Chapter 3 - The Girl He Raised

Bela

THE PENTHOUSE was too quiet at three in the morning.

In Milan, the city below never truly slept, but inside these walls, the silence felt heavy, almost suffocating.

I couldn’t sleep.

I paced the length of the dark corridors, my bare feet making no sound against the polished hardwood floors. Every shadow stretched long and menacing, warping the ultra-modern furniture into familiar, haunting shapes.

Everything inside this penthouse reminds me of another house. Another prison.

No matter how sleek the glass or how expensive the art, the air smelled exactly the same as the sprawling Ricaforte estate on the outskirts of the city. It was the scent of old money, polished mahogany, and the faint, metallic undertone of unspoken violence.

I had spent a year running from that smell, learning to breathe the cheap, stale air of crowded bars and damp apartments just to feel free.

Now, with a single turn of a key, Sebastian had dragged me right back to the beginning.

I stopped at the threshold of his private study. The door was slightly ajar, a sliver of amber light spilling across the hallway.

My chest tightened as I looked inside, my mind slipping backward, unspooling the years until the present dissolved entirely.

I was only sixteen when I first crossed the threshold of the Ricaforte estate.

I remembered the rain that day, it had been torrential, washing away the dirt of the cemetery where I had just buried both of my parents. I had been terrified, clutching a single, battered suitcase to my chest like a shield.

The Don had introduced me to the household staff as a charity case—the daughter of a loyal associate who had died in service to the family.

“The girl we have taken in,” he had called me, his voice carrying the careless benevolence of a king throwing scraps to a stray dog.

But Sebastian, who was already twenty-one and being groomed to inherit the bloody empire, hadn't looked at me with charity. He had looked at me with open, freezing dislike.

“We aren’t an orphanage, Father,” Seb had muttered that first night, standing at the top of the grand staircase, his dark eyes cutting down at me. He was already taller than everyone else, his shoulders broad, his presence commanding even then. “We don’t have room for liabilities.”

For the first six months, he barely spoke to me. If we passed in the halls, he walked right through my space, forcing me to step aside. He treated me like an inconvenience, a permanent stain on his pristine, structured world. I learned to hide in the shadows, terrified of drawing his wrath.

But the Ricaforte estate was a treacherous place for a young girl with no blood ties to the family. The soldiers who guarded the perimeter, the corrupt politicians who came for dinner—they saw an unprotected teenager as fair game.

It happened during my first winter there.

A low-level caporegime, flush with wine and arrogance after a successful shipment, had cornered me in the dark recesses of the conservatory.

His fingers had been greasy, his breath hot against my neck as he pinned me against the glass bricks. I had screamed, fighting with everything I had, but my strength was nothing against his.

Then, the glass door had shattered.

Sebastian hadn't spoken a word. He had simply dragged the man off me by his collar and systematically broken his jaw against the marble floor. The violence had been precise, brutal, and absolute.

When it was over, Seb had turned his dark, intense gaze onto me. I had been shaking, sobbing violently, expecting him to yell at me for causing trouble.

Instead, he took off his heavy woolen coat and wrapped it around my trembling shoulders.

“Stop crying,” he had growled, his thumb brushing a stray tear from my cheek with a harshness that somehow felt like comfort. “Look at me, Bela.”

I had looked up, my vision blurry with tears. “I—I didn’t do anything, Seb. I swear—”

“I know what he did,” Seb cut me off, his grip tightening on the lapels of the coat he had just put around me. “You are under my protection now. Which means you belong to this house. No one else gets to lay a finger on you. Do you understand me?”

I had nodded quickly, my heart hammering against my ribs for a completely different reason.

“If anyone so much as looks at you wrong again,” he whispered, his face inches from mine, his voice dropping into a dark promise, “you tell me. I’ll handle them.”

From that night on, everything changed.

Seb became my shield.

He taught me which corridors to avoid, which men to never look in the eye, and how to hold myself so the world wouldn't see my fear. He was still cold, still distant, but he was always there, a silent shadow watching over me from the edges of every room.

And slowly, inevitably, I fell completely in love with him.

He was the only person who had ever made me feel safe in a world built on blood. How could I not love the boy who secretly left books on my desk?

The man who stayed awake in the hallway outside my bedroom whenever his father was in a foul mood?

I loved him with a desperate, consuming intensity that blinded me to the monster he was destined to become.

A sudden shift in the air snapped me back to the present.

I blinked, the memory fracturing into pieces as I realized I was standing inside Seb’s study.

Without even realizing it, my hands had guided me to his desk. A heavy leather album lay open, and my fingers were resting on a faded photograph of the estate’s courtyard, taken years ago.

“You shouldn't be in here.”

Seb’s voice was a low baritone that vibrated through the quiet room. I didn't jump. I had learned the rhythm of his footsteps long ago, even when he tried to move like a ghost.

I turned slowly. He was leaning against the doorframe, dressed in a loose black shirt with the top buttons undone, his hair slightly damp. He looked less like the ruthless Don from this afternoon and more like the man I used to know in the quiet hours of the night.

I looked down at the photograph, then back up at him. “Everything in this place feels like a ghost, Seb.”

He walked into the room, his movements slow and deliberate, stopping on the opposite side of the desk. The amber lamp light caught the sharp lines of his jaw, casting deep shadows over his eyes.

“Do you miss that life?” he asked quietly, his voice surprisingly devoid of the mockery or anger from earlier. It sounded almost heavy.

I let out a soft, bitter breath. “I miss the person I thought you were.”

Silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating. I braced myself for his retaliation, expecting him to sneer, to call me ungrateful, or to bring up my faked death again to deflect the blow.

But he didn't.

Instead, a flicker of genuine guilt crossed his features. His gaze dropped to the desk, his jaw tightening so hard a muscle pulsed in his cheek.

He looked, just for a fleeting second, like the twenty-one-year-old boy who had wrapped his coat around my shoulders to stop me from shaking. The anger in his eyes softened into something raw, an old ache that neither of us knew how to heal.

He didn't say a single word. He simply turned on his heel and walked out of the study, leaving me alone in the amber light.

My heart hammers against my ribs, aching from that brief, unexpected glimpse of old him. But I can't let myself get weak. I need a way out of here. I need to find something or anything that can help me map an escape.

I wandered into the adjacent library room, where the administrative files and old records were kept. Most of them were firmly secured, but as I pulled on a bottom drawer tucked away in the corner of a heavy credenza, the wood gave way with a soft click.

It wasn't a file drawer. It was personal.

Inside lay a few loose items—an old silver lighter, a broken watch. And underneath them, a single photograph.

I reached inside and pulled it out. My breath caught.

It was a picture of me.

It had been taken from a distance, through a long lens, while I was walking down a crowded street in Milan. The burgundy of my curly hair was unmistakable, the curve of my jaw sharp against the autumn background.

This wasn't an old photo from our youth. The jacket I was wearing in the image was one I had bought only six months ago.

This photograph hadn't been hidden away like a forgotten relic. It was preserved, kept in a drawer he opened frequently. Trembling, I flipped the photo over.

Written in the familiar, sharp cursive of Seb’s handwriting were six words that made my blood run entirely cold:

I never believed you were dead.