Kill Order Kiss Novel Chapter 01

Kill Order Kiss Novel Chapter 01

The bullet was meant for me—and Dante loaded the gun himself.

I was still wearing his ring when I found the kill order, my name written in his handwriting, tucked inside the jacket he’d draped over my shoulders just hours before.

Three hours earlier, I’d been in his bed. His mouth on my throat, his hands gripping my waist like I was the only thing keeping him alive. “You’re mine, Valentina,” he’d growled against my skin. “Say it.”

And I had. God help me, I had.

Now I stood in his private study at the Moretti compound, the paper trembling in my fingers, reading the words that made my blood turn to ice:

Valentina Serrano. Eliminate before the merger. Non-negotiable.

The date was tomorrow.

My legs nearly buckled. I pressed my back against the mahogany bookshelf, forcing myself to breathe. The compound was silent at this hour—3 AM—the guards on rotation, the family asleep in their wing. I’d only come to the study to leave a surprise note on his desk, something foolish and romantic, because that’s who I was. A fool.

Dante Moretti, heir to the most powerful crime family on the Eastern Seaboard, the man who’d pursued me relentlessly for two years, who showed up at my restaurant every single night until I agreed to one dinner, who told me I was the only woman who ever made him want to be something other than a monster—

He had ordered my death.

My mind scrambled to make it make sense. Maybe it was old. Maybe it was about a different Valentina. But the date was fresh, the ink still sharp, and beneath my name was a detail that shattered every excuse:

She knows nothing. Keep it clean. No suffering—I owe her that much.

He owed me that much.

A sound—footsteps in the corridor. I shoved the paper back inside the jacket, my heart slamming so hard I could hear it in my skull. The door handle turned.

“Val?”

Dante stood in the doorway, shirtless, his dark hair mussed from sleep, concern softening those brutal features. He looked like a man who’d woken up and found his woman missing from bed. He looked like a man in love.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked, his voice low and warm, the same voice that had whispered promises against my lips.

I forced a smile. “Couldn’t sleep.”

He crossed the room in three strides and pulled me against his chest, pressing his lips to my forehead. “Come back to bed. You’re cold.”

I was shaking, and he thought it was the temperature.

“Dante,” I whispered into his chest, breathing in the scent of him—cedar, smoke, something dark and expensive. “Do you love me?”

His arms tightened. “What kind of question is that?”

“Just answer me.”

He pulled back, tilting my chin up, his dark eyes searching mine with an intensity that once made me feel like the most important person in the world.

“You know I do,” he said. “More than anything.”

More than anything—but not more than the family.

I let him lead me back to bed. I let him hold me. I lay in the dark with his arm draped over my waist, listening to his breathing slow into sleep, and I planned my escape.

Because the girl who loved Dante Moretti died the moment she read that paper.

The woman who replaced her was going to survive.