Chapter 3 - The Ghost of the Valentes
“What?” I snapped defensively, pulling the torn fabric tighter across my skin. “Is there blood on me?”
He didn’t answer. He just stared, transfixed, at the jagged, uneven patch of pale skin beside my left shoulder blade.
It was an old scar—a thick, puckered blemish from a burn I’d suffered when I was too young to even remember my own name. Growing up, the neighborhood kids had called it ugly. Through every locker room change in middle school and every fitting session at the boutique, I had hidden it, cursed it, and wished it away.
Right beside the old burn scar sat a dark, distinct birthmark—a natural cluster of pigment shaped sharply like two feathered wings arching protectively around the base of a half-formed royal crown.
Roman stepped forward, closing the distance between us in two long strides. His face had gone completely, deathly pale, stripping away every ounce of the fierce intimidation he usually carried like armor.
“Where did you get that?” he whispered, his voice trembling in a way I had never heard before.
“On my body? Where do you think? I was born with the birthmark, and the burn—” I choked on the words, feeling suddenly exposed and vulnerable. “The burn is from an accident when I was a toddler. Why are you looking at me like that?”
He completely ignored my sarcasm. Trembling slightly, Roman reached inside the collar of his ruined silk shirt, fumbled with a thin leather cord around his neck, and pulled out an old, blackened metallic pendant.
He held it up beside my shoulder.
It was half a heavy silver crown, fused seamlessly with one side of an intricate, outstretched metallic wing.
My birthmark completed the exact silhouette of the missing half. It was a mirror image down to the smallest microscopic line.
Roman went completely, terrifyingly still.
At that exact moment, the heavy oak door behind us gave way as Roman’s primary security detail finally breached the suite with fire extinguishers and drawn weapons.
“Boss! The fire—we’ve contained the hallway—are you—” The head guard stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes darting from the dead men on the floor to Roman’s frozen posture, and finally to the pendant in his hand.
Nobody spoke. In the heavy, smoky silence of the burning room, the older guard slowly, deliberately crossed himself.
I looked around the room, absolute panic clawing at my throat.
“Will someone please tell me what the hell is happening here?!” I shouted, my voice cracking under the strain.
Roman slowly lowered his hand, his eyes dark, haunted, and stormy as they locked onto mine.
“That symbol,” he said, his voice dropping to a horrifying, hollow whisper, “belonged to the Valente family.”
“I’ve never heard of them,” I lied automatically, though a strange, icy coldness bloomed deep in my stomach at the sound of the name.
“They controlled this entire harbor twenty years ago,” Roman continued, ignoring my denial entirely. “They owned the docks, the shipping lanes, the warehouses, and half the municipal government. They were kings of Bell Haven.”
“What happened to them?” I asked, my voice barely audible over the crackle of the burning curtains.
Roman stared directly into my eyes, the unspoken horror hanging heavily in the smoky air between us.
“They were murdered. Every single one of them.”
My stomach tightened into a painful knot. “All of them?”
May you like
Roman stared down at the jagged scar on my shoulder one more time, his jaw working as if he were swallowing glass.
“Apparently not.”
