Legally Bound

Kira's POV

The storage room smelled of mothballs and pure neglect.

I pressed my back against the cold wall, my fingers trembling as I shoved the black slab of circuitry and wires into the hollow gap behind the loose floorboard. My electricity grid cracker…the only thing in this house that was truly mine. The only proof that I wasn't just the fat, forgotten spare part they shoved into corners.

My chest tightened and I urged myself to pull it together.

The familiar vice grip around my ribs squeezed harder as my vision spotted at the edges. I had learned to live with the fainting, the way my heart stuttered and stalled like a faulty engine. They knew. The doctors had told them I was suffering from mitral valve insufficiency, frequent syncope and that I needed monitoring.

But they didn't care.

They hadn't cared when I was the only daughter they had. And now that she was back…

"Kira!"

My adoptive mother's voice sliced through the dark like a blade. Sharp. Impatient. Disgusted.

I shoved the board fully into the gap, kicked a moth-eaten blanket over it, and scrambled to my feet. My head swam again and I grabbed the shelf to steady myself.

"Coming, Mother."

The door swung open, and Rosalia Valenti stood there, her silk dress immaculate and her eyes flicking over me like she was inspecting garbage. "You're still in those rags? The guests are almost here. Get out. Now."

I stepped into the hallway, light flooding my face. I hadn't seen the second floor in weeks. They'd moved me to the basement storage room the day Isabella arrived. More room for the real daughter. I had watched my own bedroom get stripped, my clothes donated and my photos replaced with Isabella's.

I had been erased. And now I was supposed to be grateful for the scraps.

"Can you even hear me, you useless girl?" Rosalia grabbed my arm, nails digging in. "We don't have time for your dizziness. Walk."

The makeover was a humiliation dressed up as a gift.

Three maids yanked me into Isabella's old room—no, her new room, because Isabella couldn't stand the thought of sleeping in a room that had touched my skin. They stripped me down, pressed a corset so tight my ribs screamed, and poured me into a burgundy gown that was two sizes too small.

"You're swelling," one maid muttered as she yanked the zipper.

"She's always swelled," another laughed.

I swallowed the burn in my throat. I'd been "cute" and "chubby" before. Now I was disgusting, fat and a leech. Isabella had brought a mirror into the dining room on her first night back and made me watch as she compared our reflections. "Look at you," she had purred. "Even the light bends away from you."

Rosalia shoved a pair of pearl earrings into my ears, twisting them hard enough to draw blood. "Smile. Pretend you're not an embarrassment."

"Mother…" My voice cracked. My chest constricted again, tighter this time as black spots danced at the edges of my vision. "My heart. It's…it's acting up. I can barely breathe. Please, I need to sit down…"

"Stop it." Rosalia's hand shot out, gripping my chin and forcing me to meet her eyes. "You always do this. You always play the victim. Your heart is fine. You're just dramatic and lazy. You think if you faint, we'll feel sorry for you? We won't. So stand up straight and stop embarrassing me."

My vision swam as my heart hammered against my ribs like a caged bird desperate to escape. I wanted to collapse. I wanted to scream. Instead, I swallowed the acid rising in my throat and forced my spine to straighten.

"Good girl," Rosalia murmured, patting my cheek like a dog. "Now smile. Pretend you're not a disappointment."

"Why are you dressing me like this?"

Rosalia's hand froze.

I met her eyes. "You haven't looked at me in three months. Why now?"

Her smile was a knife. "Because, my dear, you're finally useful."

The parlor was all marble and gilded gold, chandeliers that cost more than my entire education. And in the center, two men in tailored black suits stood like statues, their faces carved from ice. Behind them, two bodyguards the size of refrigerators with their hands clasped in front and their eyes dead.

Between them, on a silver tray, sat an envelope.

Deep burgundy. Gold wax. The crest of a wolf devouring a crescent moon.

Volkov.

I felt the name hit my chest like a brick. Even in Italy, Volkov made people shiver. The Russian wolves who played at business while their hands dripped blood. Every crime family on the continent knelt to them, or they didn't kneel at all.

"Is this the daughter?" the taller emissary asked. His voice was granite and his accent thick as winter frost. His gaze dropped to my body—my chest, my waist, my hips—and his lip curled. "This is what you're offering to settle your debts?"

Rosalia's face flushed as she shoved me forward. "This is our daughter. Kira."

Daughter? I almost laughed. Not daughter. They'd never called me daughter without it dripping with sarcasm. And now I was being presented like a prized heifer, and even the emissaries were disgusted by what they saw.

The taller emissary studied me again. Disappointment radiated off him like heat. "Sign."

A document slid across the table.

I looked down and saw that my name was already printed. Kira Valenti, legally bound to Xander Volkov in matrimony.

My blood went cold.

"I don't…"

"Sign," my father said harshly. Lorenzo Valenti had never raised his voice at me. He had simply stopped looking at me. Now he stared through me like I was glass. "You will marry the second son. So don't make this ugly."

I signed as my hand shook so badly the ink smeared.

The emissaries took the document, nodded once, and walked out. No congratulations. No goodbyes. Just the thunder of footsteps, followed by the slam of the front door, and silence.

I stared at my parents. "What did you just do?"

Lorenzo exhaled through his nose. "You're marrying into the Volkov family. It's an honor."

"Honor?" My voice cracked. "I just signed a contract to marry a man I've never met!"

"He's crippled," Rosalia said, pouring herself a glass of wine. "Impotent. A lunatic, they say. But the Volkovs needed to settle a debt. They offered a bride price that clears our entire deficit. You understand business, don't you?"

"Understand…" My chest seized and I grabbed the back of a chair. "I have a heart condition. I can't even stand for ten minutes without fainting. And you're giving me to a crippled murderer?"

"You think I'd send Isabella?" Rosalia laughed. "My real daughter? To that monster? Don't be absurd, Kira. We raised you. Fed you. Paid for your schooling. This is how you repay us."

"We never asked for you," Lorenzo added quietly. "You were a burden we took on out of pity. Now you're a debt to be settled."

The words landed like punches.

My vision swam and my heart stammered. I could feel myself tilting, the edges of the room going dark, but I forced myself to stay upright. I would not faint in front of them. Never.

"We're not heartless," Rosalia said, gesturing with her glass. "We'll give you a small allowance. Enough to survive. But you'll never set foot in this house again."

"I never set foot in it anyway," I whispered. "You shoved me in a storage room."

"And you stayed," Rosalia smiled. "Because you know you belong in the dark."

The click of heels echoed down the hallway and I knew who it was before I even looked up.

Isabella Valenti swept into the room like a breath of expensive perfume and contempt. She was beautiful in the way that drowning was beautiful—effortless, cold, all-consuming. Her dress was white, she had real diamonds and a really vicious smile.

"Done already?" Isabella glanced at the empty tray where the envelope had sat. "Did the cripple's messengers leave? I wanted to see them grovel."

"They were professionals," Lorenzo said softly. To Isabella, his voice was honey. To me, it had always been gravel. "The wedding is tomorrow."

Isabella turned to me. Her gaze crawled down my body like a bug. "You're wearing my dress."

"It's the only one that fit."

"No," Isabella corrected, stepping closer. "Even this is too small for you. You're practically bursting at the seams. Let me guess…they didn't tell you what they were dressing you for until you signed?"

I said nothing.

Isabella laughed. "Oh, this is precious. You thought you were getting a gift. A nice dress, a pretty moment. And instead, you got sold." She circled me like a shark. "To a man who can't even stand. Who can't even perform. They say he has to be wheeled everywhere. That he shakes uncontrollably and that he's killed more men than he's spoken to."

"So I've heard."

"And you…" Her finger jabbed into my shoulder. "You're a fat, pathetic, fainting mouse of a girl. Do you know what they'll do to you in that house? The servants will mock you. The family will eat you alive. And your husband? He'll be too useless to protect you from the wall, much less his own relatives."

My heart thudded. It was hard and painful but I kept my face blank.

Isabella tilted her head. "A crippled beast and a bloated substitute. You two are a perfect match. Honestly, I should thank you. If you hadn't been such a convenient, desperate little leech, they might have forced me to marry that…that thing." She shuddered dramatically.

"Don't worry," I said quietly. "I wouldn't wish you on anyone."

Isabella's eyes flashed as she stepped closer, her perfume choking my lungs. "You don't get to speak to me like that. You're not a Valenti anymore. You never were. You're just a stray they took in and now they're selling to the highest bidder."

"Isabella," Rosalia warned lightly. "Enough."

"Let her have her moment," Lorenzo said. "We won't see her again."

Isabella smiled, stepped back, smoothed her dress, and looked at herself in the gilded mirror above the fireplace. At the perfect hair, the perfect skin, the perfect life.

"Now," she breathed, "I can properly take my place as the real Valenti daughter."

My chest burned.

The real daughter. The cherished one. The one who got the bedrooms, the diamonds, the love…simply because she shared their blood. Meanwhile, I had spent eighteen years being invisible, then despised, then sold.

I looked down at my hands. The hands that had signed away my freedom.

But those hands had also built an electricity grid cracker in the dark. Those hands could reroute city power grids. Those hands could burrow into any server, any database, any locked file the Volkov family kept hidden.

They had sold a stray, a leech, a fat, fainting failure.

They had no idea what they had just let into the Russian wolves' den.

I lifted my chin as my heart slammed against my ribs. The black spots crept at the edges of my vision. But I smiled.

Tomorrow. I'd survive tomorrow. And then? Then I'd find out exactly why the name Volkov made men tremble.

Because the second son wasn't the only one wearing a mask.