PROLOGUE: FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
The roses in Mama's garden were dying. Eight-year-old Isabella Rosetti pressed her face against the cold kitchen window, watching the red petals fall like drops of blood onto the perfectly manicured lawn. Papa had hired the best gardeners in Queens, but even they couldn't make the roses bloom in October snow.
"Piccola principessa," came her mother's gentle voice from behind her. Little princess. "What are you looking at?" Isabella turned from the window to find Elena Rosetti standing in the doorway, beautiful as always in her cream silk dress, dark hair swept into an elegant chignon. But there were shadows under her green eyes the same emerald shade that Isabella had inherited and her smile didn't quite reach them.
"The roses are sad, Mama," Isabella said, climbing down from the window seat. "They're crying red tears." Elena's breath hitched almost imperceptibly.
"Flowers don't cry, tesoro mio." "Then why do they look so sad?"
Her mother knelt down, silk dress pooling around her like water, and pulled Isabella into her arms. She smelled like expensive perfume and something else something sharp and metallic that Isabella was too young to recognize as fear. "Sometimes beautiful things have to die so that new, stronger things can grow in their place," Elena whispered, her voice trembling.
"Promise me something, Isabella."
"What, Mama?" "Promise me you'll always remember that you're stronger than you know. That no matter what happens, you'll never let anyone make you into something you're not." Elena's hands were shaking as she cupped Isabella's face. "Promise me you'll choose your own path, even if it's harder than the one they want for you." Isabella nodded solemnly, not understanding why her mother's eyes were filling with tears, why her voice sounded like goodbye.
"I promise, Mama." Elena kissed her forehead, lingering as if she wanted to memorize the moment. "My brave girl. My beautiful, deadly little rose." That was the last conversation Isabella ever had with her mother.
Three days later, Elena Rosetti's car skidded off the Queensboro Bridge in what the newspapers called a tragic accident. Too much rain, they said. Slick roads. A moment of inattention that cost a young mother her life. Isabella knew better, even at eight years old. She'd heard the hushed conversations between Papa and his men. Seen the way Vittorio Rosetti's hands shook when he thought no one was looking. Watched Marco cross himself every time Elena's name was mentioned, as if speaking it aloud might bring down a curse. The accident hadn't been an accident at all. Someone had killed her mother. Someone who wanted to send a message to the most powerful don in New York City. Someone who thought that murdering an innocent woman would break Vittorio Rosetti's spirit. They were wrong.
If anything, Elena's death had made Papa harder. Colder. More ruthless than ever before. The man who had once read Isabella bedtime stories and carried her on his shoulders through Central Park disappeared the day they buried his wife. In his place stood a stranger wearing her father's face a man made of granite and gunpowder, who spoke in whispers and ruled through fear. Isabella learned to navigate this new reality the way children learn to walk: carefully, instinctively, adapting to survive.
She became the perfect daughter quiet when Papa needed silence, charming when he needed her to smile for business associates, invisible when his work required privacy. But late at night, when the penthouse was dark and the bodyguards thought she was asleep, Isabella would sneak out to the rooftop garden Papa had built in Elena's memory. She would sit among the blood-red roses he'd planted and make her own promise to the ghost of her mother. Someday, I'll find out who killed you. And when I do, they'll pay in blood.
It was a child's vow, born from grief and helplessness. Isabella had no way of knowing that fifteen years later, the truth would destroy everything she thought she knew about her family. She had no way of knowing that her mother's killer would become the love of her life. And she had no way of knowing that keeping her promise to Elena Rosetti would require becoming the very thing her mother had begged her never to become: A beautiful, deadly rose with thorns sharp enough to cut through hearts.
Present Day - Manhattan
Isabella Rosetti stood in the same rooftop garden, now twenty-three and no longer the innocent child who'd made promises to ghosts. The October wind whipped her long black hair around her shoulders as she stared at the roses that had somehow survived another winter, their crimson petals dark as dried blood in the moonlight. Tomorrow was the fifteenth anniversary of her mother's death.
Tomorrow, she would finally learn the truth that had been hidden from her all these years. Tomorrow, she would meet Dante Moretti for the first time since that day in the cemetery when she was eight years old, and he was thirteen two children from enemy families, bound together by tragedy they were too young to understand. Tomorrow would change everything. But tonight, Isabella allowed herself one last moment of innocence. One final breath before she stepped into the darkness that would either destroy her or make her into the queen she was born to be. The roses rustled in the wind, their thorns glinting like tiny daggers in the moonlight.
"My beautiful, deadly little rose," her mother's voice whispered in her memory. Isabella smiled, cold and sharp as winter. Mama had no idea how right she'd been.
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Author's Note: Welcome to the world of His Deadly Rose, where love is war and roses bloom in darkness. This is a dark romance featuring morally gray characters, intense situations, and a love story that will test the boundaries of devotion and obsession. Please read all content warnings before proceeding.
Tags: #DarkRomance #MafiaRomance #EnemiestoLovers #AlphaMale #StrongFemale #Revenge #BloodFeud #ForbiddenLove #Possessive #Obsessive #NewYork #ItalianMafia #PowerCouple #TraumaAndHealing
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Thank you for reading! The real story begins in Chapter 1...