I didn't exactly choose to be stolen at four years old.
But the French underworld isn't big on consent.
One minute I was Donatella Acardi, Mafia royalty. The next? Just another stolen kid bleeding in someone else's basement.
That's where I met Ami...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Donatella POV:
We were dressed head to toe in black—nothing flashy, just the usual ninja-assassin gear we’d perfected over years of breaking and entering. Tight pants, fitted shirts, gloves, boots with soft soles, and definitely not those damn balaclavas that made me feel like I was auditioning for a cheap spy movie. Amir looked at me with that smirk, half amused, half irritated.
“You ready to sneak into your psycho brother’s lair without getting fried, electrocuted, or sliced in half?”
I rolled my eyes. “Born ready. Let’s do this.”
The castle was silent except for the crunch of our footsteps on the gravel path. The moon was hidden behind thick clouds, making the night perfect for a covert operation—except for one thing: the damn security cameras. Amir pulled out a small device that looked like a cross between a drone and a remote, aimed it at the cameras by the front entrance, and suddenly the feeds went blank. “Now you see me, now you don’t.”
I snorted. “Nice.”
We slipped past the main gates and headed for Leonardo’s private wing—his “office,” as everyone called it. I wasn’t fooled. It was probably a fortress with a couple dozen ways to kill an intruder. We reached the door, and Amir immediately crouched, scanning for traps. His fingers moved expertly along the edges, checking for pressure plates and laser tripwires.
“Standard maglock here,” he said. “No trick wiring.”
I stepped forward, pulling the USB drive from my pocket. The little worm was ready to burrow into the system and open the lock from the inside. Plug it in, wait for the code to override, and boom -the door swings open.
Only... nothing happened.
I stared at the screen. No green light, no beep, just silence. I glanced up at Amir. His face was tight with concentration.
"Something's wrong," he muttered. "This thing's fighting back."
I swore under my breath, fingers twitching. "Shit. The bastard's got a firewall in place. A damn good one."
Amir tapped on the device again, trying to force it. I reached into my jacket for a backup plan- because of course I had a backup plan. Pulling out a thin wire, I slipped it into the lock's tiny opening, feeling the tumblers click under my touch like a piano being played by a ghost.
Minutes passed like hours. I held my breath, twisting and coaxing the lock while Amir watched the screen, hacking furiously in the background. Sweat dripped down my temple. My hands were steady but my heart pounded so loud I thought it
might give us away.
"Got it!" Amir finally hissed, and at the exact moment I heard the tumblers fall into place-the softest click of the lock releasing-the door started to creak open.
"Okay," I whispered, gripping my knife tighter. "This is it."
The silence swallowed us whole as we waited for whatever was on the other side to reveal itself.
