Chapter: Chapter 41: The Girl Who Died and Lived AgainLeona’s POV It's been over two months now but I can't forget that night.The night I left, the world didn’t end...it just went silent.No sirens. No footsteps. No shouting in the hall. Only my heartbeat, pounding too fast for a body that hadn’t run far enough yet.I didn’t look back. If I did, I might see him or his shadow in the doorway, the weight of everything I still wanted to say but never could. So I kept walking until the city swallowed me whole.When I reached Nora’s place, the sky was just starting to turn midnight blue. My fingers trembled as I pressed the buzzer. One ring. Two. Then the door opened, and there she was...barefoot, hair in a messy bun, eyes wide like she’d seen a ghost.She didn’t ask questions. She just pulled me in.“Leona?” she whispered, clutching my shoulders like she wasn’t sure I was real.“I can’t stay,” I said. My voice cracked on the words. “I just...needed to see you before I disappear.”Her expression flickered between fear and determination. “Th
Last Updated: 2025-10-21
Chapter: Chapter 40: When the Lights Went OutDante's POV The dark hit me like a hand to the chest, not the mere absence of light but the thick, watching kind of dark that presses against your skin and whispers of things you can’t control. For weeks I’d been living in a half-shadow, but that night the shadow moved.The chandelier over my desk sputtered, sank to a shudder, came back, then stuttered again, once, twice and died. The generator kicked and the lights stayed black. Old instincts rose, cold and precise. check the feed, lock the gates, arm the men.I was already on my feet. The house was a different place in the dark; corridors that had been corridors of comfort became tunnels into the unknown. My men moved like phantoms, soft feet and low curses, but there was a wrongness under their efficiency, a tremor that said we were late.The first sound that made every hair on my skin stand on end was the gunshot.It came from the east wing. Not a crash or a shout ... a single, clean report that echoed and fell. For a second I di
Last Updated: 2025-10-13
Chapter: Chapter 39: Days without herDante's POV Luca appeared, disheveled but sharp-eyed, pulling on his jacket as he approached. “What happened?”“She’s gone.”His face stilled. That unshakable calm of his faltered, if only for a breath. Then he was moving. “Cameras. Guards. Every exit. We’ll find her.”I followed, but the mansion’s halls blurred around me. All I could see was the way she had looked at me before sleep stole her ... broken, glass-eyed, clutching herself as if she were trying to hold the pieces in.My chest tightened.I told myself she was still here, just hiding, sulking, punishing me the way she knew best. But each second stretched thin, brittle. Each door we opened, each room we tore apart without finding her ... it hollowed me further.When the cameras showed nothing, my fury turned inward.“She didn’t vanish into thin air,” I growled, shoving the table. The screen rattled, one of the men flinched. “Check again!”But the recordings yielded nothing. Just Leona walking the halls hours earlier… then sil
Last Updated: 2025-10-10
Chapter: Chapter 38: The Door Between UsLeona’s POVThe room was quiet, but my body wasn’t.Every nerve still hummed, overstimulated, like a violin string plucked too hard and left trembling. His touch lingered like fire in my skin, and yet all I felt was the coldness that followed it. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, my chest rising and falling too quickly, as though my body hadn’t caught up to my mind.Beside me, Dante slept. His breaths were steady, deep, powerful as if the weight of what had just happened was nothing. As if he hadn’t just ripped me open with his hunger and left me hollow inside.I turned my head to look at him. Even in sleep, he looked like a man carved out of granite and steel ... Beautiful, unmovable, untouchable. A man the world feared. My husband. My captor. My… destroyer.A bitter laugh almost escaped me, but it died in my throat. I couldn’t risk waking him. Not now. Not when my thoughts were finally clear enough to stitch themselves together.I should have known. All along, I should have
Last Updated: 2025-10-07
Chapter: Chapter 37: The Promise of Tomorrow Leona's POV His hand was rough, searing against my skin as it slid beneath the hem of my shirt, fingertips dragging over my stomach. My breath hitched, body jerking against him even as I hissed, “Don’t touch me...”But the words lacked fire. They came out broken, half-sob, half-moan, and the bastard knew it. I saw it in his eyes, the flicker of triumph mixed with his own desperation.“You don’t want me to stop,” Dante muttered, his lips brushing my ear. “Say you do, and I will. But don’t lie to me, Leona.”My chest heaved. My wrists twisted in his grip. And the truth sat like poison on my tongue. I did want him to stop, but I also didn’t. God help me, my body was betraying me, every nerve screaming for him even as my heart shattered into pieces.Instead of answering, I spat back, “I hate you.”His response was immediate, his mouth slammed back onto mine, bruising, punishing, swallowing the confession whole. His tongue tangled with mine, forceful, commanding, and I bit him again, tast
Last Updated: 2025-10-04
Chapter: Chapter 36: Fractured Reflections Leona’s POVThe walls of the bedroom closed in on me the moment the door slammed shut behind me. My chest heaved, and I pressed my back against the wood as though it could hold me together while the truth ripped me apart.Seraphina Rinaldi.The name echoed in my skull like a curse I never asked for. I slid down to the floor, my palms trembling as I buried my face in them. Hot, angry tears streamed through the cracks between my fingers.All my life I thought I was Leona Moretti. A nurse. An orphan. A survivor. A girl who had built herself out of scraps of grief and stubbornness. But now...now I was supposed to believe I was the last blood of a dynasty massacred before I could even remember them?My memories, the few scattered fragments I had of childhood, flashed across my mind. A woman with kind hands singing me to sleep. The scent of lemon soap on clothes hung in a garden-like backyard. A laugh, deep and rumbling, when I would reach out for arms that always felt too strong, too safe.
Last Updated: 2025-10-03
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