Chapter 1

My father called me to his study to deliver an order.

I, Victoria Castellano, was to take my illegitimate half-sister Isabella’s place, to marry the comatose heir of the rival Moretti family and secure a truce.

I didn’t cry.

I laid my kid gloves on his polished desk and made my three demands.

Sever all ties.

My mother’s entire legacy.

And give my bodyguard, Nicholas, to Isabella.

Everyone knew my obsession with him.

I loved him until I overheard the truth.

He was the hidden Rossi heir, undercover only to protect his precious Isabella.

Every time he’d saved my life, he was just guarding his link to her.

So I let him go.

I won’t tell him I’m marrying someone else.

And I’ll never tell him that three years ago, in Lake Tahoe’s freezing depths, the lips that breathed life back into a drowning man—the memory that haunts him—weren’t Isabella’s.

They were mine.

...

The scent of the study was a familiar prison: aged leather, expensive polish, and the faint, ever-present ghost of my father’s Cuban cigars. It was the smell of power, cold and masculine, and it had stifled me for twenty-three years.

Don Antonio Castellano sat behind his mahogany desk like a judge.

I stood before him, back straight, my simple black dress a stark contrast to the room’s oppressive opulence. I hadn’t been summoned for a chat.

“Victoria,” he began, his voice a low rumble that promised no good. He didn’t ask me to sit. “A situation has arisen. The Morettis.”

I said nothing. The Moretti family was our oldest, most entrenched rival. A shaky truce had held for a decade, built on a foundation of mutual profit and thinly veiled threat.

“Their heir, Caleb,” my father continued, steepling his fingers. “The one in the long-term care facility. His condition is stable, but he remains unresponsive. His mother is sentimental. She wishes to see him settled, to have someone at his side. A marriage would solidify our current agreements, make them permanent.”

A cold trickle, like ice water, began its slow descent down my spine. I knew where this was going. Isabella. Of course.

“Isabella is delicate,” he said softly. “The thought of being tied to a vegetative husband… it distresses her. She’s not suited for such a burden.”

“But I am?” The words left my lips flat, devoid of the tremor I felt in my hands, hidden in the folds of my dress.

He had the decency to look at me then, his dark eyes calculating. “You are strong, Victoria. Pragmatic. You understand the needs of the Family. You will take her place. You will marry Caleb Moretti.”

The sentence hung in the cigar-scented air. A life sentence. To be a bride to a ghost, a trophy wife to a coma patient, a living, breathing peace treaty between two criminal empires.

I looked at my father’s face, searching for a flicker of regret, of paternal guilt. Found none. His favorite asset was Isabella. I was the expendable one.

I removed my gloves slowly and placed them on his desk. Then I sat down, uninvited.

“I will do it,” I said, my voice clear as cut glass.

His shoulders relaxed a fraction, a smug victory already coloring his gaze.

“Under three conditions.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Conditions?”

“First,” I said, holding up a single, steady finger. “You will have the Family’s lawyer draw up a legally binding document, severing all ties between you and me. I will no longer be a Castellano. You will make it public within our… circles. I am disowned, released, erased.”

He stared, his mouth slightly agape. “You would cut yourself off from your own blood? From your protection?”

“The only thing I need protection from,” I said softly, “is in this room. Do we have an agreement?”

He gave a short, sharp nod, his expression shifting from surprise to wary respect.

“Second. My mother’s entire estate. The trust funds, the portfolios, the properties in her name. Especially the offshore accounts in Geneva you think I don’t know about. Every last dollar, deed, and stock certificate. It’s mine by her will. You will cease all interference and sign it over, completely and irrevocably.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. My mother’s money was substantial, and her offshore havens were a private sanctuary even from him. He hated relinquishing control. But he wanted this alliance more. “Agreed.”

“Third.” I took a slow breath, the air catching for just a second on the razor edges now lining my heart. “My personal bodyguard, Nicholas. You will reassign him. Effective immediately. He belongs to Isabella now. I don’t want him.”

That shocked him. His composure cracked. “Nicholas? Victoria, be reasonable. The man has saved your life three times that I know of. You’re… attached.”

Attached. Such a small, pale word for the cataclysm that had been my love for Nicholas Rossi.

For three years, he had been my shadow, my silent guardian, the only constant in the gilded cage of my life. I had loved him with a desperation that shamed me. Loved him until I learned the truth.

It was last Tuesday night. A report of a minor security breach on the east perimeter. Nicholas had taken a graze to the arm handling it. I’d heard, and a frantic, foolish worry had propelled me to his private quarters near the guard house, a first-aid kit clutched in my sweating hands.

His door was ajar. I pushed it open, my whisper of his name dying on my lips.

He was shirtless, sitting on the edge of his bed, back to me. The bandage on his bicep was haphazard, seeping red. But that wasn’t what stopped my heart.

In his hand, clutched so tightly his knuckles were white, was a small, silver-framed photograph. He was staring at it with a raw, feverish devotion I had never seen on his usually impassive face.

I knew that picture. It was of Isabella, laughing on the family’s sailboat in Capri, her hair a golden halo.

He brought the frame to his lips, a whisper so tender it was a physical blow to my chest. “Bella.”

Then, his phone rang. He answered it, his voice laced with the irritation of a man interrupted at a sacred moment. “…a minor inconvenience. Protecting Miss Castellano is simply a duty. A means to maintain my position close to the family. Her infatuation is… tiresome, but useful. It keeps access to her sister unobstructed.”

The world had tilted, colors draining to shades of gray. Every sacrifice, every lingering touch I’d hallucinated meaning into, every life he’d saved—mine—was just maintenance. I was the inconvenient, infatuated obstacle between him and his true prize: my fragile, perfect, illegitimate half-sister.

Back in the study, my father was still staring, waiting for me to break, to rescind the third demand.

“I am being perfectly reasonable,” I said, the words ash in my mouth. “I don’t want anything that belongs to this family. That includes its… personnel. Those are my terms. Take them, or find another bride for the vegetable.”

The vulgarity made him flinch. He studied me for a long moment, seeing not his emotional daughter, but a strategist across a bargaining table. Finally, he nodded. “Done.”

“Have the papers ready by tonight,” I said, walking to the door. I didn’t look back.

I was free.

But in that hollow space where my heart used to beat for Nicholas, something cold began to burn.

He could have his Isabella. And I would have my revenge, paid for with the currency of my own corpse of a marriage.