Chapter 1 Blood & Pixels

• Naples never slowed down.
• Not for the heat, not for the tourists, not even for the threat of death hanging in the alleyways like cigarette smoke. It moved to its own rhythm—fast, loud, beautiful in a messy kind of way. And on that particular Wednesday, under a cloudless July sky, I was trying to focus on photographing graffiti while dodging pigeons and my own anxiety.
• The Piazza Dante was a swirl of sound and color. Street musicians played an off-tune accordion, a group of art students sketched near the fountain, and a woman haggled over lemons with a vendor whose hands moved faster than his mouth. All of it was begging to be captured through my lens. And honestly? I was okay with being invisible behind my camera. It was my safe space. My shield.
• That morning, I’d been assigned a dull gig for a travel blog; a feature on Naples’ street art scene. Low pay, high exposure. Typical. I adjusted the zoom, focused on a painted dove with flaming wings, and pressed the shutter.
• Click.
• Another shot. Another breath.
• Click.
• I was calming down, getting into the zone, even starting to hum along with the musician nearby when the air cracked.
• Loud. Sudden. Real.
• A gunshot.
• My finger froze on the shutter.
• The music stopped. The haggling stopped. Everything… stopped.
• Then chaos erupted. Screams tore through the square like paper. People ran, scattering in every direction like ants from a fire. But I didn’t move. Couldn’t. My instincts were slow to kick in.
• And that’s when I saw him.
• He stood just beyond the fountain, surrounded by frozen bodies and shattered glass. He was tall, striking even from a distance, dressed in all black. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, revealing lean, scarred forearms. He held a matte-black pistol in one hand like it weighed nothing. Like he’d done this a thousand times before.
• And he was looking straight at me.
• Not the crowd. Not the vendors. Not the body of the man slumped behind him in a pool of red.
• Me.
• My heart stopped. I forgot how to breathe.
• His eyes were gray, icy, unreadable, and locked onto mine like I was the only person left in the world. And somehow, in the middle of my panic, my camera shutter clicked again.
• Click.
• That sound broke the spell.
• He started walking toward me. Not rushing. Just one calm, calculated step at a time.
• I ran.
• I turned so fast I nearly tripped over my own boots, shoved past a table full of espresso cups, and bolted through the side alley, ignoring the screams behind me. My lungs burned. My throat was dry. The camera slammed against my hip with every step, but I didn’t stop not until I reached Via Port’Alba, then my narrow street off it, and finally the old apartment I shared with no one.
• I slammed the door shut behind me and locked it. Once. Twice. Chain.
• Then I slid down the wall, gasping for air like I’d just surfaced from drowning.
• What the hell just happened?
• I had no answers. Only adrenaline, sweat, and blurry images dancing behind my eyelids.
• The man’s face.
• The dead body.
• The silence in his stare.
• I crawled to my bed and pulled the camera from around my neck. It was still warm from my skin. My fingers trembled as I flicked through the digital display, frame by frame. Blurry walls, the flaming dove mural, the crowd, then there he was.
• The killer.
• Tall. Broad shoulders. Expression flat. A ghost in human skin.
• And in the next frame… he was staring directly into the lens. Into me.
• I dropped the camera like it had burned me. It hit the bed and bounced twice, landing on my pillow like a curse. My stomach twisted.
• I knew Naples had a mafia problem. Everyone did. But it was supposed to be in whispers. Rumors. Unseen hands running clubs and casinos. Not broad daylight executions in crowded piazzas.
• And I… I was just Bella Esposito. Twenty-three. Freelance photographer. Over-caffeinated. Emotionally constipated. The kind of girl who ordered food with notes because she hated small talk.
• I didn’t belong in that world.
• But I’d just captured it. Pixel by pixel.
• And worst of all, he saw me.
• That night, I barely slept. Every sound outside made me flinch. The wind against the shutter. A scooter passing. Laughter from someone three floors down. I kept the lights off and my bedroom door half-open. I even slept with my camera on the bedside table, like it could protect me.
• It didn’t.
• The next morning, I found it. A white envelope, slid neatly under my front door.
• No postage. No stamp. No name. Just one word, handwritten in blood-red ink.
• Bella.
• I froze. My fingers hovered above it for a full minute before I picked it up and peeled it open with the edge of a nail file.
• Inside was a single photograph.
• My photograph.
• Me, frozen mid-step in Piazza Dante, camera at my face, eyes wide, lips parted. Caught in the act. Caught before the run.
• And on the back, five words written in sharp, deliberate strokes:
• “You took something from me.”
• “Now I’ll take something from you.”
• I dropped the photo. It fluttered to the floor like it weighed nothing. But in my chest, the fear was heavy, suffocating.
• I was being hunted.
• No… watched.
• Followed.
• And I didn’t even know his name.
• But his eyes… they stayed with me. Haunting and cold. Not wild, not angry. Just unreadable. The kind of eyes that had seen too much. Done too much. Eyes that didn’t regret.
• My phone buzzed on the counter.
• Unknown number.
• “Do not call the police. You’re smarter than that.”
• I dropped the phone like it bit me.
• How did he get my number?
• I started pacing, barefoot on cold tiles. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be real. I was just a photographer. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t sign up to be dragged into some mafia mess with men who kill in public and send notes in pretty envelopes.
• And yet… deep inside, I wasn’t just scared.
• I was curious.
• What kind of man could kill so calmly?
• Why did he spare me?
• Why did he… warn me?
• Later that afternoon, I tried to delete the photos. I really did.
• I sat down at my desk, inserted the SD card into my laptop, and hovered over the file.
• DELETE?
• I clicked “Yes.”
• Nothing happened.
• The system glitched. My screen flickered. Then a message popped up.
• “That’s not yours to erase.”
• No software I knew did that. Someone was in my laptop.
• I yanked the card out, heart pounding, and shut the lid.
• This was bigger than me.
• And somehow… I wasn’t just a witness.
• I was involved now. Whether I liked it or not.
• That evening, I walked to the tiny café down the block. My head was on a swivel. Every man with a phone looked suspicious. Every passing car made my skin crawl. I ordered a coffee I didn’t want and sat at the far corner, facing the door.
• He didn’t come in. But someone else did.
• A girl. Young. Pretty. Tightly wound in a black dress. She carried a small black envelope and stopped at my table like she knew me.
• “Bella Esposito?”
• I nodded, unsure why.
• She placed the envelope on my table, smiled without warmth, and walked away. She didn’t wait. Didn’t explain. Just disappeared out the back.
• I stared at it for a while. Then opened it.
• Inside was a single, typed card.
• “Come to Teatro Romano. Midnight. Alone.”
• Below it, a symbol I recognized but couldn’t place was a lion’s head in a circle of thorns.
• A mafia crest.
• I didn’t sleep that night either.
• But this time… it wasn’t just fear keeping me awake.
• It was something more dangerous.
• Curiosity.
• And just like that, the girl with the camera was standing on the edge of something irreversible.
• Blood. Power. Secrets.
• And a man with gray eyes who’d seen her… and didn’t look away.
• To be continued...