Chapter Two: The Bride in White

Romano’s POV

“Do you know what your problem is?”

My father’s voice cut through the room like a blade, I didn’t answer, I remained silent..

I stood near the floor-to-ceiling window of his hotel suite, one hand inside my pocket while the city of Milan glowed beneath us. Midnight lights beaming around; a sight I was used to in a city that belonged to men like him– Men like us.

Behind me, I heard a very loud noise, glass slammed against the table.

“You have everything a man could want,” he continued. “Power, fear, control, respect. Fear. Yet you walk around like someone stole something from you.”

My jaw tightened slightly.

Enzo Ciel hated silence unless it came from him.

“You called me here to insult me?” I asked calmly.

“No.” His tone sharpened. “I called you here because you’re running out of time.”

I looked over my shoulder slowly. My father sat in his chair like a king on a throne. Gray slowly took over his dark hair now, but age hadn’t weakened him not even a bit, if anything, it made him colder, more dangerous.

“You think because you’re my son, the empire automatically becomes yours?” he asked. “That isn’t how this works.”

I said nothing, I know how much he hated my silence.

“You’ve spent years building fear around your name, Romano, good. Fear keeps people obedient.” He leaned back slightly. “But men don’t follow ghosts forever, they follow stability.”

I scoffed at the irony, nothing about us or our world was stable.

“You want the empire?” he asked quietly. “Then get married.”

The words sat heavily in the room, I was waiting for a follow up, to take back or rephrase, but none came. It’s the one thing I had avoided for years.

Not because I couldn’t have it, because I had seen exactly what it did to people. Love made people like us weak, marriage makes us predictable and vulnerable, which gets us killed. My mother proved that. A woman my father once claimed to love buried because enemies discovered she mattered to him.

Enzo leaned forward.

“The council thinks you’re unstable.”

I laughed once.

“They’re afraid of me.”

“No,” he replied. “They’re afraid of what happens after you.”

My expression hardened.

“You have no wife, no children, no political alliances, no successor. You’ve spent years hunting ghosts and making enemies.”

He let the words settle.

“The men on that council don’t care how feared you are, they care about continuity, they want proof that when you inherit this empire, it won’t die with you.”

“ So you’re asking for a wife,” I said flatly.

“I’m demanding one.”

Silence stretched between us.

“You have one month,” my father continued. “After that, there is nothing for you.”

That finally made me look at him. Enzo held my gaze for a moment before speaking again.

“Do you think this is about inheritance?”

I said nothing.

“If you refuse, the council will need another successor.”

A cold feeling settled in my chest, I already knew where this was going.

“There are men who would be happy to take your place,” he continued. “Men who understand loyalty, men who understand stability.”

One face immediately came to mind. A face I had spent years trying to forget, the same man whose betrayal had put my mother in the ground. The same man who should have died for it, how could they forget so easily what he had caused us.

My jaw tightened.

Enzo noticed.

“Exactly,” he said quietly. “Refuse this marriage, Romano, and I won’t stop them from putting him where you should be.”

The words should not have affected me, but they did. Not because I needed his approval, I stopped needing that years ago; but because no matter how powerful I became, every conversation with Enzo Ciel still felt like being fifteen years old again standing in front of a man impossible to satisfy.

I stared at him for a long moment before reaching for my coat.

“You already planned this before calling me here,” I said.

“Of course I did.”

I gave a humorless smile.

Control, that was all he understood, that was how I grew up.

As I walked toward the door, his voice stopped me one last time.

“Marriage isn’t about love,” Enzo said. “It’s about stability. It tells the council you’re capable of building something instead of simply destroying it.”

I left without answering.

The penthouse doors shut behind me quietly.

But my father’s words followed anyway,

“One month” I muttered silently.

Marry or lose everything.

The private elevator ride down felt suffocating, by the time I stepped outside the hotel, the cold air barely helped. Milan’s streets glowed beneath the city lights while expensive cars lined the entrance.

People moved around me carefully, most recognized me immediately but no one approached. I started walking, no security, no driver, I needed silence more than company.

My hands stayed inside my coat pockets as I crossed the street, my father’s voice replaying in my head over and over again.

You need a wife, the thought irritated me more than it should have.

A contract, a performance, another business arrangement pretending to be something real.

Across the street, another luxury hotel overflowed with wedding guests dressed in expensive suits and gowns. White flowers decorated the entrance.

A wedding, perfect timing, seemed like the universe was telling me something. I looked away immediately.

Then I felt someone’s shoulder brush mine walking towards the busy road.

Soft and unsteady, my reflexes reacted before my brain did.

I grabbed her wrist hard and pulled her backward just as a black car sped past us.

The horn blared loudly down the street.

“What the hell are you doing?”

The woman looked up instantly.

And for one strange second, everything around me went quiet.

A bride.

White dress, smudged makeup, glossy eyes filled with shock and heartbreak. Even in her current state, she was impossible not to notice, she looked beautiful. There was something about her expression, like she had just lost something important and was trying not to let the world see it.

Then I noticed she was trembling.

My eyes moved over her slowly taking in the abandoned veil, the wedding dress dragging against the pavement.

Runaway bride.

“You almost got yourself killed,” I said flatly.

She swallowed hard like my face scared her but for some reason, I couldn’t stop looking at her.

Because standing in front of me was a woman who looked exactly how I felt, trapped.