Reina POV
Her phone was ringing before she opened her eyes.
She reached for it in the dark. Fia's name on the screen. She let it ring it was six in the morning and she had slept for three hours and whatever it was could wait sixty seconds while she became a functioning human being.
It rang again immediately.
And again.
And again.
By the fifth call she was sitting up. By the seventh she was fully awake with the specific cold alertness of someone whose body recognizes danger before their brain catches up. Fia did not call seven times. Fia called once and left a voice note if you did not pick up. Seven calls meant something was wrong in a way that could not wait for a voice note.
She answered on the eighteenth.
"Don't react," Fia said. No hello. "I need you to listen to me first and then I need you to not throw your phone at a wall."
Reina's stomach dropped. "Tell me."
"It's everywhere. All three of the big outlets. Same story, same photos, went up within twenty minutes of each other which means it was coordinated." Fia's voice was tight and fast. "They're saying you fled to Dante Salvatore after your father died. They're saying you're living there. They have pictures of you going in that first night, Reina. From the street. Someone was waiting with a camera."
She was quiet for one second. "What word are they using?"
Fia hesitated. "Companion."
One word. Carefully chosen. Not mistress that would be too easy to dispute. Companion was softer and uglier at the same time. It implied everything and proved nothing. Whoever wrote this knew exactly what they were doing.
"Send me the links," Reina said. Her voice was completely calm.
"Reina "
"The links, Fia. Please."
She read all three articles sitting on the edge of her bed. She read them the way her father taught her to read anything important once fast to get the shape of it, once slow to find the details, once more to find the lies hiding inside the true parts.
The photographs were the worst of it. She was in dark clothes, one bag over her shoulder, walking through the front entrance of the Salvatore building at midnight. Alone. She looked like exactly what the headline said she was a woman running to a man. There was another photo, slightly blurred, of Dante holding the door. His hand near her back, not touching but close.
They had cropped the photo carefully. In the full version, she knew, there would be six other people in frame. In this version it was just the two of them. Intimate. Incriminating. Perfect.
Her phone started ringing again. Not Fia this time.
She looked at the name. An old family ally a man who had shaken her hand at her father's funeral two days ago and told her she could count on him. She let it ring. She already knew what he was going to say and she did not have the energy to perform gratitude for a rejection.
It rang again. Different name. Same category.
Then again. Then again.
She counted them the way she had counted seconds at the dinner table. One rejection. Two. Three. Four people her father had trusted for decades, calling to very politely tell her they were stepping back. Giving her space. So sorry. Such a difficult time. They would be in touch.
They would not be in touch.
She put the phone face down on the bed and sat with her hands in her lap and breathed.
They want you to fall apart, she thought. This was designed to make you fall apart. So the only thing you cannot do right now is fall apart.
She stood up, washed her face, got dressed, and went downstairs.
Dante was already at the kitchen table.
He had his phone face down and his coffee in front of him and the specific stillness of someone who has been sitting with bad news long enough to have finished being angry about it. He looked up when she walked in. She went to the coffee maker. Her cup was already there the right order, the right temperature. She did not let herself feel anything about that right now.
She sat across from him. She pulled out her phone and opened the first article. She read it again, all the way through, while her coffee cooled slightly.
She kept her face completely still. It was the hardest thing she had done since walking out of that family meeting. Harder, maybe, because she was more tired now.
She could feel him watching her. She did not look up.
The comments under the article were the ugliest part. She should not have scrolled that far. She did anyway, because she needed to know the full shape of the damage, and what she found was a hundred strangers using her name and her father's death to say things she was not going to repeat even inside her own head.
She put the phone down.
"Say it," she said. She kept her eyes on the table.
The word stretched out. She waited for I told you this would happen or this is why I said to keep a lower profile or even just the silence of someone who felt justified. She had heard all those things from men in her life. She was prepared for them.
"I'm not going to say anything," Dante said.
She looked up.
He was watching her with an expression she had not seen on his face since he came back. Not cold. Not calculated. Something older than that. Something that looked almost like it hurt him too.
She looked at him and he looked back and for five full seconds neither of them performed anything at all.
Then she looked down at her coffee. She picked it up. She made herself drink it slowly, like a person who was fine, because she needed practice being fine before she had to do it in front of anyone who mattered.
"How bad is it?" she asked.
"Bad," he said. "Not unfixable."
"How many allies do you think Marco got to before this went up?"
"At least four. Probably six." He paused. "He planned this the same way he planned everything else. Organized. Patient. The photos were taken the night you arrived, which means he knew you were coming before you got here."
She absorbed that. Marco had known she would come to Dante. He had been ready. He had a photographer waiting.
Which meant he understood her better than she had realized. He knew she would look for the strongest option. He knew she would come here. He had prepared accordingly.
She respected it the way you respect something dangerous. Cold and distant and useful.
Her phone buzzed on the table. She turned it over. Another ally. She declined the call. She was done listening to rejections delivered in sympathetic voices.
Dante's phone rang.
He picked it up immediately. She watched his face while he listened. She had gotten good at reading him in the last few days the tiny signals in his jaw and his eyes that he could not completely control. She saw his jaw tighten. She saw something move in his eyes that was close to anger.
He said nothing to the caller. Just listened for ten seconds. Then he said: "I understand," and hung up.
He set the phone on the table. He looked at her.
"Marco has called a family meeting," he said. "Tomorrow morning. Every Moretti soldier, every advisor, every ally. He's making his leadership formal." He held her gaze. "You have not been invited."
The kitchen was very quiet.
She thought about her father's chair at the head of the family table. She thought about the men who would fill that room tomorrow. Men who watched her grow up. Men who brought gifts to her birthdays. Men who shook her hand at her father's funeral and said we are here for you.
All of them sitting in her father's house tomorrow morning while her brother erased her.
Without her in the room.
Without her even knowing about it until it was done.
She set her coffee down very carefully.
"What time?" she said.
Dante blinked. Just slightly. "Reina "
"What time is the meeting?"
He looked at her for a long moment. She watched him calculate whether to argue with her. She watched him decide not to.
"Nine o'clock," he said.
She nodded once. She picked up her phone. She had one unread message from a number she did not know sent eleven minutes ago, no name.
You weren't invited because your brother is afraid of you. Don't let him do this without witnesses. A friend.
She stared at the message. Then she looked up at Dante.
"I'm going tomorrow," she said.
He did not say no. He said something much worse.
"I know," he said quietly. "I'll drive you."