Chapter 1 – The Night the Snow Died
The first snow of the year should have been beautiful.Instead, it fell on blood.
Qiao Xueran's hands trembled as she pressed them against her mother's wound, but the warmth was already leaving. Her father lay only a few feet away, eyes glassy, throat cut. The killers didn't bother to hide their faces — family never does.
Her uncle's laughter still rang in her ears as they walked away, boots crunching the snow they had stained.
"Don't bother crying, little one. The dead don't listen."
But she cried anyway. For hours. Until her voice broke.With no one to help, she dug their graves herself, her bare fingers clawing at frozen earth until the nails tore and bled. She laid them side by side, covering them in snow like a final blanket.
That night, Qiao Xueran made two promises.One: She would make them all pay.Two: No one would ever suspect she was capable of it.
Years later…
The neighbors called her the slow girl. She wandered the markets with empty eyes, tripping over her own feet, smiling at nothing. It was a perfect disguise — the kind of face no one took seriously.
Her aunt, greedy and sharp-eyed, saw an opportunity.
"Pretty enough for one night," she whispered to a trader. "The boss likes them quiet."
That's how Qiao Xueran found herself shoved into the back of a black car, wrists bound with silk, her aunt's coins clinking in the pocket of the driver.
The man she was being delivered to was Han Zixuan, the most feared mafia boss in Verona City — a man whose shadow could make people disappear.
And waiting in the house were two others: her cousins, Jin Wurou and Xun Lanyue.The same ones who used to pin her to the ground and make her eat dirt as a child.The same ones who laughed when she dug the graves.
Now, they were smiling again.
"Oh, cousin," Jin Wurou purred, fanning herself lazily. "You look… almost alive."
Xun Lanyue didn't speak. She just stared with those unblinking eyes — the same as the night her parents died.
Qiao Xueran lowered her gaze, mouth slack, and gave them the same empty smile she had perfected for years.Inside, she was sharpening her knife.