Maria didn't flinch under Leonardo's gaze.
She expected him to laugh. Mock her. Wave her off like every other man in her family had once done.
He didn't.
He studied her eyes sharp, thoughtful as if peeling back each word she hadn't yet said.
"I'm here to offer you something," she repeated. Her voice stayed calm. Her hands didn't shake.
Leonardo Cruz leaned back into the sofa, fingers loosely around a crystal glass of scotch.
"And what would that be?"
"An alliance," she said.
His brow lifted. "You came here to talk politics?"
"No." Maria stepped forward. "I came to offer you something more valuable than that."
Leonardo tilted his head, intrigued but unmoved.
"And what could the discarded daughter of the Moretti family possibly offer a man like me?"
Maria didn't blink.
"Access. Influence. Intelligence. And vengeance."
That last word lingered like smoke in the air.
Leonardo didn't move. But something in his eyes shifted.
Maria saw it.
She kept going.
"I know how my family works," she said. "Where the fake loyalty begins and where the bodies are buried. My father, my mother, the business, the secrets. Everything the Morettis hide I've watched from the shadows."
He swirled the drink once. Slowly.
"And you think I care about your family?"
"I think you care about power," she answered. "And if you want a way into their circle without spilling blood, I'm it."
Leonardo finally stood.
Maria followed him with her eyes. He walked to the far end of the room, placed the glass down on a tray, and folded his arms behind his back as he faced the floor-to-ceiling windows.
"Damien Valerio," he said quietly. "He's the one your family offered you to."
Maria's pulse ticked.
"That arrangement," he continued, "gave him a merger, control of your father's imports, and a seat on the council of Milan's silent network."
He turned to face her again.
"And yet you're here."
"He wanted me dead," she said.
A pause.
Leonardo's expression didn't change.
But his next question was careful.
"How do you know?"
Maria met his gaze with the kind of certainty that only came from memory.
"Because I died once already."
Leonardo didn't interrupt.
He didn't scoff or press her for more.
He simply moved back to the table and poured a second glass, offering it to her.
Maria didn't take it.
She wasn't here to toast her tragedy.
He noticed that and smiled faintly.
"You're serious," he said.
"I don't have the luxury of being anything else."
Leonardo Cruz was many things cartel-born, legacy-forged, ruthless by design. But unlike his father, Riccardo, who built his empire on brutality, Leonardo had built his own strategy.
He bought silence before he spilled blood.
Created fear without having to raise his voice.
He was power in its cleanest, quietest form.
And Maria wasn't just walking into his lair she was daring him to see her as an equal.
"I'm not offering you affection," Maria said. "I'm offering you a contract."
"What kind of contract?"
"A public alliance," she replied. "On paper, a marriage. In reality, a partnership."
He stared at her.
"You realize what that would mean."
"I do."
"Your name next to mine," he said, stepping closer, "puts you on a kill list."
Maria's breath hitched not in fear, but in memory.
"I've already been on one," she said. "I just didn't know it the first time."
Leonardo's gaze narrowed.
He didn't ask how she knew what she knew.
Didn't ask why she carried the kind of pain that sounded like prophecy.
Instead, he walked to a sleek drawer behind his desk and pulled out a single sheet of paper.
Maria waited as he set it down between them.
A blank contract.
"The terms will be simple," he said. "No secrets. No emotions. No betrayal."
She nodded once. "Fine."
He added, "And no hesitation."
Maria's reply was immediate.
"I won't blink."
Leonardo smiled slowly and sharply.
"You already haven't."
Maria left the penthouse with a copy of the draft in hand.
The cold air outside felt lighter than it had in days.
Not because she was safe but because she had just aligned herself with the most dangerous man in Milan.
And he had said yes.
Back at the Moretti estate, Keyla twirled a wine glass between her fingers.
Her phone lit up on the vanity.
Still no message from Maria.
It bothered her.
For a girl who used to be an open book, Maria was becoming difficult to read.
That wasn't part of the plan.
And Keyla hated not being in control.
Maria's phone buzzed as she entered her room.
A message from Rina.
Rina Miles: "Contract approved. You'll receive your public meeting time tomorrow. Wear something bold. And don't smile too much."
Maria sat on her bed and stared at the message.
A smile curved her lips anyway.
Rina was sharp an expert fixer with a past in scandal cleanup and crisis engineering. Rumor said she once buried a senator's cheating scandal using nothing but hacked security footage and two fake marriage licenses.
The kind of woman Maria would've feared in her old life.
Now, she was one of the few people she trusted to handle what came next.
Maria placed the contract on her nightstand and stared at the ceiling.
For the first time in years, she didn't feel like a ghost in her own story.
She felt like the author.
But even authors had enemies.
And hers were about to start noticing.
In a dimly lit bar across town, Damien Valerio sipped a neat scotch and leaned into a whispered conversation with a broker.
"Keep an eye on her," he said. "If Maria makes one wrong move... I want to be the first to know."