d to say it out loud.
Not where I could hear. Not like it was simple. Not like I was just a signature away from becoming no one.
The corridor blurred at the edges as I turned, one foot in front of the other, not running—just… fleeing with dignity. My shoes echoed down the marbled floor, and still the words clung to me like frost: make her sign the papers.
Me.
After everything I’d done. After the nights I stayed, when I should’ve left. After I silenced my own name to carry his.
He couldn’t mean it. Not really.
This was a game. A punishment. A warning shot across the bow. He would take it back—he always did. We’d been through worse. We’d come back from worse.
Hadn’t we?
I kept walking, faster now. The east hall curved away from the ballroom noise—velvet drapes muffling the laughter, the low pulse of music, the unspoken pity that would soon follow me down every corridor.
I didn’t cry.
Tears would make it real.
I was not losing him like this.
“Aria?”
I turned too fast. My vision spun a little, the world off-kilter—and then there he was.
Luca Venturo.
He saw me before I ever saw him—like I was already marked on the map of his mind.
The first time I ever noticed him, he was standing by the east balcony, one hand in his pocket, the other lazily cradling a glass. Luca Venturo. His name moved through the house in whispers—rival family, foreign blood, neutral for now. He wasn’t smiling.
Now he stood near the bar, half-shadowed by crystal lights and conversations soaked in old money and older grudges.
He said nothing, just looked at me. Like, really looked. His gaze held for three seconds. Maybe four.
I turned away from him first. My footsteps echoed softer in the empty corridor. I hadn’t meant to linger. But something pulled me.
Just behind, Don Vittorio’s voice rolled like gravel across marble floors.
“She’s different.”
Another voice followed. Smoother. Curious.
Luca.
“Quiet. But not weak,” he said. “Why is she hidden?”
Vittorio replied without pause. “Because the wolves in this house would rather tear her apart than serve beside her.”
***
“Move faster, Aria. The sauce is burning.”
Gianna’s voice sliced across the kitchen like a cleaver.
“Yes, ma’am,” I murmured, already stirring the wrong pot just to avoid another comment.
Pans clattered. Orders flew like bullets. I moved through the steam like I didn’t exist. Like I belonged to the marble and the flame.
My mind wasn’t in the room. It was still echoing with Luca’s words from earlier—calm, direct, laced with something I wasn’t ready to name.
The knife slipped before I felt it.
A sharp sting. A line of red across my palm, fast and bright.
I didn’t make a sound. Just grabbed the nearest cloth napkin and wrapped it tight.
No one noticed. Perfect. Pathetic.
I stepped out the back, onto the cold garden steps, and breathed in air that didn’t reek of garlic and tension.
The wound throbbed. My pride throbbed more.
“It’s nothing,” I whispered to myself. “Just another cut.”
Footsteps crunched on the gravel behind me. I turned, shoving the napkin behind me.
Luca stood a few feet away, sleeves rolled, jacket slung over his shoulder, watching me like he already knew.
“You’re bleeding,” he said softly.
“I’ve had worse,” I replied. My voice was flat, the kind you use when you want people to leave you alone.
He didn’t move. Just stood there—quiet and grounded, like the world could end and he’d still be standing exactly like that.
Then, without a word, he held out his hand.
I hesitated. He didn’t press. Just wait.
There was something in the way he waited, steady, patient, that made me give in.
I placed my hand in his, slow and careful.
He unwrapped the napkin gently, like he was handling something far more delicate than flesh.
“You wrap all your enemies this softly?” I tried.
“No,” he said. “Only the ones who pretend they don’t feel pain.”
From his pocket, he pulled a silk handkerchief—dark navy, crisp, with a tiny stitched L in the corner.
He pressed it against the cut, his touch firm but kind.
“Even queens bleed,” he murmured. “Doesn’t make them less royal.”
I looked at him.
“You’re not calling me a queen, are you?”
He smirked. “No. I’m saying you bleed like one. Silent and terrifying.”
