Seven years earlier.
She doesn’t belong here.
Not among men who speak in contracts and kill in promises. Not under chandeliers paid for in silence or beside women who wear diamonds like armor and smile like threats. She moves through this place like it hasn’t touched her, like the dirt of our world hasn’t even grazed the hem of her sundress.
And God help me, I don’t want it to.
I first see her just past the rose hedge, laughing at something a little girl says. Not a practiced, empty laugh—the kind women here perfect by seventeen—but real, unfiltered amusement. It spills from her lips like she hasn’t learned yet to be careful with her joy. She kneels to adjust the girl’s sandal, her head bowed, a loose braid slipping down her back, and in that moment, I stop pretending I’m only here for the politics.
She stands again and spins beneath the olive trees, arms wide like she’s trying to hold the sky. The hem of her yellow dress flutters around her knees, bare feet brushing over the stone path as if nothing in this place could ever hurt her. She’s radiant in a way this world doesn’t know what to do with.
I light a cigarette and stay hidden beneath the arbor’s shade, watching her move through dusk like a dream no one has earned.
She’s young. Maybe seventeen. Maybe barely eighteen. But she doesn’t carry herself like a girl. She isn’t performing. She isn’t calculating who’s watching. She’s just present—completely, startlingly alive in a place designed to kill that kind of thing young.
And I know, with a certainty that slides cold and final through my spine, that I’ve seen her before I was supposed to. Before I could have her. Before I even knew I’d want to.
I shouldn’t be looking at her. I know that. But I can’t look away.
Later, I ask. Quietly. Discreetly. One name at a time.
Emilia Renzi.
Niece to a minor associate. Raised far from the city. Kept away from the business. Sheltered by a mother who knew too well what this world can take from a woman. She’s soft. Good. Unclaimed. A reminder of what life looks like untouched by blood and power.
She’s not mine.
But I want her like she already is.
I want to know what her voice sounds like when she isn’t laughing for a child but whispering something just for me. I want to know if her breath hitches when I touch her. If she trembles when I say her name.
But I don’t speak to her. I don’t make a move. I don’t even let her see me watching.
Because this isn’t the moment.
Not yet.
She’s still innocent. Still wrapped in a version of herself that I refuse to stain.
I turn to leave, and for a second, I hate the part of me that hesitates. The part that looks back one last time and memorizes the way she lifts her face to the stars like they’ve never betrayed her.
But I do look back.
And I think—no, I know—that one day, she’ll belong to me.
Not because I’ll take her.
Because I’ll wait.
Because I’ll make sure the world doesn’t touch her until I can.
Because when the time comes, and she walks into a room with fire in her voice and silk on her skin, and she meets my gaze like she’s never once been afraid of the dark—I’ll be ready.
She’ll think it’s fate.
She won’t know it’s obsession.
I flick the cigarette into the gravel and disappear into the villa, her laughter still echoing behind me. But I carry a vow with me, silent and absolute:
One day, Emilia Renzi will wear my ring.
She just doesn’t know it yet.
And when she finds out what I’ve done to make sure she ends up mine… she’ll either hate me forever—or fall even harder.
