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BLOOD AND BIDDING
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2025-08-01 05:58:44The De Luca estate was never quiet for long.
By mid-morning, the halls buzzed with movement—men in suits, hushed conversations in Italian, the hum of danger so familiar it became background noise. Aria stayed out of the way. She’d learned early: silence was safer than curiosity. But today felt different. The air was heavier. Tighter. Even Clara, who usually smuggled her breakfast in with soft smiles and whispered jokes, didn’t say much. She only placed the tray down on Aria’s dresser and said, “Wear something black tonight.” “Why?” Clara didn’t answer. Just left with a look that said: don’t ask questions you’re not ready to survive. — By dusk, the estate looked transformed. Candles lit every hallway. Men and women filed in through the east entrance in sleek suits and backless gowns. No one smiled. Everything about the atmosphere whispered one word: Power. Aria stood by the window in a fitted black dress she hadn’t picked, her arms crossed, her stomach in knots. She hated how beautiful the dress was. Hated that she looked like someone who belonged in this world—when inside, she still felt like a girl trying not to drown. She spotted him from the balcony. Luciano. Dressed in tailored black-on-black. No tie. No smile. Just quiet command. He looked like he’d been carved from the same shadows he ruled. Their eyes met across the distance. He didn’t beckon her. Didn’t need to. She came. — The ballroom was cathedral-like. Marble floors. High glass ceilings. Chandeliers like cages dripping with gold. And in the center, an elevated platform. A stage. Aria felt her chest tighten. “What is this?” Luciano stood beside her, drink in hand, unreadable. “An auction.” Her blood ran cold. “Of what?” He looked down at her, eyes hard. “Of loyalty. Of punishment. Of favors owed and collected.” That didn’t make it better. Luciano leaned in slightly. “You’re safe.” “That’s not the same as free,” she said under her breath. A flicker passed through his expression—approval, maybe. Or warning. — The auction began. But it wasn’t objects they were bidding on. It was people. Men dragged forward in chains. Women with trembling shoulders. Names were announced, debts shouted, prices offered in crisp notes and nods. It was brutal. Elegant. Disgusting. Aria wanted to leave. She turned to Luciano, voice low. “Why are you showing me this?” “Because I need you to see what I am,” he said. “So when I tell you I’m dangerous, you’ll believe me.” Her throat went dry. “I already know what you are.” He didn’t deny it. But he didn’t look away either. — Later, after the room thinned and the air reeked of wine and smoke, Luciano led her to a smaller chamber off the main hall. Quieter. But not safer. He closed the door behind them. “You hate me right now.” “Yes,” she said simply. “Good.” He stepped closer. “Hatred is honest.” She stared at him. “Why bring me here? Why let me see all this?” “Because I’m not offering you a fantasy, Aria. I’m offering you truth.” She didn’t want it. Didn’t want the weight of it. But when he lifted her chin, his touch soft despite everything, she didn’t pull away. “Say it,” he murmured. “Say what?” “That you’re still here.” Her voice shook, but it came. “I’m still here.” He let go. And left her standing there—fuming, shaking, aching with questions. Not because he’d hurt her. But because she didn’t leave either. — That night, Aria couldn’t sleep. She sat by the window in her room, legs pulled to her chest, watching the stars above the stone walls. This place. This man. This world. It was poison wrapped in velvet. And somehow, she was still breathing. Still staying. Still… his.
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BOUGHT,TAMED AND TAKEN QUIET BEFORE THE STORM
The jet sliced through the clouds like a blade, silent except for the faint hum of engines and the occasional clink of ice settling in a glass. Aria sat by the window, arms wrapped around herself as the Alps rose beneath them—cold, sharp, merciless.Zurich lay not far now.Luciano hadn’t said a word in hours. He sat across from her, legs wide, hands clasped together as if holding something invisible in his grasp. His gun sat on the seat beside him, within reach but untouched.Aria broke the silence.“You haven’t told me what you’re going to say to him.”Luciano’s gaze remained locked on the clouds. “That depends on whether he walks into that room as my father… or as my enemy.”“Do you believe he’s really alive?”“I didn’t,” he said, finally turning to face her. “But now I do. And that changes everything.”A shadow passed across his features. Aria knew that look. The one he wore when he was calculating outcomes, loss, leverage. It wasn’t just a meeting. It was a battle with a man who’d
BOUGHT,TAMED AND TAKEN THE WEIGHT OF TRUTH
The silence in the room was deafening.Aria sat on the velvet couch, her knees drawn to her chest, the oversized robe Luciano had given her wrapped tight around her frame. Her hair was still damp from the cold shower she’d taken, as if she could wash away what she’d heard—what she’d seen. But nothing could rinse it off.Luciano’s father—Don Emilio Moretti—was alive.Luciano stood by the bar, his back to her. One hand clutched a crystal tumbler filled with dark scotch. He hadn’t taken a sip. Not since Isadora had left hours ago, her heels clicking against marble like war drums.“Say something,” Aria whispered, her voice hoarse.He didn’t turn. “What do you want me to say?”“That you’re not going to spiral again. That this time, you’ll let me in.”He exhaled—sharp, jagged. “My father was supposed to be dead. I buried what was left of him in a sealed casket. For years, I’ve lived like he was a ghost that haunted me.”“Luciano…”“Do you understand what this means?” He finally turned, eyes
BOUGHT,TAMED AND TAKEN THE MEMORY THAT BLEEDS
Aria sat stiffly at the war room table, her knuckles white where they gripped the edge. The entire estate buzzed with alarms now silenced, and the cold clarity of threat hung heavy in the air. Screens blinked with updated feeds. Guards were being repositioned. Blood was being mopped off the marble in some distant hallway.But nothing, not even the presence of safety, could quiet the noise in her head.Luciano stood beside her, one hand resting protectively on her shoulder. His other held the message they’d taken off the guard’s corpse—written in blood, on a torn page of an old book.The words scrawled across the page were unmistakable:She remembers what she was made for.“What does it mean?” Aria asked finally, her voice quieter than a whisper.No one in the room answered right away.Isadora shifted on her feet near the screens, arms crossed tightly. Mateo leaned against the back wall, eyes dark and unreadable.Luciano answered without looking at her. “I think he’s talking about your
BOUGHT,TAMED AND TAKEN BENEATH THE SURFACE
Aria’s heart slammed against her ribs, each beat echoing louder in the suffocating silence. The screen remained black, the faint mechanical hum of the vault’s systems eerily absent. But it was the voice—that low, gravel-slick whisper—that rooted her to the cold concrete floor.“You should’ve stayed mine.”She spun toward the corner where the sound had hissed from the ceiling speaker. “Show yourself,” she said, though her voice trembled more than she wanted.No response.Her fingers hovered near the emergency panel on the far wall. But it wasn’t lit. Disabled. Just like everything else.She grabbed a knife from one of the weapon racks, her fingers white-knuckled. She moved with her back to the wall, eyes darting across the room—corners, ceiling vents, behind shelves. There was nowhere to hide. The room was small, sterile, impenetrable.And yet someone—or something—was in here with her.The lights flickered once. Twice. Then shut off completely.Total darkness.Aria clamped a hand over
BOUGHT,TAMED AND TAKEN WHAT THE DARKNESS HIDES
The world slowed.Outside the window, beneath the moonlit shroud of trees, the shadow didn’t move—but Aria’s breath caught as if it had already stepped inside her bones. The glass pane between them suddenly felt too thin, too breakable.Luciano pulled her behind him in a blink, one arm tight around her waist as he turned toward Mateo. “Get eyes on that figure. Now.”Mateo was already speaking into his comms, barking orders. A flurry of guards rushed into motion, some storming out toward the north gate, others sweeping the hallways.Luciano turned back to the window just as the figure stepped back into the trees and vanished.He didn’t wait. He dragged Aria toward the hallway, tension thick in every movement. “We’re going underground.”She struggled to keep pace. “Where are we going?”“There’s a vault below the estate,” he said without looking back. “One of the few places only I can access. No signal. No sight lines. He won’t find you there.”“But—what about your people? Your sister? L
BOUGHT,TAMED AND TAKEN THE VOICE OF A GHOST
The pitch-black silence swallowed the room whole.No one moved. No one breathed.Antonio Moretti’s voice had slithered into their ears like poison—low, calm, measured… and real.Alive.Luciano’s hand instinctively went to Aria’s waist, pulling her close, shielding her with his body as the darkness pressed in around them.Aria could barely hear her own thoughts over the pounding of her heart.The voice from the speaker repeated, now softer—mocking.“You took everything from me once. And now you’ve brought it all back together. How poetic.”Then static.Then silence.The emergency backup lights flickered to life a few seconds later, casting the dining hall in a sickly red glow. Shadows crawled along the walls. The air smelled faintly of electricity and fear.Isadora stood calmly at the end of the table, her expression unreadable, like she’d known this moment was coming.Luciano turned to her slowly. “How long have you been in contact with him?”She didn’t answer.Instead, she smiled fai
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