Vultures Prey

Some monsters are born.

Others are built.

Khadiza Aerostone Castellanos knows which one she is.

After surviving the deaths of her parents, enduring years of abuse in a foster home that hid behind white picket fences and perfect smiles, and committing an act that forever stained her hands with blood, thirteen-year-old Khadiza ran from the only world she had ever known.

She expected to die.

Instead, she found Rafe Castellanos.

The most feared Don in the criminal underworld should have killed the girl who pointed his own gun at him. Instead, he offered her something she had never possessed before:

A family.

Years later, Khadiza has become the Castellano Famiglia's deadliest weapon-a woman whose name is whispered through the underworld like a warning. She is loyal only to the family that chose her, merciless to those who threaten them, and utterly incapable of distinguishing vengeance from justice.

But when decades-old rivalries reignite, hidden betrayals fracture the Castellanos from within, and the heir to a rival empire forces his way into her life, Khadiza begins to question the one thing she has always believed.

Maybe blood doesn't make a family.

Maybe it only decides who betrays you first.

Because vultures don't wait for death.

They circle long before the first body falls.