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THREADS OF FIRE
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2025-08-01 06:03:33The charm was warm in Aria’s palm by morning.
She’d slept with it under her pillow, as if the weight of someone else’s grief might quiet her own. It didn’t. But it gave her something to hold onto—something real in a house where everything felt like a performance. She slipped it into her pocket before leaving the room. Downstairs, the halls were eerily still. No guards hovered near the doors, and even the staff moved with hushed urgency. Something was off. In the dining room, Luciano sat alone at the head of the table, dressed in black, a glass of scotch untouched beside him. He didn’t look up when she walked in. But he spoke. “You weren’t supposed to see me yesterday.” She paused. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He finally looked at her. “You didn’t interrupt. You reminded me I’m still visible.” Aria sat at the far end, unsure if she was invited or testing him. “You say things like you want to be known,” she said carefully. “But then you shut every door that opens.” His eyes darkened. “I never said I wanted to be known. Just obeyed.” Her chest tightened. “And what if someone wanted more than that?” Luciano laughed—but there was no humor in it. “Then they’d die disappointed.” — Midday brought a storm. Thunder cracked through the sky like the world was splitting open. Rain pelted the estate, smearing the windows with streaks that blurred the world outside. Aria stayed in the music room, her fingers ghosting over the piano keys. She hadn’t played since her father died. The memory of it—of small hands reaching for beauty in a house filled with silence—made her stomach twist. But this place… this gilded cage… had woken something up in her. A need. A fire. She pressed a key. Then another. The sound was soft, unsure—but it was hers. — Luciano watched from the doorway, silent. He didn’t speak until the final note lingered like smoke. “You’re good.” Aria turned slowly. “I used to play for peace. Now I play so I don’t scream.” He stepped inside, every movement deliberate. “You’re changing.” She met his gaze. “Or maybe I’m remembering.” Luciano nodded, as if that meant something to him. “You think you can remember who you are in a place like this?” Aria stood. “I think I have to.” — That night, he didn’t summon her. But she found herself outside his study anyway. She knocked once. No answer. She opened the door. Luciano sat in the dark, back to the fireplace, eyes on nothing. She didn’t speak. Just walked to the armchair across from him and sat. Minutes passed. Then his voice came, rough and low. “Do you know what they said when Adriano died?” Aria said nothing. “They said it was my fault. That I made him soft. That I should’ve taught him to kill instead of read.” He looked at her. “I did both. It still wasn’t enough.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “You loved him.” Luciano didn’t blink. “More than I knew how to say.” A silence settled. Not heavy. Just real. And then he asked, “Why haven’t you tried to run again?” Aria held his gaze. “Because for the first time in years, I feel like someone sees me.” Luciano’s jaw clenched. “Don’t make me care about you.” Her heart stumbled. “Why not?” “Because caring is a weakness people use to gut you from the inside.” — Aria stood slowly, walking to where he sat. She leaned down, her hand gently brushing his cheek. “You’re already gutted, Luciano.” His eyes burned into hers. “And yet, you’re still standing.” She turned and walked out, heart hammering. She didn’t see the way his hand curled around the charm at his throat. The one she thought he’d forgotten.
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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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