Isabella "Bella" Romano, 24**, has spent three years working double shifts at a rundown diner, her fingers raw from scrubbing grease, her dreams buried under medical bills for her dying mother. She's invisible—just another exhausted girl in a city that chews up the desperate and spits out bones.

Then one blood-soaked night, she witnesses a execution in the alley behind her workplace. The killer's cold eyes meet hers. She should run. She should scream.

Instead, **Dante Salvatore**—the Ghost of Chicago, the most feared mafia boss in North America—makes her an offer: become his tool, his perfect weapon disguised as innocence, or watch her mother die without the experimental treatment that could save her.

Bella has no choice. She becomes Dante's **"little bird"**—his spy in high society, his bait for enemies, his alibi when bodies drop. She wears the designer dresses he buys, attends galas on his arm, and learns that monsters don't always have fangs. Sometimes they have empty eyes and blood on their Armani suits.

Dante Salvatore has never let a woman past his bed. Love is weakness. Attachment is a target painted on your back. His empire was built on ruthlessness, and he's survived by feeling nothing. Women are transactions—pleasure exchanged for jewelry, then forgotten by morning.

But Bella is different. She doesn't flinch when he kills. She doesn't beg for mercy or luxury. When he barks orders, she obeys with fire in her green eyes. When he bleeds, she stitches him up with steady hands, asking nothing in return. 

The tool is becoming something else. Something dangerous.

As Bella navigates assassination attempts, deadly rivals, and the twisted politics of five crime families, she discovers the truth: Dante isn't just a monster. He's a king haunted by the massacre that orphaned him at twelve, forced into power by his uncle's cruelty, and imprisoned by a legacy of violence he never wanted.

Then **Nico Moretti**—Dante's childhood friend and underboss—betrays them. The experimental treatment for Bella's mother? Funded by the Bratva, who want Dante dead. Bella's mother's illness? Poisoned deliberately to recruit Bella as their inside agent.

Bella was never supposed to be Dante's tool. She was meant to be his **assassin**.

When Dante discovers the conspiracy, he's faced with an impossible choice: kill the woman who betrayed him, or trust the girl who taught him what it means to have a heart—even if it gets him killed.

Because in the underworld, love isn't a weakness.

**It's a loaded gun pointed at everything you care about.**

And Isabella Romano—the girl who scrubbed floors—is about to prove that queens aren't born into power. They're forged in fire, crowned in blood, and built by the men who underestimated them.

Sitting in that safe house, I kept seeing it. Dante's face when he left. Like he knew he might not come back.


And that name. Nico. His best friend. His brother.


I paced the small living room. Checked my phone. Nothing.


How long had he been gone? Two hours? Three?


What if something happened? What if Nico—


But I couldn't stop. My mind kept spinning. Kept imagining worst-case scenarios.


The clock ticked. Each second felt like an hour.


Dante. On his knees. Surrounded by men with guns.


The video was live. Happening right now.


I had to do something. Had to help him.


But what could I do? I was nobody. Just a waitress playing dress-up in a monster's world.


Chapter 9 - The Gala