[Milan, Seven Years Ago]
It was a warm night in late spring, but Celeste's hands were cold. She has been waiting for 2 hours
She stood by the window, staring out at the narrow alley behind the Moretti estate. Her heels were off, her hair loose, the silk dress clinging to her like a second skin. The city lights shimmered below, but none of it mattered. Not the parties. Not the diamonds. Not the legacy her father was grooming her to carry.
Only one thing mattered.
He was supposed to meet her here.
He promised.
She checked the clock again. Midnight. Two hours late.
After years she was feeling scared...what if he don't come to take her like her father said.
Her heart beat like a warning drum in her chest. Something was wrong. She could feel it deep in her bones, in the tightness in her throat, in the way the air had gone still. She had written him a note, just like always. Slipped it through the old fence near the river docks. He'd replied with a message carved into the wood: "Midnight. Our place."
And yet… nothing.
No sign of Dante Romano.
Not his voice. Not his laugh. Not even the smell of cigarettes and cologne that always lingered on his clothes. Just silence.
Celeste paced the floor, arms wrapped around her waist. She wasn't supposed to love him. Her father had made that clear. Dante was a street kid. A fighter. The son of a nobody with a record and no name worth saving. But to her, he had been everything.
He had touched her like she wasn't untouchable.
Loved her like she wasn't a weapon.
And now he was gone.
Her father's words ringing in her ears.
"You think a normal family boy like him would love you? You're just being delusional, love is not in our working field...And when he knows the truth which family you belong to he will also leave you"
________________________________________________
When the guards found her the next morning, asleep on the floor in front of the window, no one said a word. Her father's face was unreadable. Her mother looked away. And Celeste? She swallowed the ache, locked it deep inside, and never spoke his name again.
But in the quiet of her nights, when the city fell asleep and the air turned cold, she remembered.
The way he held her.
The way he looked at her like she was more than blood and duty.
The way he promised he'd never leave.
She never knew what happened that night.
Only that something broke.
And she never got the chance to break with it.
Now she just accept her fate and living in darkness, rulling the darkness but still, Celeste has her light....Her adopted daughter