Back to My Home Land

Sienna’s POV

“Nothing good ever comes out of them,” my mother said, her Italian accent wrapping around each word like warm silk. Marionella, my mother always spoke with that soft voice and sharp meaning. It had been so long since I’d heard her in person that the sound of it made something twist deep inside me.

I knew she was going to rub it in. She had warned me about Gabriel years ago, warned me in a dozen different ways, but I was too stubborn and too in love to listen. I thought things would work out. I thought I’d build a life with him that would make all her fear and her anger worth it.

Well… look at me now.

Ten years later, I was sitting on a ridiculously expensive couch in the living room of my father’s house in Italy. My childhood home. My gilded cage. The place I’d escaped at seventeen. Sunday sunlight washed over the marble floors and gold-trimmed walls, but none of it felt like warmth.

My triplets were in Los Angeles, safe with their nanny. Max, Milo, and Maya, were my entire heart.

I was only here for the weekend for two days, no more, because my mother had called crying, claiming she was sick. She wasn’t.

She looked healthier than she had in years. But ever since the scandal broke five years ago, she has not stopped calling. Not once. Begging me to come home, demanding explanations, and pleading for updates.

Of course, I never told her the most important part.

I never told her I had children.

I wasn’t ready for that. Not now. Maybe never.

She stood across the room in a long golden kimono, the fabric shimmering each time she moved. Gold gleamed against her olive skin, making her look regal, dramatic, and exactly like the kind of woman who could stare down the world and win.

I swallowed. “Mom… I thought he loved me.”

My voice cracked before I could hide it. Five years, and I still couldn’t say it without feeling something inside me break all over again.

She didn’t soften. “Love is not enough, Alessia.”

I flinched at the name.

Alessia.

My birth name.

My real name.

A name I left behind when I ran away, just like I left the empire, the family, and everything it meant to be a Marino.

“What about Father?” I asked, glancing around the room as if I hadn’t grown up here.

“I did not tell him you are here,” she said simply. “Your papa… if he knew…”

She looked away. “It would be trouble.”

Trouble.

That was one way to put it.

If Don Carlo Marino found out I’d returned without permission, it wouldn’t be a warm reunion. It would be a reckoning. He was not a man who forgave easily. He was not a man who forgot anything.

I rubbed my palms together, restless. “Mom…”

“Call me Mama, Alessia,” she corrected sharply.

I laughed under my breath. “Mama, then.”

She finally came to sit beside me, adjusting her kimono before crossing her legs with that slow, deliberate grace only Italian women seemed to have. “Now,” she said, “what about what we discussed earlier?”

I almost rolled my eyes.

Almost.

“Alessandro Moretti is a very nice man,” she continued, and her face tried to look innocent but failed miserably. “He would make a strong husband. He would take care of you.”

I raised a brow. “Mama, Alessandro has two wives already.”

She shrugged as if this were nothing. “And seven children. He is very… fruitful.”

“You are not the child you were,” she continued, but there was a plea there, soft as moth wings. “Consider your place. Consider what is stable, she added.

Stability sounded like a polished coffin. I’d seen stability in Gabriel’s loving pat on the head and in the way he’d discarded me for convenience. Stability didn’t keep your heart whole; often it simply weighed it down.

“I will think about it,” I said finally. A lie, but a safe one.

She sighed dramatically, flicking her wrist. “Your father made a promise long ago. The Morettis helped us. They expect something in return. A marriage would keep peace.”

I let out a tired exhale. “I’m not marrying anyone. Not now. Not ever. And especially not another man chosen for me.”

She studied me with a look that made me feel fifteen again, caught sneaking out after midnight, barefoot, heart racing. “Then what do you want?”

I hesitated, then said the only thing that would buy me freedom, even temporarily.

“I want revenge,” I said. “On Gabriel. I want him to feel what he made me feel. And when I’m done… maybe I’ll return. Maybe.”

It was a lie again.

The only way to slip out of this conversation alive.

Her expression softened, but not fully. “You must promise me, Alessia. Promise that after you finish this revenge, you will come back. You will return to the empire.”

I looked around the room like I was signing a lifelong contract.

Then I nodded.

Because nodding was easy.

She reached out and held my hands tightly. “Good. You have been away long enough.”

Before Marionella could continue, my phone buzzed on the coffee table, the sound too bright in the quiet of the house. The screen flashed a name that made something inside me tilt: Desmond.

I stood immediately and took a few steps away, heat rising in my cheeks before I even pressed the answer button.

“Hello,” I said, trying and failing not to smile.

“Hello, pumpkin.”

I rolled my eyes, even though the stupid nickname made my chest feel warm. “Calling me a fruit isn’t cute, Desmond.”

“I wasn’t trying to call you anything cute, Sienna.”

I almost laughed. “Right. You just enjoy getting under my skin.”

“Always.” His voice dropped, smooth and confident. “Now… why the call?”

There was a pause.

A slow exhale.

And then, “I think it’s time.”

I could practically hear the smirk in his voice.

A sly smile curled onto my lips.

I knew exactly what he meant.