Chapter 1 — The Headline That Killed Me

The first time I saw the word fiancée attached to his name, my body reacted like it had swallowed glass.

The screen glowed in the dark like a confession.

DON DANTE MORETTI ANNOUNCES ENGAGEMENT TO KATERINA PETROVA.

A photo loaded beneath it—Dante in a tailored black coat, cold as a statue, his hand at Katerina’s waist like she belonged there. She wore white. Her smile said she’d already won.

I stared until my vision blurred, then I did the stupid thing I always did when I was bleeding.

I looked for him.

Not in the news. Not in the comments. In the house.

In our house—except it had never been ours. It was his. I was the secret he kept behind locked doors.

Five years.

I was eighteen when he took me out of smoke and screaming and put a roof over my head. I was nineteen when I learned the difference between safety and ownership. I was twenty when I stopped asking to go out and started asking permission to breathe.

And now I was twenty-three, reading that I had been replaced like a piece of decor.

I set the phone down and listened to the villa’s silence. No laughter. No music. No footsteps. Only my heartbeat hammering my ribs, loud enough to give me away.

Francesca, the head housekeeper, knocked softly. “Serafina.”

I didn’t answer.

The door opened anyway. It always did. Privacy was a myth in this house.

Her eyes were cautious, sympathetic, and afraid in the same breath. “They’re arriving tonight. The whole family. It’s going to be… an event.”

An event. Like my five years were nothing but a scheduling conflict.

“I’m not going,” I said.

She swallowed. “Dante—”

“I said I’m not going.”

Francesca’s voice dropped. “He expects you.”

Of course he did.

Not because he loved me. Love was a luxury men like Dante couldn’t afford.

Because I was his. And if I stopped acting like it, the world would notice the crack in his control.

I stood, the movement too sharp. The room spun for half a second. I steadied myself on the dresser.

My eyes caught on the small ceramic cat nightlight by my bed—an ugly, cheap thing I’d bought years ago because it looked harmless. Like me, back then. I’d kept it like a talisman. Proof I could choose something in this cage.

My throat tightened.

Francesca watched me. “Serafina… please. Just do what you’re told. Tonight isn’t safe.”

“Tonight was never about my safety,” I said, and the words came out calm, which scared me. “Tonight is about showing everyone who owns what.”

Francesca flinched. “He does protect you.”

“He protects what he doesn’t want stolen,” I corrected. “Not what he cares about.”

A car door slammed outside.

My skin went cold.

The sound of boots in the hallway followed—men, multiple, familiar.

Then the deeper rhythm I could always pick out even in a crowd.

Dante.

My body betrayed me immediately, tightening, aching, remembering.

Five years of being trained by his attention.

Five years of being punished by his absence.

The door opened.

He filled the frame like he owned the air. Black suit. White shirt. No tie. Hair brushed back. Eyes like a winter ocean—beautiful, distant, deadly.

His gaze moved over me the way it always did: quick, clinical, possessive.

“You saw it,” he said.

Not a question. Not an apology.

“Yes.”

He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. The click sounded like a lock on my throat.

“You’re coming downstairs,” he said. “You’ll stand beside me. You’ll behave.”

My nails dug into my palms. “Beside you like what, Dante? A ghost? A mistake?”

His jaw tightened. “Don’t do this.”

“Do what?” I laughed once, sharp and ugly. “Feel something?”

His eyes flicked, just a fraction, like I’d hit a nerve. Then the steel came back.

“This engagement is necessary.”

Necessary.

Like I was unnecessary.

“You’re going to marry her,” I said, and the words tasted like poison. “After five years.”

His gaze pinned me. “You don’t get to demand anything from me.”

I took a step closer. My voice dropped. “I never demanded. I waited.”

That was the tragedy.

I waited for a ring. For daylight. For a name I could wear without fear.

He stared at me like he was looking at a weapon he’d forgotten to unload.

“You’ll do what I tell you,” he said quietly. “Or I’ll make you.”

My pulse throbbed in my ears. “Who is she to you?”

“A contract,” he said.

“And what am I?”

His silence was the answer.

Francesca would later swear she heard my heart break. I don’t think hearts make sounds. I think it was just the air leaving my lungs.

Downstairs, the villa began to fill with voices.

Tonight, I was going to be displayed.

And I didn’t yet know how much it would cost me to stay alive.