They called me a nobody everyday of my life, so I made sure they watched me leave.

Everyone was gathered on the front steps like it was a spectacle worth dressing for.

The black car parked at the base of the stairs didn’t belong to anyone in this house. Its sleek frame bore a crest that had once belonged to nightmares whispered in mafia boardrooms—the Corvatti seal.

Whispers started like smoke curling through the cold. Gianna’s gasp sliced the air. “They’re sending her to the Corvattis?” she snapped, voice sharp with disbelief. “As what? A maid?”

Her pearls rattled as she turned her head to Alessia, who didn’t even bother to hide her grin.

“What a downgrade,” Alessia muttered, loud enough for me to hear.

I didn’t even slow. Each step down that staircase felt like claiming a throne. They had spent years convincing me I didn’t belong.

But now, they were the ones unsure of their place. I held the envelope in one hand like it was scripture, my red dress whispering against the stone like a promise of things they’d never touch again.

The butler, who’d never spoken more than two words to me in all these years, moved forward and opened the door. He didn’t bow, didn’t fumble. His voice was steady. “Miss Corvatti.”

I slid into the car without looking back. The leather was soft, the cabin silent. As the door shut, I exhaled for the first time.

The man beside me didn’t speak. Not at first. He didn’t ask if I was alright, or how I felt.

Instead, he sat still—hands clasped over his lap, cufflinks glinting in the low light—like he understood there was nothing to fix.

Silence sat between us. Not awkward. Just full.

I leaned my head lightly against the cool window, watching the highway blur past in streaks of dusk.

Gianna’s words still echoed in my bones. “A servant with pearls.”

Alessia’s sneer. Valentina’s smug smile.

But when Vittorio said the name, everything stopped.

Corvatti.

It fell like thunder.

And in that moment, every eye in the room realized I wasn’t a shadow. I was a legacy.

I closed my eyes briefly, remembering the way Don Vittorio had looked at me. Like the truth had been sitting on his chest for years, and he’d finally let it go.

“I should’ve told you.”

His voice had cracked. The Don, reduced to a man who once believed silence was protection.

Maybe he meant well. Maybe he did love me. But love that hides still leaves bruises.

I’d spent years trying to be enough for a family that never saw me.

“Napkins only,” Alessia once said, tossing me a stack.

“You’re lucky we keep you at the table,” Gianna had whispered.

And I had smiled. Shrunk. Folded myself into corners they didn’t bother to glance at.

Now they flinched when I entered a room.

That was progress.

I caught my reflection in the car window.

No tears. No makeup out of place. Just eyes sharper than they’d ever been.

The red dress was gone now, but I still wore its defiance.

They thought I was being discarded.

They were wrong.

I wasn’t being returned. I was being reclaimed.

The man beside me shifted slightly, adjusting his cuffs like it mattered how he met power.

He cleared his throat. “You’ll be greeted by his advisors first. Don Matteo prefers quiet arrivals.”

I nodded. My voice caught in my throat.

If I spoke now, it would shake—and I couldn’t afford to sound small. Not here. Not anymore.

I reached into my coat pocket and felt the soft silk.

Luca’s handkerchief.

Dried blood stained one corner, but I held onto it anyway. He had wrapped it around my hand like it mattered. Like I mattered.

“Even queens bleed,” he’d said. “Doesn’t make them less royal.”

That stayed with me.

Ahead, the city vanished behind iron gates and sweeping stone. The Corvatti estate rose out of the land like it had always been there—untouched, unquestioned. The grass outside the gate bent with the wind, like it bowed to something old. Something known.

The car slowed. Guards stepped forward, looked once at me, then bowed to me.

We passed through. My hands tightened on the armrest as the gravel shifted under us.

“What kind of father hides his daughter for twenty years?” I asked quietly.

The man looked straight ahead. “You’ll see soon enough,” he said. “He didn’t hide you. He saved you.”