone bold,fearless, bold and has features of a lion",Alessandro De Luca said.

Marcos finally turned around, his jaw ticking. "So what? You want me to kill a woman because she's doing her job?"

"I want you to do yours," Alessandro said simply.

There it was.

No emotion. No morality. Just business.

Marcos downed the scotch in one swallow. It burned-but not nearly enough.

"Name?"

"Vanessa Maren."

The name sounded familiar.

Alessandro continued, "She was writing a fluff piece on a politician, then started poking around the docks. Her sister was involved with someone who used to work for us. Girl got herself killed two years ago-wrong place, wrong time."

"The sister?" Marcos asked.

"Murder. Stabbed. Unsolved."

"And Vanessa thinks we did it?"

"Doesn't matter what she thinks. If she publishes anything, we have a thousand questions to answer."

Marcos didn't speak for a long time. His father's office, all glass and steel, was silent except for the distant thrum of traffic far below.

He wasn't new to this. Marcos had cleaned up the family's messes since he was seventeen. Laundering money. Threatening informants. Breaking fingers and making bodies disappear. But something about this felt different.

Maybe it was the name.

Maybe it was the growing nausea in his gut.

"I'll handle it," he said at last.

Alessandro smiled-not warmly. "I knew you would."

Marcos started working on her daily activities,how to look for her ,workplace and all

It took less than three hours to find her.

Vanessa Maren lived in a cramped, crumbling apartment on the city's edge-the kind of place with flickering hallway lights and neighbors who minded their own business to survive. Marcos didn't knock. He waited outside in his black SUV as she exited the building mid-afternoon, clutching a worn leather satchel and wearing grief like a second skin.

She wasn't what he expected.

She wasn't glamorous, powerful, or cocky like the journalists who hounded politicians,like his father described her . She looked... exhausted. Dark circles under her eyes. Hair pulled into a careless bun. Clothes wrinkled and clean but cheap. She walked with a kind of limp sadness, like every step cost her something.

Marcos smirk in disappointment so this is the threat? he thought.

She didn't hail a cab. She walked-six blocks, alone, in July heat. Marcos tailed her at a distance, growing more curious than cautious. Eventually, she turned into a cemetery.

He parked, then followed on foot.

From behind a maple tree, he watched as Vanessa knelt at a grave. Her fingers brushed the name carved into the stone. Mia Maren.

Her sister.

Vanessa didn't cry.

She just sat there. Silent. Still. Hands folded like she didn't know what else to do.

Then-very softly-she started talking to the grave.

"They still haven't called. I left another message. Maybe he doesn't exist. Maybe I'm wrong and you just... got unlucky."

A bitter laugh.

"But you didn't get mugged, did you? You were meeting someone. That's what you said in your last message. I played it thirty times."

Marcos frowned.

She pulled out a battered phone and hit play. A voicemail. He could barely hear it, but he caught the fragments.

"Mia here. Heading out. If I'm not back by ten, start worrying."

Vanessa paused the message.

Then whispered, "I started worrying. You never came back. I'm lonely Mia ,I'm tired .i don't know what to do anymore,just know I missed you"

Marcos stepped back, the weight of the moment landing like a punch. He wasn't here to kill her. He was here to decide whether she deserved to be silenced.

And suddenly, he wasn't sure anymore.

Later that evening, he returned to his apartment-luxury, cold, spotless. He poured himself another drink and stood by the window.

Vanessa Maren wasn't a problem to solve.

She was a woman in pain.

She was grieving her death sister.

A woman who had no idea she was dancing on the edge of a blade.

I could walk away, Marcos thought.

But then he remembered her voice. The voicemail. The cracked way she said "You never came back."

"What is wrong with me?" he said to himself ,unlike me,why am I starting to doubt myself ? All I need is to get the job done ......that's all

He picked up his burner phone and dialed a number only two people had access to.

A voice answered. "Report."

"I found her," Marcos said.

"Handled?"

"Not yet."

A pause.

"You know the rules, De Luca."

"I'm aware,don't worry I will do the needful I got this "

"Clock's ticking."

The line went dead.

Marcos stared out the window, hands clenched,goes into a deep thought on how to go about it .

Vanessa Maren didn't know it yet, but her sister's murder wasn't the end of the story.

It was the beginning, which might go leads to her on death