Anastasia
The cold in New York was a familiar, bracing companion, a stark contrast to the simmering, tropical humiliation I had endured in Miami. It was a cold that cut through the cashmere of my coat and settled deep in the bone, mirroring the frost that had encased my heart since the moment Serafina—the favored, the untouchable, the accidental Don—had cut me loose.
Madrid. The very word was a stone sinking in my stomach. The failure wasn't the loss of assets; assets could be replaced. The failure was the public, unassailable proof that I had underestimated her. I, Anastasia Ruffo, who had been raised to rule, who understood the ledgers and the language of power better than anyone in the family save Antonio himself, had been outmaneuvered by the spoiled daughter who ran off with a killer.
I had been informed, with clinical, dispassionate efficiency, that my oversight of the European consortium was terminated. My contacts were rendered inert, my deals voided. Serafina didn't even grant me a meeting. She sent a legal construct—a binding, bloodless decree delivered by an anonymous attorney. It was the ultimate insult: not a threat, but an irrelevance.
Irrelevant. The word tasted like ash. Serafina had reduced me to a disgruntled relative, banished from the core. She assumed I would retreat, lick my wounds, and perhaps start a small, pathetic rival operation in the Caribbean.
She was wrong.
I hadn't come to New York to beg, or to broker a deal for a quiet retirement. I had come to initiate a scorched-earth policy, and I needed the right kind of gasoline. That meant Matteo. That meant Castellano.
Matteo Verrelli’s main office, perched high in a brutalist Manhattan tower, was exactly as vulgar as I expected: polished chrome, unnecessarily heavy leather, and an air of insecure opulence. Castellano, his second, was already there, hovering near the espresso machine like a lean, nervous shadow.
Matteo rose when I entered, his movements heavy and slow, like a man moving through water. He was a creature of the old guard, of blunt force and traditional malice, but he was also the man whose empire stood against Serafina's.
“Anastasia. A pleasure,” Matteo said, not sounding pleased at all. His eyes, though, were sharp, assessing the damage. He knew I was compromised. He knew I was desperate.
“Matteo. Castellano,” I acknowledged, my voice calm, perfectly pitched—no hysteria, no plea. I allowed myself a slow, deliberate sweep of the room before sitting down, not opposite them, but angled, ensuring the dynamic was a consultation, not an interrogation.
“You’ve lost Europe,” Matteo stated, leaning back, the leather of his chair groaning.
“Serafina seized Europe,” I corrected, pulling a thin file from my briefcase—a psychological profile, not a financial one. “And she only did it because she chose to sacrifice a decade of stability for a single gesture: recovering Adrian Vasquez.”
Castellano scowled. “That boy. The Ghost. They call him that for a reason.”
“He is good, yes. Unpredictable, yes. But he is also her singular, undeniable weakness,” I said, laying the file on the glass table. I didn't open it. I knew the contents by heart. “Serafina has always been about control. She controls her environment, her people, her appearance. But Adrian is the only variable she cannot tame; she can only choose him. That choice is her Achilles’ heel, and I know exactly where she hides the wound.”
Matteo folded his hands across his broad chest. “You come to us, Anastasia, after the Dorians have decimated our Spanish operation. You’ve been exiled. You have no formal power structure. What exactly are you offering?”
The question was blunt, intended to humble me. I met his gaze without flinching.
“I am offering you two things you lack, Matteo. First, I offer you the complete, comprehensive internal map of the Dorian structure. Not the balance sheets, but the psychological weak points. I know which lieutenants are ambitious, which ones are loyal out of fear, and which ones are only loyal to Antonio. Now that Antonio is… weakened…”
I paused, letting the implication hang in the air. We both knew the old man was failing.
“...loyalty shifts. Serafina’s power is new, aggressive, and untested. My intelligence shortens your timeline from years to months. I can tell you where the wires cross, where the security is a façade, and where the loyalty runs thin.”
I let that sink in before delivering the second point, the one that truly mattered.
“Second, I offer you global connectivity. You are strong in the Americas and parts of Europe, but your reach is limited in the Asian markets. I have cultivated, over two decades, high-level contacts in Tokyo, Seoul, and Dubai—networks that answer to me personally, separate from the Dorian umbrella. I can open doors for your influence that would take you five years and billions of dollars to unlock alone. Access to these markets, virtually guaranteed, in exchange for a temporary partnership.”
Matteo looked impressed, but wary. He was a businessman of chaos, and he knew a deal that good usually came with a hidden cost.
“And what is the price for this partnership, Anastasia?” he asked. “Power? Territory? A seat on my board?”
I shook my head, my eyes burning with a focus that was utterly detached from profit.
“No. I don't want power. I don't want territory. Not from you. I want something much more valuable, Matteo. I want justice.”
I leaned forward, placing my hands flat on the table, my voice dropping to a low, intense register that was far more menacing than a shout.
“I want Serafina Dorian-Vasquez publicly destroyed. Not killed. Killing is too swift, too clean. I want her name dragged through the mud until it is unrecognizable. I want her foundation—her reputation, her carefully constructed image of power—to be shattered in front of every contact, every rival, every man and woman who ever compared her favorably to me.”
The rage that lived beneath my control was finally allowed to show its teeth, but it remained measured.
“She took everything I worked for because she was Antonio’s daughter. She inherited the throne I was groomed for. She earned the respect of the organization through sheer accident of birth, while I earned it through blood, sweat, and tireless efficiency. She must pay for that original, unforgivable sin: existing as the preferred Ruffo. I want the woman she dismissed as irrelevant to be her undoing.”
I looked from Matteo to Castellano. “I want her assets frozen, her reputation ruined, her face on every front page with the word fraud beneath it. I want her stripped down to nothing. I want her to stand naked in the ruins of her own making, and I want her to realize, in that moment, that it was me. It was the woman she dismissed as irrelevant.”
“And Adrian?” Castellano asked, his eyes gleaming with fascination.
“Adrian Vasquez is part of the humiliation,” I stated. “She chose him over the legacy. She will watch him be used as a tool for her downfall. Perhaps he will be a casualty of the cleanup. I don't care, so long as she is forced to watch him suffer because of her choices.”
Matteo watched me, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face. It was the first honest reaction I’d seen from him. He understood pure, personal malice better than corporate greed.
“No power,” he mused. “No money. Only the spectacle of vengeance.”
“Vengeance is the only currency I accept,” I confirmed. “When she is destroyed, I will walk away. You take the Dorian holdings, all of it. I will simply vanish back into my own networks, having secured a debt of honor from you that you will eventually repay in kind.”
“A guarantee,” Matteo said. “That is what you ask for. A solemn guarantee that we will prioritize the destruction of Serafina’s reputation and her foundation.”
“Yes. And I will require certain logistical guarantees to protect my people and my contacts in Asia during the transition. I will not trade one loyalty for another, but merge them for a common purpose.”
“Done, Anastasia,” Matteo said, the deal sealed with the weight of his word. “You give us the roadmap, and and we will give you the spectacle. We will ruin her. And when the smoke clears, the Dorian name will be nothing but a footnote in the Verrelli history, thanks to the help of a very motivated enemy.”
He raised a glass of scotch that materialized from Castellano’s hand. “To the fall of the favored daughter.”
I accepted the glass, the amber liquid burning faintly on my tongue, but the chill inside me was a deeper, more satisfying fire.
I drained the glass in a single, practiced swallow. Serafina thought she had cut me off, but she had merely pushed me out of her sphere of influence and into the perfect orbit to crash her world. Antonio gave her the crown; I would give her the grave. And it would be a very public grave indeed. The game, I realized, was finally getting interesting.