Chapter 2 – Ultimatum

The papers are still on the vanity when my legs give out.

I stumble back onto the stool, marriage certificate limp in my hands, the black letters of my name, and his burning like they’ve been branded into my retinas.

Wife.

The word looks wrong next to my face in the mirror. Wrong next to smeared lipstick and stage sweat and the girl who swore she would never belong to anyone again.

My chest tightens. The room feels too small.

I shove my feet back into my boots, not even bothering with the zippers and barreling for the door.

The hallway outside is a strip of harsh fluorescent light and scuffed concrete. The roar of the crowd is still a dull thunder through the walls, but in here, it sounds like it’s happening in another universe.

“Luna!”

Mia’s voice hits me from the side.

She sprints toward me from the catering room, tablet clutched to her chest, headset half off, messy bun threatening to fall apart. She skids to a stop when she sees my face.

“Whoa.” Her eyes go wide. “You look like you saw an actual demon.”

“Close enough,” I rasp. “He’s alive.”

“Who is?” she asks, then her brain catches up. “No. No way. Don’t tell me—”

“Dante,” I say.

The syllables feel like glass in my mouth.

Her fingers clamp around my forearms. “The Dante? Rooftop‑wine Dante? Slept‑on‑a‑mattress‑on‑the‑floor Dante?”

“The one who left a note and ‘died in a fire’ Dante,” I say. I almost laugh; it comes out like a choke. “Apparently rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated.”

She stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. “You’ve been awake for how many hours? Are you sure this isn’t your brain protecting you from burnout?”

“I’m not hallucinating.” My nails dig into her skin. “He was in my dressing room. He—” Heat floods my face. “He kissed me. And then he showed me a marriage certificate with our names on it and told me I’m his wife.”

Mia’s mouth drops open.

Then she snaps it shut. “Okay,” she says very calmly. “We’re going to march right back in there and prove this is just a very fancy psychotic break.”

She spins toward the dressing room door.

It opens before we reach it.

He fills the frame like a storm cloud in a suit. Jacket unbuttoned now, shirt still open at the throat, not a hair out of place. The blood is gone from his cuff; the only physical evidence of what just happened is a faint smear of my lipstick at the corner of his mouth and the red mark on his lower lip where I bit him.

His gaze slides from me to Mia and back again, taking us in with one slow sweep.

“Mia,” he says, like he’s checking an item off a list.

She goes very still. “You know my name,” she says flatly.

“I make a point of knowing the names of people closest to my assets,” he replies.

My stomach flips. “I’m not an asset.”

His eyes cut to me, dark and unreadable. “No,” he says. “You’re the balance sheet someone tried to cook.”

I don’t know what that means, but it makes Mia’s grip on my wrist tighten.

“Who let you back here?” she demands. “Security is—”

“Works for me tonight,” he says, not bothering to hide the impatience. “As does your primary sponsor. And the company that owns your jet.”

My throat goes dry.

Mia swears under her breath. “You’re Moretti Holdings,” she whispers. “Like… *that* Moretti Holdings.”

He tips his head slightly, like she’s finally catching up. “And you,” he says to her, “are currently blocking a hallway we need to walk down.”

“Luna’s not going anywhere with you,” Mia snaps.

“Mia.” My voice shakes. “It’s okay.”

She swivels on me. “No, it’s not. He shows up from the dead and starts throwing corporate names around, and suddenly we’re all just supposed to—”

“Go stall the label,” I cut in. “Please.”

Her jaw works. She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t trust it. But she knows that tone. It’s the one I use before I walk onstage and can’t be pulled back.

“I’ll be right outside that door,” she says, low. “Scream if you need me.”

She shoulders past Dante with a glare that could strip paint and disappear down the corridor.

We’re alone.

Not really—two suited men lurk just beyond Dante’s shoulders—but close enough. The air between us hums like a live wire.

“You came prepared,” I say. “Bodyguards. Corporate takeovers. Lipstick.”

He glances at my mouth, then back to my eyes. “You always did like an audience.”

“We’re backstage at my show,” I snap. “Sorry I didn’t clear your assault and battery scene with my tour manager.”

The corner of his mouth almost twitches. Almost. “We need to talk,” he says. “Preferably somewhere you’re not going to bolt from.”

“Try me.”

He turns and starts walking down the hall without checking if I follow.

He always did that. Assumed I’d be there when he turned around.

The worst part is that I do follow, boots thudding against the concrete, because wherever this conversation goes, I’m not letting him have the last word.

He leads us away from the main traffic of crew and sponsors, down a quieter service corridor that smells like bleach and old beer. In the end, a heavy side door stands propped open, letting in a cool slice of night.

Beyond it, under the jaundiced glow of a security lamp, a black car, and an SUV idle. More men in suits stand nearby, talking to stadium staff in low voices. Their posture is all deference to him, even when their backs are turned.

I’ve had security for years. They’re always trying to look invisible.

No one here is pretending.

Dante stops a few paces from the door and faces me. The men behind him subtly shift, placing themselves so he’s the most protected object in the room.

“You want to tell me what the hell this is?” I demand, holding up the papers like a weapon. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like fraud.”

“From where you’re standing,” he says, “it looks like the night before your first tour. Brooklyn. Cheap hotel room. A man you trusted telling you to sign a stack of papers so no one could take advantage of you.”

I flinch.

“Jimmy,” I say. “This is about Jimmy?”

“Your ex‑manager,” Dante confirms. “Yes.”

“He’s a greedy asshole, not a villain in a mob movie,” I snap. “He skimmed off the top, broke promises, sure, but he didn’t—”

“He did,” Dante cuts in sharply. “He took an advance against your future earnings from a man in Naples who doesn’t know the difference between an artist and a product.”

The nausea rises so fast that it makes my head swim. “What advance?”

“He bet on you,” Dante says. “He took money from someone who wanted the rights to your contracts, your image, your time. And when that wasn’t enough collateral, he sweetened the deal.”

My fingers go numb around the papers. “Sweetened how?”

Dante’s gaze doesn’t flinch. “He offered you.”

The words hang there, heavy and obscene.

“My agent would never—”

“He wasn’t your agent,” Dante snaps. “He was a small‑time operator with a drinking problem and a sixty‑page gambling ledger. You were nineteen. Hungry. Desperate. You trusted the wrong man. He didn’t sell your songs, Luna. He sold you.”

My knees lock.

Memories flash: Jimmy waving contracts at my face in our cramped studio. Me hunched over a notebook, writing my first EP track while he muttered, “Let me handle the boring stuff. You just sing. You wanna be famous or not?” The way he’d pat my shoulder and say, “You’ll thank me when you’re rich.”

I thought he was talking about percentages.

“What does this have to do with you?” I whisper.

“Everything.” He glances at the certificate in my hand. “He signed an agreement handing control of your career and person to that man in Naples. Before it was filed, I found out. I bought him out. Ten times what you were worth on paper.”

My head snaps up. “Bought who out?”

“You,” he says simply.

The word rings in my skull.

“I didn’t know,” I say. It sounds lame even to my own ears.

“Of course you didn’t.” Some of the ice in his gaze melts, just for a heartbeat. “He made sure you wouldn’t. Do you remember what I said when I put that pen in your hand?”

The hotel room resurfaces—threadbare carpet, a bed that squeaked every time we breathed. Dante behind me, arms around my waist, chin on my shoulder, papers spread on the pillow. His voice low in my ear: *It’s just for protection, little star. If anyone tries to screw you, I want it on record they have to go through me first.*

“I thought you were talking about bad contracts,” I say, throat tight. “Not… not this.”

“I was talking about all of it,” he says. “The fastest way to make sure your control shifted from a trafficker to someone with at least a shred of conscience was a legal bond the court couldn’t ignore. Marriage. With clauses.”

“So you married me to win a dick‑measuring contest with a loan shark,” I say. “Romantic.”

His eyes flash. “I married you to keep you alive.”

“You left me,” I shoot back. “If you cared that much, maybe don’t vanish the second my first album drops.”

His jaw tics. “If I stayed, he would have known exactly who to use to get leverage on me. Do you think I wanted you anywhere near my surname when half my uncles are in prison?”

“So you just watched?” I say. “From a distance? For seven years?”

He doesn’t look away. “I couldn’t move until your name was worth enough to protect,” he says. “Until you were too big to disappear quietly if he tried.”

The admission knocks something loose in my chest I don’t want to name.

“So what now?” I ask. “You show up seven years later, swing your money around, kiss me like you have a right, and drag me back to your castle to be your pet wife?”

His eyes go darker. “It’s not a castle.”

“Sorry. Fortress. Lair. Murder villa. Pick your poison.”

He exhales, a long, slow drag of air. “This isn’t a joke, Luna.”

“Nothing about this is funny,” I snap.

One of his men murmurs into an earpiece near the door. The stadium’s distant roar has dulled; the show is truly over now, the crowd spilling out into the night. Out there, I’m a goddess. In here, I’m a girl in a hallway finding out she was almost sold like a guitar.

“Your ex‑manager is gone,” Dante says. “He took his payout and crawled into whatever hole breeds men like him. The man he sold you to did not forget you. Your little name‑drop stunt in *Bleed for Me* reminded him you exist.”

My blood runs cold. “Name‑drop—”

“You think he doesn’t listen when the woman he almost bought sings some distorted version of her lover’s name on global radio?” Dante shakes his head. “He’s been asking questions. If I let go now, he’ll take his original contract and every lawyer on his payroll to a judge and claim you were stolen from him.”

“And what?” I say hoarsely. “The judge gives me to him with a bow on top?”

“Maybe not,” Dante says. “But while your label scrambles to protect itself, while your fans argue online about whether you’re telling the truth, while the cops shrug and say ‘it’s complicated,’ men like him don’t wait. They take.”

For a moment, I can’t feel my legs.

“This is insane,” I whisper. “This is not my life. I’m not—I’m not some trafficked girl off the street. I’m—”

“You’re exactly the kind of prize a man like that loves,” Dante says, quiet and cruelly honest. “Beautiful. Young. Famous. If he owns you, he owns headlines. He owns leverage. He owns the satisfaction of knowing he took something from me.”

The way he says it—*he took something from me*—makes my stomach lurch.

“I’m not a trophy in your pissing contest,” I say.

“No,” he agrees. “You’re the only thing that ever made me care who won.”

The words hang between us, startling and raw.

Before I can respond, footsteps pound down the hall.

“Luna!”

Rafael’s voice.

He barrels around the corner, curls a mess, shirt half‑buttoned, eyes wild. Two of Dante’s men step in front of him. Rafael shoves one back with more force than I’d expect from a guy who spends most of his life in a studio.

“Move,” he snarls. “Touch me again, and I’ll sue you personally, cabrón. Luna!”

“I’m fine!” I call, automatically, even though ‘fine’ left the building an hour ago.

Rafael’s gaze snaps to me. He takes in my smeared lipstick, my bare legs, Dante looming in front of me.

His face goes from alarm to murder.

“You,” he says to Dante. “Of course it’s you.”

Dante regards him like an interesting insect. “Cruz.”

“You two know each other?” I demand.

“Producers talk,” Rafael says tightly, never taking his eyes off Dante. “Especially when some silent investor starts blocking deals and buying up pieces of the industry.”

His look says the rest: *I’ve been fighting this man’s shadow for years and didn’t realize it was attached to your ghost.*

“You tried to negotiate me out?” I ask.

Rafael’s jaw flexes. “Later. We’ll talk later. Right now we’re leaving.”

He reaches for my hand.

Dante shifts, not fast, just… decisive. One second Rafael’s fingers are a breath away from mine. The next Dante’s body is between us, a barrier in an expensive shirt.

“Step back,” Rafael growls.

“No,” Dante says.

The temperature in the hallway spikes.

“Luna doesn’t belong to you,” Rafael spits.

“Legally,” Dante says, calm and deadly, “she does.”

I shove my way between them, planting a palm on each of their chests. Two different kinds of heat burn under my hands.

“Stop,” I snap. “Both of you. I’m not a bone for you dogs to fight over.”

Rafael’s chest heaves under my fingers. “He has no right—”

“Neither do you,” Dante cuts in. “And yet here you are.”

Rafael bristles. “You disappear and break her, then you crawl out of whatever hole you’ve been in and pull this mafia‑prince bullshit—”

“Careful, Cruz,” Dante says softly.

“Or what?” Rafael sneers. “You’ll throw money at me? Threaten my studio? I don’t scare as easily as your label puppets.”

Dante’s eyes go flat. “No,” he says. “I’ll put a bullet in your leg the next time you drag her onto a public street without real protection.”

“I said stop!” I shout.

The echo of my voice hits the cinderblock walls and comes back to us.

For a second, both men actually listen.

I step back, folding my arms tight across my chest to keep them from shaking.

“This is my life,” I say. “My career. My body. Not your chessboard. Not your battleground. Not your compensation for daddy issues.”

Rafael tears his gaze off Dante long enough to look at me. “Luna, listen—”

“No, you listen,” I say. “What are my options? Hide in Madrid until the internet replaces me with the next girl, or go play house in a murder villa in Sicily?”

“You don’t have to pick either,” he insists. “We get a real lawyer. We go public on your terms. Tell your side first, before—”

“And what do I do while we wait for the courts and the PR teams and the comment sections?” I ask. “Pray he doesn’t send someone through my hotel window? Hope my fans don’t decide I’m a liar?”

“You don’t have to go with him,” Rafael says, voice low. “Please don’t go with him.”

I look up at Dante.

“What do you want?” I ask. “In plain English. No riddles. No martyr act.”

He studied me for a long beat.

“One year,” he says. “You come to Sicily as my wife. You live under my protection while I finish this dispute. At the end of that year, we revisited the terms. Annulment. Divorce. Renegotiation. Whatever you want, decided with clear eyes.”

“And if I say no?”

He doesn’t blink. “I withdraw everything I’ve used to shield you. The contracts go back on the table. The man who first bought you will take his papers and his money to a judge. Your label will pretend to be shocked, then cut you loose to save themselves. And the truth about what your ex‑manager tried to do to you will leak in whatever ugly, distorted form sells the most ads.”

“You’re blackmailing her,” Rafael says, disgusting thick in his voice.

“I’m stating facts,” Dante says. “She gets to choose which hell she prefers.”

His eyes return to mine.

“You have until tomorrow night,” he says. “Midnight. After that, I stop standing between you and the wolves.”

He turns away and gives a small nod. His men peel off the walls and flow around him like dark water. They disappear out the open door into the night toward the idling car.

He doesn’t look back.

The echo of his footsteps fuses with the distant thunder of the dispersing crowd.

I sag against the wall.

Rafael swears in Spanish, then English, then something that might be both.

“Luna, we’re not doing this,” he says. “We are not letting him dictate—”

“Can we get back to the hotel before I fall apart?” I say quietly. “Please.”

His shoulders drop. “Yeah,” he says, softer. “Yeah. Come on.”

—

The hotel suite on the top floor of the Palermo harbor hotel has floor‑to‑ceiling windows and a view of a thousand bobbing boat lights.

It might as well be a cell.

I sit on the edge of the king‑size bed, still in my stage bodysuit with a robe thrown over it. The marriage certificate and contract lie on the duvet like something poisonous. My boots are off. My hair is a tangle. My mascara has surrendered.

Rafael paces the room in restless circles, and the phone presses to his ear. Every few minutes, he switches languages, voice rising, then heaves a sigh and ends another call.

Finally, he tosses the phone onto the armchair.

“They’re all cowards,” he says.

“Who?” I ask dully.

“Lawyers, PR people, everyone I know.” He gestures wildly. “They hear ‘Moretti’ and suddenly it’s ‘complicated’ and ‘we need to see the documents’ and ‘maybe don’t poke that bear.’”

Mia sits cross‑legged at the foot of the bed in my hoodie, hugging her knees. She looks between us like she’s waiting for a bomb to go off.

“We can still leave,” Rafael insists. “My friend in Madrid, you remember her? She has a villa. Gated. Off every paparazzo’s radar. We get you out of Sicily, go dark for a while, figure this out from a distance.”

“And while I’m hiding, he tells his version to whoever will listen,” I say. “Or worse—he stops telling anyone anything and just… stops standing in the way.”

The image of some faceless man in Naples reading my name on a printed contract makes my skin crawl.

“We go public first,” Rafael says. “We control the story. ‘I was tricked into a marriage contract at nineteen. I didn’t know. I’m freeing myself now.’ People will rally around you.”

“For five minutes,” Mia mutters. “Then the other side drops their receipts, and everyone starts arguing about who’s lying.”

“Thanks for the comfort,” I say.

She winces. “Sorry.”

My phone buzzes on the bed between us.

For a second, my heart slams—Dante? Label? Press?

A notification preview slides up.

*Blind Item: Which Global Pop Star Is Hiding a Husband?*

The blood drains from my face.

Mia leans over my shoulder as I tap it open.

The post is short. Smug. Vague.

*Which chart‑topping “heartless siren” has been selling heartbreak and “single girl” anthems while secretly tied to a powerful European businessman? Our sources say a hush‑hush union years ago might explain her rocket‑fuel career and her refusal to name the man behind her most famous breakup hit…*

Posted six minutes ago.

He didn’t even give me an hour.

My vision prickles at the edges.

“Shit,” Rafael murmurs.

I dropped the phone onto the duvet like it burned me.

“He didn’t even wait,” I whisper.

“You don’t know it was him,” Mia says, but she doesn’t sound convinced.

“Who else knows?” I ask. My eyes drift to the certificate, to the looping, stupidly hopeful eighteen‑year‑old version of my signature. “The courthouse clerk? Jimmy, if he’s still alive? The drummer who witnessed it and probably doesn’t remember?”

No one who cares that I bleed for a living.

I stare at my name next to Dante’s.

If I do nothing, the rumor will grow teeth and chew through my image, my contracts, my fans’ trust.

If I run, I disappear and let men with more money and guns decide my fate in absentia.

A year ago, my biggest problem was topping myself on the charts.

Now I have until tomorrow night to decide which devil owns me.

For the first time in a long time, I’m not sure if my next song will be a weapon.

Or a confession.