Hearts Under Fire

Fifteen-year-old Catherine Herrmann watched her parents—two of Europe's brightest justice-fighters—executed in the courtyard of their own villa. She was left for dead, a bullet in her leg and a promise in her ears: "One day you'll hear my voice again." She spends the next decade turning that night into fuel. Now a rising investigator with Europol and the BKA, Catherine lives for the hunt. Her target: "El Fantasma", the shadow network that reaches into courts, police, and governments—and the man who ordered her family's murder. When a high-risk operation explodes, Catherine discovers a deeper truth: someone inside the system has been feeding her enemies for years. Every near-miss, every failed raid, every ambush was designed. And the same people who built that trap have found a way to turn the trauma in her blood into a tool. As Catherine races from Munich to Prague, Milan, and beyond, the line between justice and vengeance blurs. The only people she can truly trust are a stubborn trauma-surgeon uncle, a former special-forces operator who refuses to leave her side, and a handful of allies as broken and dangerous as she is. To stop the network and the man behind it, she'll have to walk straight into the lion's mouth—knowing she may not walk back out. In a world built on blood and betrayal, can Catherine stay on the side of justice, or will vengeance claim what's left of her heart?