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Author: Ceewins
last update publish date: 2026-10-06 05:49:20

Episode 18

CHIARA

The glare of the midday sun hit the glass storefronts along Madison Avenue as Sofia and I stepped out onto the sidewalk. The air was crisp, carrying the faint scent of roasting nuts from a street cart down the block and the constant, dull roar of Manhattan traffic.

For the first time in weeks, my shoulders felt almost light. We had just finished lunch, and for nearly two hours, we hadn't spoken about board meetings, stock allocations, or legal injunctions.

"I still think you
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  • INSATIABLE VOWS    The Missing Name

    Episode Twenty-NineCHIARASofia opened her door in a sleep shirt and one sock, took one look at my face, and said nothing at all. She just stepped back and let me in.The apartment smelled like coffee and lemon cleaner. On the kitchen counter, taking up an absurd amount of room, sat a basket of fruit roughly the size of a toddler, a pineapple standing guard at the top like a flag."Don't," Sofia said, following my eyes. "I've tried to throw it out twice. It's too big for the chute."I almost laughed. It came out as something else.She steered me to the couch, put a blanket around my shoulders, and sat on the coffee table in front of me, close enough that our knees touched. Then she saw what I was holding."That's a lab envelope.""Yes.""Chiara.""I haven't opened it." I set it on the table between us, face up, the case number small and gray in the lamplight. "And I'm not going to. Not yet.""Why not?""Because if I open it, he gets to say I only believed him because I had no choice.

  • INSATIABLE VOWS    What The Folder Says

    Episode Twenty-EightCHIARAHe came in and closed the door behind him without being asked.I sat down in his chair, because it was the only one in the room facing the desk, and I set the black folder in front of me like an exhibit. My hands were steady. I noticed that from a distance, the way you notice things about a stranger."I'm going to read this the way I read everything," I said. "Start to finish, no skipping. If you want to say something, wait until I'm done.""All right.""And Alessio. Don't stand over me."He crossed to the leather chair by the window and sat. It was the first time in weeks I'd seen him look like he didn't know where to put his hands.The folder was thicker than I expected and tidier than I wanted. A typed summary on top, then tabs. Someone had labeled them in a neat, impersonal hand, which was somehow the worst part. Not a madman's scrapbook. A dossier.'Subject: C. Vance. Eighteen months.'My routines, in a table. Which days I worked from the office and wh

  • INSATIABLE VOWS    The Price Of Silence

    Episode Twenty-SevenALESSIOI woke on the sofa in the den with a blanket over me that I hadn't put there.It took me a moment to understand what that meant. Chiara had covered me, and then, I realized, had sat up long after. The desk lamp was still on, a yellow circle on the glass-topped desk, and her legal pad lay in the middle of it, face up, like she hadn't wanted to hide it and hadn't quite wanted me to find it either.I crossed the room and read it before I could decide not to.Three lines, in her small, upright handwriting.Fact 1: the shipping line, five years ago.Fact 2: "Some debts are older than you think."Fact 3: the ledger is thirty years old. A.V. is twenty-eight.She had underlined the last one twice.I stood there longer than I should have. I'd spent weeks building walls out of careful sentences, and she had walked around all of them with a pen and a subtraction problem.I didn't move the pad. Moving it would have been a lie I'd have to remember."The registry flagge

  • INSATIABLE VOWS    The Space Between Us

    Episode Twenty-SixCHIARAThe steps of the federal courthouse were still crowded with press photographers and legal correspondents when we finally made it outside.The judge’s ruling had been measured and procedurally precise: my voting rights remained intact, Moretti Holdings was formally ordered to produce specified records within fourteen days, and both parties were required to identify the registered agent for the Swiss account. It wasn’t a sweeping final judgment, and the judge explicitly noted this was not yet a finding of fraud—but it was enough to crack their armor wide open.Yet as I stood on the granite landing, watching my father’s town car pull away from the curb without a single glance in my direction—and knowing that the shadow of Hollis Grove Capital was still unaddressed—the victory felt heavy in my chest.Alessio stepped up beside me, slipping his hand into mine. His thumb brushed over my knuckles, steady and grounded.“Your father isn’t going to break,” Alessio said

  • INSATIABLE VOWS    The Friday Hearing

    Episode Twenty-FiveCHIARAI woke up to the sound of someone being very quiet on purpose.Alessio was sitting on the edge of the bed, already dressed, his tie hanging loose around his collar while he tried and failed to knot it without a mirror. Gray light filtered through the curtains. For a second, I forgot where I was. Then I remembered all of it at once.“You’re awake,” he said.“You’re losing a fight with a tie.”“It’s winning.”I sat up, pulling the sheet with me. He watched me with an expression I didn’t have a name for yet. Not the boardroom face. Something softer, a little unguarded, like a man who hadn’t decided whether to be embarrassed about it.“Come here,” I said.He came.I fixed his tie in about four seconds. I’d been fixing Levi’s for seven years, and my hands remembered. I hated that for exactly one second before it stopped mattering.“Good morning, Mrs. Vitiello.”“Good morning.” I smoothed the knot against his chest. “It’s Friday.”“I’m aware.”“Are you nervous?”“

  • INSATIABLE VOWS    A good man

    Episode Twenty four CHIARAThe door to the executive lounge clicked shut behind us, cutting off the lingering noise from the hallway.I pulled Levi’s handwritten note from my pocket and held it up between us, the white paper sharp against the quiet room."You didn't just buy those shares to help me, did you, Alessio?" I asked quietly, looking into his gray eyes. "Because whatever happened to that Vitiello asset line five years ago, you knew enough to make sure you had a seat at this table."Alessio didn't turn away. He walked over to the glass wall overlooking the city, unbuttoning his suit jacket and placing his hands in his pockets."The Vitiello line wasn't just an asset on a balance sheet, Chiara," he said, his voice quiet and low. "It was a commercial shipping line. The Vitiello family had built it over three generations. They took me in when I had nothing."He paused, his gaze returning to mine."Five years ago, Harris Moretti structured a leveraged buyout through a shell entit

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