Dante
This place is a joke. A theater of children playing at being adults. My name, for tonight, is Leo Rossi. It tastes like ash in my mouth. A name as flimsy as the paper cup of punch I refuse to hold. My mission is simple. Infiltrate. Identify. Report. My father’s instructions were precise, delivered with the cold finality of a gunshot.
“The Aegis is a nest of snakes, Dante. Learn their poison. Then bring me the antidote.”
I lean against a marble column, a ghost in the chaos of this welcome mixer. My posture is relaxed, a carefully constructed illusion of a bored student. Inside, I am a tightly coiled spring. My senses are sharp, filtering the overwhelming noise into data streams. The jock holding court by the punch bowl, his arrogance a weakness. The girl crying in the corner over some boy. The professor smiling too much at his students, his desperation is a tool that could be used.
Everyone here is a potential asset or a potential threat. My job is to categorize them. It is what I do. It is all I do.
My father, Andrei Bellandi, does not tolerate failure. He does not tolerate distractions. And this entire university, this entire mission, is beneath me. A game for a boy, not a man. But I follow orders.
My eyes sweep the room with methodical patience. A practiced, emotionless scan. I catalog faces, gaits, the subtle shifts in social dynamics. I am assessing the terrain before the battle. Then, I see her.
A girl in a pale yellow dress. She is smiling, nodding at some idiot in a polo shirt whose collar is popped like a cheap proclamation of his own inadequacy.
She looks soft. Innocent. Her hair is down, her posture open. She is the picture of a freshman heiress, nervous and out of her depth. A perfect little sheep. My initial assessment is dismissal. Another piece of background scenery.
But I look again. My training forces me to. And the details begin to fight the narrative.
Her smile does not quite reach her eyes. Her eyes are not taking in the party. They are scanning. They move with an efficiency that makes the hairs on my arm stand up. She is not looking for friends. She is mapping exits. Gauging threats.
She is doing my job.
My gaze narrows. The world around her fades into a dull hum. Who is she? She stands with a perfect, subtle balance, her weight distributed to move in any direction at a split second’s notice. That is not the stance of a girl who has only ever worried about what to wear to a party. That is the stance of someone who has been trained to fight. To survive.
The idiot in the polo shirt leans in, invading her space. I watch her hand, expecting a flinch, a nervous flutter. There is nothing. Only a stillness. A controlled, patient waiting. She is not afraid of him. He should be afraid of her.
And then her eyes find mine.
Across the crowded room, it happens. A direct hit. It feels like the impact of a sniper’s bullet. Her mask, that perfect construction of wide eyed innocence, cracks. For one single, stunning heartbeat, I see her. The predator. Her eyes are not the soft brown of a fawn. They are the hard, calculating obsidian of a hunter. There is shock in them, but it is not fear. It is the raw shock of recognition.
My own breath catches in my throat. An unwelcome, unfamiliar sensation.
She breaks away first. A professional move. She turns back to the polo shirt clown and laughs at something he says. The sound is light, airy, and utterly fake. A beautiful, perfect lie.
I feel a pull toward her that is as dangerous as it is undeniable. This is a complication. My father’s voice echoes in my head. *No distractions.* She is the very definition of a distraction, a rival player on a board I was meant to command alone.
I need to know who she is.
I push off the column and begin to move through the crowd. As I pass a cluster of laughing girls, a man in a waiter’s uniform bumps into me. A clumsy, apologetic gesture.
“My apologies,” he murmurs, his face blank, and continues on his way.
I do not stop. I do not acknowledge him. But my fingers find the card he slipped into my jacket pocket. I already know what it is. My intel was correct. The Aegis is recruiting. They look for the outliers, the ones who stand apart.
Apparently, we both caught their eye tonight.
I find a quieter corner, near a service exit I had already marked. I glance back to where she was standing. She is gone. The idiot is looking around, confused, like a dog who has lost its ball. Smart girl. She knows when to vanish.
I look at the card in my hand. It is heavy, black stock. An embossed gold shield with the letter ‘A’. Identical to the one described in my briefing file. It is an invitation. A key.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. A secure message. One word.
*Status?*
It is from Mikhail. My second, my shadow on this campus. He is posing as a graduate student in the engineering department. His message is a leash, pulling me back to the mission.
I type a reply, my thumb hovering over the screen.
*Target in sight.* I write, referring to The Aegis.
I pause. Then I add two more words.
*And a complication.*
I hit send before I can second guess myself. Sharing a potential problem is protocol. Sharing this particular problem feels like admitting a weakness.
His reply is instantaneous.
*Neutralize it.*
I stare at the words. Neutralize it. In my world, that word has a very specific meaning. It means eliminate the threat. Permanently.
I look across the hall, searching for that flash of yellow again, but she has melted into the crowd completely. The thought of neutralizing her sends a cold, unpleasant jolt through me. It is not a moral objection. I have done what was necessary, many times. It is… something else. A profound reluctance to remove the most interesting piece from the board.
She is not just a complication. She is a puzzle. A beautifully crafted enigma wrapped in a lie. Her movements, her awareness, the flash of steel I saw in her eyes. It all points to a background like my own. A life of violence and discipline hidden beneath a veneer of civilization.
Who trained her? The Italians? The Triads? The Bratva does not have any active female operatives of her age in the field. She could be Romano. The thought lands with the weight of a stone in my gut. Lena Romano. The Ghost. Marco Romano’s younger sister. Spoken of in whispers. An asset so secret, most of our people think she is a myth, a scare tactic. If it is her… then this mission has just escalated from a simple infiltration to the opening move in a war.
My father would want her dead yesterday.
And I… I want to know her.
I want to stand in a room with her when the masks are off. I want to see what she is capable of. I want to peel back the layers of her disguise and see the woman underneath.
This is a dangerous path. A deviation from the mission. It is a weakness. My fascination is a liability that could compromise everything. I know this. Every instinct, every piece of my brutal training, is screaming at me to follow Mikhail’s advice. Neutralize the threat. Report her existence to my father and let him handle it.
But for the first time in a very long time, I am going to disobey.
I turn the Aegis invitation over in my hand. On the back is an address. A time. Midnight. Tomorrow.
This was always the plan. Get the invitation, accept the pledge, and climb the ladder of their pathetic little secret club until I can see who is pulling the strings.
Now, the mission has a new dimension. Infiltrating The Aegis is no longer just about my father’s ambitions. It is about her. It is the only way to get close to her, to watch her, to understand the threat she represents. Or the ally she could be.
This campus is her hunting ground. And it is mine.
A confrontation is not just inevitable. I am going to make sure of it. I need to know if the fire I saw in her eyes is the kind that warms, or the kind that burns everything to the ground.
I pocket the card. My decision is made. Let the children have their party. The real games are about to begin.
