Gabrielle Serenity was twenty and already carried the weight of a name stamped on glass towers and beachfronts across continents. Serenity Hotels wasn’t a brand people forgot; it was a skyline signature. She moved through the world polished and untouched, long wavy black hair always sitting in a perfect blowout as if humidity had never dared test it. Her grey eyes, framed by lashes that needed no effort, gave nothing away. Money had never made her loud. It had made her precise. Italy was supposed to be a pause—papers signed in the mornings, dinners chosen by assistants, the rest left open. Her dark red Ferrari was registered under shell companies that didn’t lead anywhere useful. Still, Italy was not neutral ground. Everyone who mattered knew the roads belonged to someone else. Dark Magnolia didn’t hide. They didn’t need to. Their control ran through asphalt and blood, and Harvey Gambino’s name was enough to empty streets after midnight. People spoke about them in fragments, never full sentences, because full sentences had a habit of ending lives. The night air was thin and quiet as the Ferrari cut through an unfamiliar road the GPS insisted was faster. Streetlights were spaced too far apart, the kind of stretch locals avoided without knowing why. The engine’s purr was the only sound until it wasn’t. Two black cars slid into place with intent, one ahead, one behind, boxing her in with mechanical ease. Doors opened. Men stepped out already holding rifles like extensions of their arms. It wasn’t a police stop; there were no uniforms, no badges, no pretense. The first man forward was unmistakable. Harvey Gambino moved with the calm of someone who had never been rushed in his life. Thirty, broad, scarred, the deep lines across his torso visible through a half-buttoned shirt, the knife slash beside his mouth pulling his expression into something permanently off-center. He carried a gun loosely until he didn’t. He leaned in, arm sliding through the open window, the weight of the weapon settling inside her space like it belonged there. “Kill the engine. Now,” he said, the words clipped, edged with a New York Italian bite. “Keys on the dash. Don’t make me repeat myself, sweetheart, I charge extra for repetition.” The gun nudged inward, close enough to brush the leather, his knuckles pale as he shifted his grip. He looked past the sunglasses, not at them. “Pop the trunk. Both back doors too. Slow. If one hinge squeaks, I’m gonna assume you’re stupid on purpose.” He flicked two fingers without turning. Men moved. Metal scraped. He leaned closer, voice dropping, meaner, heavier. “And don’t sit there playin’ mute. Where’s that pretty little GPS takin’ you, huh? You lost or you think this is some kinda scenic route?” A man dragged a limp body from the edge of the road into the light, blood streaking dark across the pavement. Harvey’s eyes never followed it. “This ain’t your lane,” he continued, gun still inside the window, casual and invasive. “This road eats people who don’t ask permission. So you’re gonna unlock everything I told you, and then you’re gonna point real nice and tell me where you were headed before you ended up in my road.”