4

Giovanni didn't break the kiss until the absolute last possible second. When his lips finally lifted from mine, he didn't step back. He rested his forehead against mine, his chest heaving, his dark eyes glittering with a lethal, unbothered amusement that made me want to scream. He looked down at my bare shoulders, his tattooed thumb deliberately tracing the edge of my exposed scar, marking me even in the middle of a nightmare.

"Rosa?" Elena’s voice was sharper now, a note of irritation cutting through her exhaustion. "Are you locked in there?"

Panic mutated into survival instinct. I violently shoved Giovanni’s chest, and this time, he actually let me step back, though his gaze never left my face.

"I-I'm here!" I called out, my voice cracking before I forced it into a steady, apologetic pitch. I grabbed the torn fabric of my dress, desperately pulling it back up over my shoulders, but the zipper was completely shredded. It wouldn't hold. "Just a second, Elena! I... I had a little wardrobe -."

"Oh, no. Do you need help?"

"No!" I blurted out, a bit too quickly. I looked at Giovanni, silently begging him with my eyes to find a place to hide, but the bathroom was small. There was nowhere to go.

Giovanni casually leaned back against the marble sink, crossing his arms over his tailored charcoal suit. He wasn't going to hide. He wanted the chaos. He wanted the fire.

Realizing he was going to let the world burn, I had to act fast. I grabbed a large, plush hand towel from the counter, draping it over my shoulder like a makeshift shawl to completely hide the torn back of my dress and the exposed skin. With trembling fingers, I smeared the back of my hand across my mouth, trying to erase the evidence of his lips, but I knew my mouth was swollen, my lips flushed a deep, telltale crimson. My carefully pinned hair was entirely scattered, dark strands hanging wildly around my face where his fingers had just ruined it.

I took one last terrifying breath, stepped past Giovanni, and unlocked the heavy oak door.

I only opened it a crack, blocking the gap with my body.

Elena stood in the dimly lit corridor, her perfect brow furrowed as her eyes instantly locked onto mine. The contrast between us was devastating. She was immaculate—not a single hair out of place, her makeup flawless.

And then there was me.

"Are you alright?" Elena asked, her eyes narrowing slightly as she scanned my face. A cold, sharp tension suddenly flooded the hallway. "Your hair... and your face is flushed."

"I'm fine," I lied, my heart hammering so loudly against my ribs I was certain she could hear it. I gripped the towel tightly around my shoulders. "The zipper on my dress completely snapped when I went to adjust it. I was just trying to see if I could fix it, but it's totally ruined. I think... I think I need to slip away to my room and change."

Elena opened her mouth to reply, but before she could speak, the bathroom door behind me was pushed fully open.

Giovanni stepped out into the corridor.

The air left my lungs entirely. He didn't offer a single word of explanation. He didn't even look at me. With complete, icy indifference, he smoothed down the lapels of his suit jacket and looked directly at his fiancée.

"Your father must be waiting for us, Elena," Giovanni said, his voice smooth, gravelly, and entirely unbothered. "Let's go."

Elena’s eyes darted from Giovanni’s pristine suit, down to his lips, and then straight back to my smudged mouth and scattered hair. The suspicion in her gaze was sharp enough to cut glass. She wasn't stupid. She was a mafia princess, raised in a world of secrets and lies, and the math in front of her was adding up to something dangerous.

A heavy, suffocating silence stretched between the three of us.

But instead of making a scene, Elena forced a tight, plastic smile onto her face. Her spine went entirely rigid. "Of course. Let's not keep my father waiting."

She turned on her heel, but just before she walked away, she cast one last lingering, lethal look over her shoulder at me. "You should find a mirror, Rosalia. You look... completely unraveled."

They walked away down the grand corridor, Giovanni never once looking back.

I leaned my back against the wall, my knees shaking so violently I almost slid to the floor. I wiped my mouth again, staring at the empty hallway. She knew. She didn't just suspect—she knew something monstrous had just happened in that room. If I stayed in Italy, if I stayed near this wedding, Giovanni would trap me, and Elena would destroy me.

I had to run.

The heavy oak door of my assigned guest room clicked into place, but the silence inside the estate didn't bring any relief. My hands were still shaking so violently I could barely strip off the ruined dress. I threw the torn fabric onto the floor, catching a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror. My lips were swollen, my neck flushed a deep crimson where Giovanni's mouth had branded me, and the faint, pale lines of the old scars on my skin seemed to scream in the dim light.

Scolopendra.

The childhood name vibrated in my chest, unlocking a floodgate I had spent thirteen years keeping barred shut.

As I stepped further into the bedroom, the shadows in the corners seemed to stretch, morphing into the high ceilings of my childhood home. Suddenly, I wasn't twenty-three anymore. I was ten years old, standing in the dark hallway of our old estate, the floorboards cold beneath my bare feet, listening to the muffled, terrifying roar of my parents' voices behind a closed study door.

That night. The night the world burned.

"You're going to get us killed, Arthur!"My mother’s voice echoed in my head, sharp, panicked, and entirely stripped of her usual elegance. "Look at what they did to the Moretti family last week. You think we're safe because of an old blood oath?"

"It's too late to back out, Ella,"my father had fired back, his voice a gravelly, exhausted whisper that sounded hollowed out by fear. "I'm deep in it.

"Then don't retire—just stop digging!" I could still hear the desperate, ragged sob that caught in her throat. "Leave 'The Circle' alone, Arthur. Please. For the love of God, leave them alone. If they find out what you've documented, they won't just take the business. They will erase our entire bloodline."

"I'm doing this to protect us—"

"You're signing our death warrants!"

The memory cut off with the imaginary sound of a shattering glass, and suddenly, the air in my bedroom vanished.

A sharp, crushing weight dropped directly onto my chest. I gasped, lunging forward, my knees giving out as I hit the hardwood floor beside the bed. My lungs burned, expanding frantically, but no oxygen was getting through.

Breathe. Just breathe.

I clawed at the collar of my shirt, my vision blurring into a haze of static. The room was spinning. The scent of Giovanni’s expensive tobacco and rain vanished, replaced by the suffocating, phantom smell of smoke and ash. I could feel the heat. I could feel the terror of the flames licking at my heels as a little girl.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird, a wild, lethal rhythm that made my ears ring. I curled onto my side on the floor, tucking my knees to my chest, my body trembling so violently my teeth chattered. I'm dying,my brain screamed. He found me, and now it's all going to burn again.

The panic attack dragged me under, a heavy, suffocating tide that felt like it lasted for hours. Every time I managed to swallow a jagged breath, the memory of Giovanni's dominant, unyielding voice—“You think I'm letting you walk out of this room?”—dragged me right back under the water.

I was trapped in the wreckage of my own past.

Then, a sharp, piercing vibration cut through the static in my head.

My phone was buzzing against the floorboards just a few inches from my hand. The screen lit up the dark bedroom, casting a pale glow over my trembling fingers.

I forced my burning lungs to take one agonizing breath, reaching out with a weak, sweating hand to grab the device. I didn't even look at the caller ID before pressing it to my ear, my voice coming out as a broken, breathless wheeze.

"H-hello?"

"Rosa? Oh thank God, you picked up."

My mother’s voice.