It has been two days since I found out I’m pregnant, and the pressure it left behind hasn’t left my body for a moment.
It lives beneath my skin, curls behind every breath, pressing against my ribs whenever I try to lie still.
I rise before the staff.
Before the scent of espresso threads its way through the halls.
Before the light has finished spilling its gold across the gravel paths that cut through the vineyard.
My feet are bare against the cold tile, the hem of my robe trailing behind me as I move through the sleeping estate.
The marble corridors stretch ahead, long and quiet, and every step I take is magnified by the hush.
I pass the gallery, where the portraits hang like watching eyes, and push through the side door that leads to the gates.
A cool, damp wind blows outside, and the morning fog still clinging to the earth.
It pries my eyes open fully, but the ache in my chest never really slept.
This ritual has been mine since childhood.
Long before I knew what power tasted like or how deeply silence could wound, I had insisted on fetching the mail.
At first, it was little more than a child’s attempt to be useful, a way to earn Papa’s approval.
I would take the path down the sloped drive, past the citrus trees and the wrought-iron gates that never quite kept the world out, collecting whatever had been delivered—bills, papers, invitations in heavy envelopes—and return them like offerings, my hands trembling with pride.
Even now, long past the age when such things are expected of me, I do it.
No one asks me to, but no one stops me, either.
It is the only task I perform that belongs entirely to me.
This morning, the sun is only just cresting the hills beyond the vines, casting everything in a pale, golden haze.
I unhook the latch on the gate box, and the metal creaks with familiarity.
Inside is the usual stack of utility invoices, printed invitations from second-tier families hoping to curry favor, a glossy envelope bearing a cosmetics partnership my mother will pretend to scoff at before privately arranging a meeting.
And then, nearly buried at the bottom, I see an invitation.
The cardstock is cream-colored and impossibly thick, the kind that speaks to money not inherited but earned through fire and force.
Its surface is embossed with gilded filigree, subtle enough to feign modesty, but the seal ruins any illusion of restraint.
Red wax, still faintly fragrant from the press, bears the Salvatore crest: a serpent devouring its own tail, an ouroboros reimagined not as a symbol of balance but of endless hunger.
I do not need to open it to know what it contains.
The Salvatore gala has been circulating through conversation for weeks now, a thing dressed up in the language of charity but pulsing with the unmistakable beat of conquest.
Each year, it grows more elaborate, more ostentatious, an empire flexing its reach beneath the polished sheen of philanthropy.
This time, the pretense is a children’s hospital, complete with press releases and official sponsors, but everyone with ties to the underworld knows it is little more than camouflage.
The gala is not an invitation.
It is a summons.
These events function as political theatre for the modern mafia, staged not in smoke-filled back rooms but in marble ballrooms beneath chandeliers heavy enough to crush a man.
They are orchestrated to test loyalty, to map the invisible hierarchy of power in real time.
Who arrives early, who arrives late, who doesn’t show at all.
The guest list is a roster of allegiance and ambition, and the Salvatores know exactly how to read it.
To attend is to declare yourself unafraid.
To decline is to risk being seen as irrelevant or weak.
Silence, in this world, is rarely mistaken for diplomacy.
It is usually read as fear.
I run my fingertip along the wax seal, noting the faint warmth still trapped in its center.
This was pressed recently, likely within the last twenty-four hours. The envelope is cooler than the rest of today’s correspondence, as if it was delivered in haste, perhaps even reluctantly.
It arrived later than it should have.
That in itself is a message.
The Salvatores, I suspect, did not think we would come.
Perhaps they hoped we wouldn’t.
It would be easier to eclipse us that way, to make our absence speak louder than any speech could.
In a world built on reputation and shadow, a single empty seat can be fatal.
That, more than anything, is what decides it for me.
I will go.
I will wear whatever dress my mother selects, I will smile at the men who want to sell me off in pieces, and I will find Enzo Moretti before the night is over.
Because no matter what the Salvatores think they know about the Lombardis, they have yet to learn that obedience and submission are not the same thing.
I was raised to endure, but I have learned how to strike.
When I return through the halls, the estate has begun to stir.
Servants move with discretion, the scent of coffee and fresh bread threading through the air as breakfast is arranged.
I place the envelopes in the lacquered tray beside Papa’s seat at the long dining table.
I do not say a word about the invitation.
Our dining hall is a monument to ego.
Twelve high-backed chairs line a table carved from dark walnut, its surface always gleaming, always empty but for the curated display of decanters and gold-trimmed serving ware.
Crystal sconces catch the morning light and refract it into fractured stars across the frescoed ceiling.
Papa believes that beauty is proof of power, and this room is his cathedral.
Papa is already seated when I enter, his tailored shirt pressed to perfection, his cuffs gleaming with his initials in gold.
He stirs a cube of sugar into his espresso with absent precision, not looking up as I take my seat.
My mother enters moments later, draped in a silk robe the color of periwinkle dusk, her expression unreadable as she settles in beside him.
The servants begin placing dishes: soft cheeses and figs, warm sourdough with honeycomb, eggs cooked in butter and truffle oil.
I sip from my glass of blood orange juice, waiting.
It takes exactly three bites for Papa to notice the envelope.
‘What is this?’ he mutters, reaching for it.
His face darkens by the second as he cracks open the seal, eyes skimming the contents.
His mouth tightens.
‘Salvatores,’ he mutters. ‘Of course.’
He sets the envelope down with an edge of disgust.
‘They have the gall to invite us now, after the stunts they’ve pulled this year? Hosting that event like they already own the city.’
I slice into my croissant slowly, carefully, letting the butter flake along my plate before I respond.
‘Perhaps that’s why we should go.’
The silence that follows is immediate and sharp.
Papa lowers his cup. ‘Excuse me?’
Across the table, my mother glances at me, interest evident behind her careful façade.
I meet his gaze calmly. ‘If we decline, they win. It makes us look afraid. Weak. But if I go, if I represent the family, it reminds them—and everyone else watching—that the Lombardis do not bend to intimidation.’
His mouth hardens.
‘You think a gown and a smile will be enough to undo what they’ve done?’
‘No,’ I reply softly, ‘but presence matters. These galas are not about peace. They are about perception. And perception is power.’
My mother exhales, her fingers lifting to her chin as she watches me.
‘She’s not wrong,’ she murmurs.
Papa turns toward her. ‘You approve of this?’
‘I think Aria has her father’s instinct for timing,’ she says, speaking of me as if I am not in the room with them. ‘And the sense to know when to strike. The Salvatores would never expect it. That gives us an advantage.’
He shakes his head, leaning back in his chair.
‘You’re too young to understand how dangerous that family can be.’
‘I’m old enough to understand what we lose if we keep pretending we’re still on equal footing,’ I answer.
Although this is spoken out of turn, I have the sense to keep my head down, my voice level, and my eyes sincere.
Papa studies me for a long time, his fingers drumming once against the edge of his plate.
There is something unreadable in his eyes, built from the knowledge that his daughter has teeth.
‘You will go,’ he says at last, voice clipped, ‘but you will do nothing foolish.’
I incline my head and keep my eyes innocent. ‘Of course.’
My mother lifts her glass slightly, the ghost of a smile touching her lips. ‘Make sure they remember who you are, darling.’
I nod once, the taste of triumph curling quietly beneath my tongue.
Beneath the table, my fingers curl into my lap.
I do not let the tremor show, not even when I imagine the only person I will truly be going to see.
After breakfast is over, I finish my chores, try to get some reading done, and wonder what Enzo will say if I tell him.
Come evening, I prepare for the gala.
My mother has already selected the dress, a slip of sapphire silk, custom-tailored in Florence and worn once, photographed beneath chandeliers in a different city, during a different war.
Now it is resurrected, pressed, and delivered into my hands like armor.
Jewels glint beneath my collarbone, sapphires encircled in diamonds, heirlooms of a grandmother I never met, gifted not for sentiment but strategy.
My hair is swept up with painful precision, tendrils curling against my temples in calculated softness.
As I get into the limo, only one thought pervades my mind, and that is that I do not look like a girl about to ruin her family.
I look like an offering.
The car pulls away from the Lombardi estate with the low growl of an engine too finely tuned for anything less than ceremony.
We descend through the hills of Nuova Speranza in a procession of sleek black, the city unwinding beneath us like a dark ribbon stitched in light.
The road curves along the cliffs, the sea sprawling beside us, salt crashing against the rocks in invisible waves.
Wind slips in through the vents, tinged with brine and cold, stirring the edges of my gown as if to remind me that nothing tonight will stay still for long.
Beyond the tinted glass, the coastline stretches in long, jagged swells, the water ink-dark and roiling under a sky already softening into night.
On the docks below, cranes stand like skeletal sentinels over cargo yards and shipping containers, reminders of what this city trades in—silk, steel, secrets.
Somewhere in those depths lie a hundred deals brokered in smoke and silence, men who vanished beneath the tide, loyalties weighted with stone.
We pass through the old port district, where crumbling warehouses lean into each other like drunks at last call, their broken windows catching the light like teeth.
This is where Nuova Speranza was born.
Where the first barrels of stolen bourbon crossed the bay, where blood once spilled faster than ink.
The ghosts of that era still linger in alleyways and on rusted fire escapes, watching as the city they helped build forgets their names.
Further inland, the streets rise, flanked by villas dressed in stucco and shame.
Newer construction, old money.
The Salvatores have carved their way into this landscape like surgeons with gold scalpels.
What they lacked in legacy, they have replaced with spectacle.
Theirs is not a history of vineyards and slow inheritances, but of bullets and fire, of sudden ascension and unapologetic expansion.
And as we climb higher, that truth sharpens.
The Salvatore estate looms ahead like a fever dream of power pretending to be tradition, its façade washed in the last embers of twilight as our car crests the final curve of the drive.
It is not old in the way the Lombardi vineyards are old.
This estate is newer, cleaner, hungrier, built not from inheritance but from acquisition.
From men who didn’t wait to be invited into the old world, but who crashed the gates and rebuilt the palace with marble bought in cash and blood.
Its white stone gleams under the evening sky, smooth and flawless, veined with the kind of money that arrives quickly and needs to be seen.
Columns rise where they do not need to.
Arches soar for the sake of grandeur alone.
Everything about the estate is deliberate, designed to impress and intimidate.
This is the kind of wealth that grew faster than the dust could settle.
At the gates, two men in charcoal suits stand silently.
Their expressions are unreadable, hands clasped before them, but their eyes follow every detail.
The make of the car.
The timbre of the engine.
The number of seconds it takes to roll down the window.
They nod once, and the wrought iron gates swing open, heavy and ornate, bearing the serpentine emblem that has become the signature of Salvatore rule.
Beyond them, the driveway curves through manicured grounds lined with cypress trees, each one clipped to unnatural precision.
The air smells of lavender and ambition, perfume woven with oil.
Water murmurs somewhere in the distance, likely from one of the artificial fountains shaped like Roman gods.
The Salvatores may have no lineage to speak of, but they’ve dressed their empire in old-world drag.
Inside, the estate spares no expense in hiding its youth.
The floors shine beneath our shoes, marble shot through with golden veins.
The walls are lined with panels of dark wood and massive oil paintings, the kind that try too hard to look centuries old.
The ceilings stretch high overhead, covered in murals that depict not faith or family, but conquest.
A battlefield of gods and mortals.
Triumph painted in gold leaf and blood.
The chandeliers shimmer with hundreds of crystal pendants, suspended above the ballroom like frozen rain.
They cast fractured light across the marble, turning every guest into a moving constellation of silk and glass and shadow.
There is an unspoken rule in these gatherings: beauty is a mask, civility a weapon.
The room is already full.
Men in formal suits and tuxedos glide between conversations, their smiles tight, their hands always half a gesture from violence.
Women drift like ghosts through the crowd, glittering in gowns that reveal as much as they conceal, trained from birth to make power look effortless.
Waiters pass between them, balancing silver trays with white-gloved precision, offering champagne flutes like bribes no one declines.
There is a stage at the far end of the room.
A string quartet plays a piece composed to sound expensive.
Beyond them, glass doors open to a terrace strung with lights, where cigars will be smoked and real conversations will happen under the stars.
These events exist for the same reason mafia families hold christenings in cathedrals and funerals in cathedrals and weddings in cathedrals.
Appearances. Allegiance. Visibility.
A chance to show who still walks the earth with untouchable confidence, who still controls the ports, who still decides what passes through the gates of this city, and what disappears at sea.
The mafia learned long ago that fear alone was not enough.
That power, once earned, must be paraded.
The Salvatores have perfected the performance.
Every guest here has been curated, every placement is intentional.
The businessmen sipping expensive Scotch near the east alcove?
Loyalists to the Salvatore shipping lines.
The arms dealers by the hearth?
Indebted to Marco Salvatore for a quiet favor years ago.
Even the local politicians, with their freshly pressed suits and hands still warm from dirty envelopes, have been positioned close to the food and far from the exits.
Luca Salvatore plays the perfect host, all quiet menace in his three-piece suit, his smile more blade than charm.
Marco prowls behind him like a shadow given form, his gaze never still.
I keep my distance.
I am not here for them.
Enzo is nowhere to be seen.
Not on the ballroom floor, not in the arcades of champagne and caviar.
Not among the soldiers who line the room’s edges, watching with the stillness of men who are used to blood being spilled in silence.
I know better than to ask.
Instead, I make my way to the gallery.
The corridor beyond the ballroom hums with quiet opulence.
Oil paintings stretch wall to wall, each one a portrait of a Salvatore ancestor, their features sharp with legacy, their eyes dead with conviction.
The floors beneath my heels are obsidian and gold, a mosaic that tells the story of the family’s rise from Sicilian blood to international empire.
Smuggling, laundering, consolidation.
Their power grew not by fire, but by cold, exacting strategy.
They offered protection where the law failed, filled gaps the city refused to acknowledge.
And then they built palaces on the bones of their rivals.
Ten minutes later, after performing just enough pleasantries to remain forgettable, I slip away from the ballroom and into the quieter corridors that thread through the estate like veins beneath silk.
A server turns the corner ahead of me, silver tray glinting with half-finished flutes of champagne, but he doesn’t look up.
No one ever does in these in-between spaces, where the marble gives way to shadow and the chandeliers no longer bother to glimmer.
I move carefully, my heels softened against the Persian rugs that run the length of the side hall, their patterns dark with age and money.
Up ahead, through the glow of a low sconce, I see him.
Enzo stands at the landing of the upper mezzanine, his silhouette cast in dusky gold as he leans one arm along the banister.
He is dressed in black, as always, the sharp line of his jaw kissed by the faint light above, the scar over his brow pale against the depth of his gaze.
He does not move when he sees me.
He does not smile.
He simply tilts his head once in quiet acknowledgement, a gesture so subtle and spare it feels carved from stone.
I ascend the stairs without speaking, the hem of my gown trailing behind me like smoke.
The music from the ballroom fades with each step, until only silence stretches between us.
Enzo doesn’t wait.
He turns with the ease of a man born in shadows and slips down a corridor so narrow it vanishes between two columns, nearly hidden behind a gilded mirror.
He does not look back.
I follow.
We pass through the hush of velvet-draped halls and past portraits of Salvatore men I do not recognize: new kings painted like old gods, their eyes stern, their suits impeccable.
At the end of the corridor, Enzo reaches for a wooden door set with a lion’s head knocker, its brass mouth frozen in mid-roar.
The metal catches a glint of light as he pushes it open without ceremony.
Then he disappears inside, leaving the door ajar behind him.
After a second of hesitation, I follow to find him standing in the center of the room, his back half-turned, the collar of his shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled once at the cuffs.
The room itself is spare—walnut floors, tall arched windows veiled with sheer curtains that filter the evening light into amber.
A decanter of scotch glows like fire on the mantle.
There are no family photos, no art.
Only books.
Volumes are stacked along shelves, the kind that speak not of leisure but of study.
War histories. Strategy. Biographies of men who rose by breaking the rules their fathers taught them.
He does not smile when he sees me.
‘Aria.’
I shut the door behind me.
For a moment, he simply watches me, his gaze raking over the gown, the curve of my shoulder, the line of my neck.
Then, he moves to the bar and pours a glass, the decanter catching the lamplight as he tilts it.
He doesn’t offer one to me.
‘So,’ he says, voice calm, almost bored. ‘Your family allows you to wander the lion’s den in silk now?’
I lift my chin. ‘It was time I learned to hunt.’
The corner of his mouth curves. ‘You came to the wrong predator.’
‘I came to speak.’
He takes a sip, then turns, leaning against the table with one hand resting on the glass.
His eyes are unreadable, but his body is so still it feels like waiting. ‘I told you that we meet when I reach out. This is careless, Aria.’
I hate how easily he dismantles me.
I hate that I came here thinking I could be coy, clever.
That I could play him the way I’ve played diplomats and suitors, men twice his age and half as dangerous.
I lift my chin defiantly. ‘It was important.’
‘Say what you came to say,’ he murmurs.
His indifference grates at me, makes me want to lash out. ‘Papa has chosen a suitor,’ I say at last.
That gets his attention.
He straightens, the glass forgotten in his hand.
‘And?’ he asks, his voice dropping to a silken whisper. ‘What does the jewel of the Lombardi dynasty think of her future husband?’
I force my voice to be steady.
‘I think he’s a practical choice. He has influence. Wealth. A connection to Eastern European arms routes. Papa believes he’ll help rebuild what we lost.’
Enzo steps forward once.
His eyes darken, a cold anger sparking in their depths. ‘And you?’
‘I think…’ I falter, breath catching. ‘I think I’m considering it.’
The silence that follows is absolute.
Then, like a storm breaking free of its own sky, he is in front of me.
His hands come down on my arms, hard enough to hold, not hard enough to bruise, but I feel the heat of him everywhere, the way his breath saws through the distance between us.
‘No,’ he snarls. His grip tightens. ‘No one touches you.’
My heart skips a beat.
‘No one puts their hands on what’s mine.’ He pulls me to him, every inch of him rigid, trembling with a fury I’ve never seen in him before.
‘I don’t care who your Papa promises you to,’ he growls against my cheek. ‘I don’t care what alliances he’s trying to resurrect. If he marries you off to anyone else, I will burn the deal to the ground with the groom still in his tuxedo.’
His lips crash into mine with a fury that knocks the breath from my chest, one hand locking around the back of my neck, the other gripping my waist with bruising force.
I gasp against him, and he swallows the sound, deepening the kiss until I can’t think, can’t breathe, can only feel.
Whiskey lingers on his tongue, dark and heady, burned into the edges of his mouth like a memory that will not leave.
He tastes like heat and fury, like something forbidden and final, and when his teeth scrape gently against my lower lip, I whimper into him.
That sound undoes something in him.
He growls low in his throat and presses me backward until my spine hits the paneled wall, his body pinning mine in a line of heat and strength.
I feel the hardness of his chest, the press of muscle against silk, the promise of power thrumming beneath his skin.
My hands find his lapels, fingers curling in the fabric like I need to anchor myself or be swept under completely.
He kisses like a man starved of gentleness, like this is the only language he’s ever trusted.
I can taste the war in him.
He breaks the kiss only to return to it harder, angrier, dragging his mouth over mine with a desperate, almost punishing rhythm.
His hand fists in the back of my dress, pulling me closer, as though he’s trying to erase any inch of air between us.
My head tilts back, and he takes my throat in his palm—not to hurt, just to hold, to claim, to remind me who he is and who I have always been in his presence.
‘You told me you’re going to marry,’ he breathes against my lips, voice low and wrecked. ‘You think I would let that happen?’
I try to speak, but he kisses me again, cutting the words from my tongue before they can form.
This kiss is deeper than the last, rougher, his mouth moving over mine with devastating precision, his tongue claiming me until I am dizzy with it.
He tears his mouth away just long enough to drag his eyes over my face.
‘No one touches you,’ he says, each word bitten off like a sentence. ‘No one gets to have you. Only me.’
Then he kisses me again, like he’s sealing it with blood.
My knees weaken beneath me, but he holds me upright, hands gripping my hips, grinding into me until I can feel the sharp edge of his desire through every layer of fabric.
I am undone, shaking beneath the crush of his mouth, lost in the fire he brings with every touch, every breath.
His hands move before my breath can catch.
One rises to the column of my throat, holding me steady against the wall, not with cruelty but with absolute, unrelenting control.
The other travels lower, slow at first, grazing the curve of my waist, the line of my thigh, until it finds the hem of my dress and drags it upward in one ruthless sweep.
The silk gathers beneath his hand, cool and weightless, lifting inch by inch until the air kisses my bare thighs.
His knuckles brush the lace between my legs, and I feel the tremor that runs through me all the way to my spine.
He pauses, just for a breath, his fingers curling around the waistband of my underwear.
The sound of it being tugged down is barely a whisper, but it thunders in my ears as it slides over my hips, down my thighs, pooling at my heels like a discarded secret.
I exhale, unsteady, and he drops to one knee without ceremony, his shoulders pressing my legs apart with ease.
The sight of him kneeling before me—a man like Enzo Moretti, born of violence and shadow, on his knees—is enough to make my lungs seize.
Then his fingers are on me.
Two of them, long and calloused, dragging through my slick heat with maddening patience.
I bite my lip, hard, my hands splayed flat against the paneled wall behind me, anchoring myself as sensation licks up my spine like flame climbing oil.
‘You’re soaked,’ he murmurs, and the sound of his voice—quiet, like he’s just stumbled into something holy—nearly breaks me.
His fingers part me, slick and insistent, and I cry out as he slides one inside, slow and deep, curling against that secret place I didn’t even know I’d been aching to be touched.
The wall at my back becomes the only thing keeping me upright as he begins to move, measured and deliberate, learning me by feel, by the way my hips buck and my breath catches, by the way my moans catch on my tongue like prayers.
His thumb finds my clit, circling it with a touch that is both ruthless and adoring.
He adds a second finger, thicker now, stretching me, and the sensation is too much and not enough, a torment that builds and builds until I can’t remember my own name.
My head falls back against the wall with a soft thud, the chandelier light catching the sweat on my collarbone, the sapphires at my throat glittering like sin.
Enzo’s name spills from my mouth, breathless and broken, and I feel him groan against my skin, his fingers moving faster now, coaxing me toward the edge.
‘Come for me,’ he says, voice so low it doesn’t sound like speech, more like a command from something older than language. ‘I want to feel you fall apart on my hand.’
And when I do—when the pleasure crashes through me like lightning tearing through a storm cloud—I cry out his name like a vow I was never meant to make.
His mouth finds mine again as I come down, swallowing my shuddering breath, holding me steady while the rest of the world spins out beneath us.
