Kidnapping the Assassin: The Mafia Don’s Fatal Mistake

The Year of Ash and the Marseille Ghost

Chapter 17

[Elara]

Grief does not fade. It simply calcifies, turning into a heavy, jagged stone you carry in the hollow cavity of your chest.

Three hundred and sixty-five days had passed since the black waters of the harbor swallowed my husband. A full year since I clawed my way out of the freezing mud and painted the city in the blood of his traitors.

I stood in the center of a ruined penthouse in Marseille, France. The Mediterranean rain lashed violently against the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting fractured, watery shadows across the imported marble floor.

At my feet knelt Enzo.

Cassian’s former underboss looked like a cornered rat. He had spent twelve months running from me, burning through stolen syndicate funds to buy the protection of the Corsican cartel. His expensive clothes were torn. His face was a bruised, swollen mess courtesy of the two Rossi soldiers standing silently by the heavy oak doors.

"Elara, wait." Enzo spat a mouthful of blood onto the pristine white rug. He looked up, his chest heaving with terrified, shallow breaths. "The Corsicans... they’re backing me. You kill me here, you start a European war. You can't fight the High Table and the cartels at the same time."

I looked down at him. I felt absolutely nothing.

No anger. No triumph. Just the exhausting, endless void that had become my entire existence.

I slowly pulled off my black leather gloves, tucking them into the pocket of my tailored trench coat. My left hand felt heavy. The vintage gold Rossi crest ring caught the dim ambient light from the city below. I never took it off. It was a physical reminder of the ghost I belonged to.

"I already started a war, Enzo," I said quietly. My voice lacked any inflection. It was the dead, flat tone of a woman who had nothing left to lose.

I drew the suppressed compact pistol from my shoulder holster.

"He was weak!" Enzo screamed, scrambling backward on his hands and knees. Genuine panic warped his features. "Cassian gave up the throne for a contract killer! He was going to ruin us"

I squeezed the trigger.

The muted thwip barely registered over the sound of the thunder outside.

Enzo slumped backward, a clean hole between his eyes. His body twitched once before settling into the permanent stillness of death.

I stared at his corpse. I waited for the satisfaction. I waited for the closure that vengeance was supposed to bring.

The room remained cold. The stone in my chest didn't lighten by a single ounce.

"Bag him," I told my men, turning toward the shattered glass doors of the balcony. "Take his head to the Corsican boss. Tell them the Rossi Syndicate considers our accounts settled."

I stepped out onto the balcony, letting the freezing rain soak my hair. I pulled a silver flask from my coat, unscrewed the cap, and took a burning swallow of bourbon. It didn't warm me. Nothing had warmed me since that night in the maintenance tunnel.

I had kept my promise. Lily was safe in Geneva, guarded by a private army I funded with syndicate money. Cassian's throne was secure. I ruled his empire with an iron fist, terrifying the Capos into absolute submission.

But I slept in an empty bed. I woke up reaching for a man who wasn't there.

A sudden, sharp sound snapped me out of my thoughts.

It wasn't thunder. It was the wet, sickening crunch of bone breaking inside the penthouse.

I dropped the flask. I drew my weapon and spun around, stepping back through the broken glass doors.

My two soldiers were dead.

One lay over the coffee table, his neck bent at an impossible, unnatural angle. The other was pinned to the wall, a tactical combat knife driven entirely through his throat.

A man stood in the center of the room.

He was towering. Broad-shouldered and wrapped in dark tactical gear. A black ballistic mask covered the lower half of his face, leaving only his eyes visible beneath the hood of his rain-slicked jacket.

The Corsican cartel’s legendary enforcer. The local street bosses whispered rumors about him. They called him the Hound. A brutal, soulless mercenary who appeared out of nowhere a year ago and tore through the French underworld like a rabid animal.

He didn't draw a gun. He just stared at me.

I raised my pistol, aiming directly at the center of his chest.

"You killed my men," I stated softly, my finger applying three pounds of pressure to the trigger. "Big mistake."

I fired twice.

He moved with a terrifying, liquid violence. He didn't just dodge; he anticipated the trajectory. He swept a heavy marble side table upward, taking the bullets in the stone, and hurled it directly at me.

I ducked, the marble shattering against the balcony glass.

Before I could recover my aim, he was on me.

He moved too fast for a man his size. He grabbed my wrist, twisting my arm upward with agonizing force to disarm me. The gun clattered across the floor.

I didn't panic. I pivoted, driving my elbow into his ribs. It felt like striking a solid block of granite. He grunted, absorbing the blow, and swept my legs out from under me.

We crashed to the floor. I scrambled, pulling the ceramic blade from my ankle holster. I slashed blindly in the dark.

The blade caught the thick fabric of his mask. It tore upward, severing the straps holding it to his face.

He caught my wrist mid-strike, pinning my arm to the floor. His massive weight pressed me down, completely trapping me. He loomed over me, his chest heaving, his grip like a steel vise crushing my bones.

The torn ballistic mask slipped off his face and fell to the rug.

Lightning flashed outside, illuminating the dark penthouse in a stark, blinding white glare.

My breath stopped in my throat. My heart seized, refusing to beat.

The combat knife slipped from my numb fingers, clattering uselessly against the hardwood.

Familiar obsidian eyes stared down at me. A sharp, patrician jawline. A jagged, faded scar running along his left collarbone where I had once dug buckshot out of his flesh.

He was breathing hard, looking at me not with recognition, but with the cold, assessing glare of a hunter examining his prey.

"Cassian," I whispered, the name tearing out of me like a dying prayer.

The man frowned. The grip on my wrist didn't loosen. He tilted his head, his dark, dead eyes analyzing my terrified face.

"Who the hell is Cassian?" he asked.