Valentina sat on the cold floor of her father's study, her back against the wall, the photograph in one hand and the manila envelope in the other.
The Beretta lay beside her on the marble. Loaded. Ready. She had checked the magazine twice — not because she doubted her father, but because checking gave her hands something to do besides shake.
The house was empty. Not quiet — quiet implied peace. This was empty. Hollow. The kind of silence that fills a space when the person who made it a home is gone. No guards patrolling the hallways. No Marco whistling off-key in the kitchen at midnight. No heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, followed by a gentle knock and her father's voice saying, *"Still studying, piccola? It's late."*
Gone. All of it. Gone.
She looked at the photograph again.
Her father, young — maybe thirty, thirty-five. His smile was wide, genuine, almost boyish. She had never seen him smile like that. By the time she was old enough to form memories, Dominic Rosetti had become the man who smiled with calculation, who laughed with purpose, who showed joy only in the privacy of their home and only to her.
But in this photograph, he was happy. Truly happy. And he was shaking hands with a man who looked almost exactly like Dante Vittori.
*His father. Alessandro Vittori.*
The same Alessandro Vittori who had been her father's sworn enemy for two decades. The same man whose territory wars with the Rosetti family had left dozens dead. The same man who sat on the other side of an invisible line drawn in blood and money across the city.
And yet here they were — shaking hands. Smiling. Like friends.
Like brothers.
*"He is my debt."*
What debt? What could her father possibly owe Alessandro Vittori? And why had he kept this photograph locked in a safe that only she could open?
Valentina set the photograph down carefully and turned her attention to the manila envelope. It was thick — at least fifty pages inside. The seal was old, yellowed with age, but unbroken. Whatever was inside, her father had prepared it but never opened it again. As if he'd packed it away and hoped it would never need to be found.
She broke the seal.
Inside were documents. Financial records. Property deeds. Contracts written in legal language so dense it would take a lawyer weeks to untangle.
Good thing she was almost a lawyer.
She spread the papers across the floor and began to read.
The first document was a transfer of ownership dated twenty-four years ago — the year she was born. A property in the old port district, warehouses and dock access, signed over from Rosetti Holdings to an unnamed trust. The value was staggering. Millions in real estate, just handed over.
The second document was a financial ledger — handwritten, her father's meticulous script. Monthly payments going back twenty-three years. Large sums, always on the fifteenth, always to the same account number. She didn't recognize the account, but the routing number was from a bank in Switzerland.
The third document made her stop breathing.
It was a contract. Two signatures at the bottom — her father's and one other. The language was formal, almost archaic, like something from another century. She read it once. Then again. Then a third time, because her brain refused to accept what her eyes were telling her.
It was a marriage contract.
Her marriage contract.
*"In the event of the death or incapacitation of Dominic Rosetti, his eldest daughter, Valentina Rosetti, shall be wed to the eldest son of the undersigned, thereby unifying the two families and settling all outstanding debts between them."*
The second signature belonged to Alessandro Vittori.
The eldest son of Alessandro Vittori was Dante.
Valentina's hands went numb. The paper slipped from her fingers and floated to the floor like a dead leaf. She stared at it, her mind racing at a thousand miles per hour while her body sat completely still.
Her father had promised her to Dante Vittori.
Before she was even born, before she had taken her first breath, before she had chosen her own name or her own path or her own life — her father had signed her away. Like property. Like a transaction. Like a clause in a business deal.
The man who had told her she could be anything. The man who had paid for her law school, who had encouraged her independence, who had looked at her with such fierce pride when she argued her first mock trial — that man had signed a piece of paper that reduced her to a bargaining chip.
And the worst part — the part that made her want to scream until her throat bled — was the date.
The contract was signed three months after her mother's death.
Her mother, Isabella Rosetti, had died in childbirth. Valentina had never known her. She had grown up with photographs and stories and her father's quiet grief, a wound that never fully healed. He never remarried. He never even looked at another woman. He told Valentina once, on her sixteenth birthday, that he had used up all his love on two people — her mother and her.
And three months after burying the love of his life, he had sold his newborn daughter to his enemy.
Why?
The question burned in her chest like acid. Why would he do this? What debt could possibly be worth his only child?
She grabbed the remaining documents and rifled through them frantically. Financial records, property transfers, coded messages she couldn't decipher — and then, at the very bottom of the stack, a letter.
Handwritten. Her father's handwriting. Addressed to her.
My dearest Valentina,
If you are reading this, then I am gone, and the wolves are at the door. I am sorry. I am sorry for so many things that this paper cannot hold them all, but I will try to explain the one thing that matters most.
I owe a debt that money cannot pay. Twenty-four years ago, I made a choice that saved your life and cost me my soul. I cannot tell you what that choice was — not in writing, not where eyes I don't trust might find it. But I can tell you this: the Vittoris are not what you think they are. And neither am I.
The contract in this envelope is real. It is legally binding. And when the time comes, it will be enforced — not because I want it to be, but because it is the only thing that will keep you alive.
Do not fight it, Valentina. I know you will want to. I know your fire, your stubbornness, your beautiful, terrible pride. You are your mother's daughter in that way. But please — for once in your life — trust me. Even though I have given you every reason not to.
There are people who want you dead. Not because of what you've done, but because of what you are. The marriage is your shield. Dante Vittori is many things — cold, dangerous, ruthless — but he will protect you. It is in his blood and in his bond.
The truth is in the roses, piccola. Remember that. The truth is always in the roses.
I love you more than empires. More than power. More than the life I am about to lose.
Forgive me.
Papa
Valentina read the letter three times.
Then she folded it carefully, pressed it against her chest, and broke her own promise.
She cried.
Not the screaming, animal grief of the night her father died. This was different. This was quiet. Deep. The kind of crying that comes from a place so far inside you that you didn't even know it existed until it cracked open.
She cried for her father, who had loved her and lied to her in equal measure. She cried for her mother, who she would never know. She cried for the life she thought she was building — the law degree, the career, the independence — all of it suddenly revealed as a castle built on someone else's chessboard.
And she cried because, despite everything, despite the betrayal and the manipulation and the impossible, suffocating weight of what she had just discovered — some small, stubborn part of her still trusted him.
Trust me. Even though I have given you every reason not to.
"Damn you, Papa," she whispered into the empty room. "Damn you for making me love you this much."
She didn't sleep that night. She sat in the study until dawn crept through the windows, gray and pale, turning the white marble pink. She organized the documents. She memorized the key details. She photographed everything with her phone and uploaded the files to an encrypted cloud account.
Then she hid the originals.
Not in the safe — that was too obvious now. She removed a loose panel behind her father's bookshelf, a hiding spot she had discovered as a child playing hide and seek, and placed the envelope and the photograph inside. The Beretta she kept.
By seven AM, she had showered, dressed, and transformed herself from a grieving girl on a floor into something else entirely. Black jeans. Black boots. A fitted black turtleneck. Hair down, straight, falling past her shoulders like dark water. Minimal makeup — just enough to hide the shadows under her eyes.
She looked at herself in the mirror. She barely recognized the woman staring back.
Good.
She didn't want to be recognized. She wanted to be underestimated. She wanted every person who looked at her to see a broken girl mourning her father, not a woman with a loaded gun in her waistband and a secret that could reshape the entire criminal underworld.
Her phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
*"We need to talk. —D"*
She stared at the message. The card. She had tucked his card in her bra at the funeral and then tossed it on her nightstand, intending to burn it. She hadn't saved the number. But he had hers.
Of course he did. Men like Dante Vittori didn't wait for permission.
She typed a reply, then deleted it. Typed another, deleted that too. Finally, she put the phone down without responding.
Let him wait. Let him wonder. Let him sit in his cold empire and question whether the girl he'd watched slap him across the face was broken enough to come crawling.
She wouldn't crawl. Not to him. Not to anyone.
But she needed information. And right now, Dante Vittori — the man she hated, the man she was apparently contracted to marry, the man who may or may not have killed her father — was the only person who had it.
*"When you're ready to hear the truth, call me."*
His words from the funeral echoed in her mind. So arrogant. So certain. As if truth were something he owned and could distribute at his leisure.
Her phone buzzed again.
*"I know about the envelope."*
Valentina's blood ran cold.
She snatched the phone off the table, her heart slamming against her ribs. She read the message three times, each time feeling the walls close in a little tighter.
He knew. He knew about the safe. He knew about the documents. Which meant he knew about the contract.
Which meant he had known — maybe for years — that she was promised to him.
And he had shown up at her father's funeral. Looked her in the eye. Handed her a card. Let her slap him in front of a hundred people. All while knowing that, according to a piece of paper signed before she could speak, she already belonged to him.
The rage that filled her was incandescent. White-hot. Nuclear.
She picked up the phone and called the number.
It rang once.
"Valentina." His voice was the same as at the funeral — deep, controlled, infuriatingly calm. Like a man who had never been surprised by anything in his life.
"You knew," she said. No greeting. No pleasantries. Just the accusation, sharp as a blade.
A pause. She heard him exhale — not a sigh, exactly. Something more deliberate.
"Yes."
"How long?"
"Since I was eighteen. My father told me on my birthday. Some boys get cars. I got a blood contract and a future wife who didn't know I existed."
His tone was dry. Almost sardonic. She wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him.
"I am not your wife."
"Not yet."
"Not ever."
Another pause. When he spoke again, the sardonic edge was gone. His voice was quiet. Serious. And underneath the control, she heard something she hadn't expected.
Urgency.
"Valentina, listen to me carefully. I know you hate me. I know you think I killed your father. I didn't — but I understand why you believe it, and I don't have time to convince you right now. What I need you to understand is that the contract in that envelope is the only thing standing between you and a bullet."
"Is that a threat?"
"It's a fact. Your father is dead. His empire is vulnerable. And there are people — people far more dangerous than me — who want to make sure the Rosetti bloodline ends with him. The only reason they haven't come for you already is because they don't know if the contract has been activated."
"What do you mean, activated?"
"If we marry, you come under Vittori protection. Full protection. Our resources, our men, our territory. No one touches you. The contract makes it binding — not just legally, but by the laws of our world. The old laws. The ones even the worst of us still respect."
"And if I refuse?"
Silence.
"Then I can't protect you. And you will be dead within the week."
The words settled over her like snow. Cold. Heavy. Suffocating.
She closed her eyes. Her father's letter burned in her memory.
*The marriage is your shield. Dante Vittori is many things — cold, dangerous, ruthless — but he will protect you.*
"I want to meet," she said. "In person. Somewhere public."
"Name the place."
"The Cathedral Café. Noon."
"I'll be there."
She hung up without saying goodbye.
Then she sat on the edge of her bed, the phone in one hand, the Beretta in the other, and tried to figure out which one was more likely to save her life.
She arrived at the Cathedral Café at 11:45.
She wanted to be there first. She wanted to choose the table — back corner, facing the door, wall at her back. Her father had taught her that. *"Never sit with your back to a room, piccola. The dead are full of people who trusted the wrong direction."*
She ordered a black coffee and didn't drink it. It sat in front of her, steaming, while she watched the door and ran scenarios in her head.
Scenario one: Dante was telling the truth. Someone else killed her father. The contract was protection. The marriage was survival.
Scenario two: Dante was lying. He killed her father. The contract was a trap. The marriage was a cage.
Scenario three: Something in between. Something more complicated than truth or lies. Something her father had seen twenty-four years ago that she was only now beginning to glimpse.
The door opened at noon. Exactly noon.
Dante Vittori walked in like he had been carved from the cold and set down among ordinary people as a reminder of what power looked like. Same devastating face. Same silver eyes. Same aura of controlled menace that made the other patrons instinctively look away.
He wore a charcoal suit today. No tie. Top button undone. The red mark from her slap was gone, but she imagined she could still see its ghost on his cheekbone.
He spotted her immediately. Of course he did. He crossed the café without hesitation, pulled out the chair across from her, and sat down.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. They just looked at each other — two people bound by a contract they didn't choose, separated by a murder that hadn't been solved, and connected by something neither of them was ready to name.
"You look tired," he said.
"You look alive," she replied. "Unfortunate."
The corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. More like the memory of one.
"I ordered coffee," she said. "I didn't order one for you."
"I noticed."
"Good. Then we understand each other."
He leaned back in his chair, studying her with those pale, unreadable eyes. She held his gaze without flinching. She would not be the first to look away. Not with this man. Not ever.
"Ask your questions," he said.
"Did you kill my father?"
"No."
"Did you order his death?"
"No."
"Did your father?"
A flicker. Barely visible. But she caught it.
"My father has been in a coma for six months," Dante said. His voice was even, but something underneath it shifted. "A stroke. He can't order breakfast, let alone an assassination."
Valentina blinked. This was new information. Alessandro Vittori — the feared patriarch of the Vittori empire — was incapacitated? How had she not known this?
"That's not public knowledge," she said.
"No. It's not. And now you know why I'm running things." He paused. "And why certain people think this is the perfect time to destroy both our families."
"Both?" She frowned. "Why would anyone want to destroy the Vittoris? You're at the height of your power."
Dante's expression didn't change, but his eyes — those cold, silver, impossibly controlled eyes — darkened by a single shade.
"Are we?" he said softly.
And in that moment, sitting across from the man she had sworn to destroy, Valentina realized something that terrified her more than any threat, any gun, any contract.
She realized that Dante Vittori was afraid.
He hid it well. Better than anyone she had ever seen. But it was there — buried deep beneath the ice and the control and the perfectly tailored armor of his indifference. Fear. Not for himself.
For something bigger.
"What aren't you telling me?" she whispered.
He leaned forward. Close enough that she could smell that dark cologne again. Close enough that she could see the flecks of blue in his silver eyes.
"Everything," he said. "But I'll start with this — your father wasn't murdered by an enemy, Valentina. He was murdered by a friend."
The coffee went cold.
The world tilted.
And Valentina Rosetti realized that the war she thought she was fighting was only the surface of something much, much deeper.
END OF CHAPTER 2
Next Chapter: Dante reveals the name of the traitor inside the Rosetti family. Valentina is forced to make an impossible choice — and the first move in a dangerous game begins.