CHAPTER 4: THE DEVIL'S RULES

"Rule Number One," Dante said, stepping out of the car without so much as a glance back at me.

"Never enter my office without permission."

He didn't raise his voice. He didn't wait to see if I understood. He simply stated it, the way a man might state the time or the weather, already certain the words would be obeyed.

I climbed out after him and looked up.

Iron gates towered on either side of the drive, taller than any fence had a right to be. Guards stood at intervals along the walls, weapons visible, eyes tracking everything that moved. Beyond them, the estate itself sprawled into the darkness, stone and glass and lit windows stretching farther than I could see in one glance.

This wasn't a mansion. It was a fortress.

We walked through the entrance and into a hall lined with marble so pale it seemed to glow under the chandeliers. Paintings hung along the walls, the kind of art that belonged in museums, not private hallways. I noticed the guards first, stationed at every corner, still as statues. Then I noticed the staff.

They didn't greet Dante the way servants greet an employer. They bowed, eyes down, backs straight, and said nothing unless he spoke to them first. Nobody looked him directly in the eye. Nobody dared.

I understood something then that no one had needed to explain to me. Power in this house wasn't displayed in gold trim or expensive paintings. It lived in the silence that followed Dante wherever he walked, in the way an entire building seemed to hold its breath until he passed.

"This way," Marco said quietly, appearing at my side. "Let me introduce you to the household."

A woman waited near the base of the grand staircase, gray-streaked hair pulled back neatly, an apron over a simple black dress. She had kind eyes, the first kind eyes I'd seen since the wedding, and when she looked at me, something in her expression softened.

"Sofia Bianchi," Marco said. "She runs the household."

"You poor child," Sofia murmured, stepping closer, her voice pitched low enough that only I could hear it. "You've been through enough." She reached out and gently touched my arm, just once, and I nearly flinched at how foreign kindness felt after everything.

"Luca Ferraro," Marco continued, gesturing to a broad-shouldered man near the door, arms crossed, face unreadable. "Head of household security."

Luca nodded once, his eyes assessing me with a coldness that told me exactly where I stood with him. Not an enemy yet. Not anything else either.

"And you already know me," Marco said, a faint smile touching his mouth. "Marco Ricci. I keep this place running and keep the Boss from making enemies he doesn't need." He studied me for a moment longer than necessary, curious, careful, the same look he'd given me in the car. "Welcome to the De Luca estate."

I opened my mouth to respond, but the click of heels on marble cut through the moment before I could.

She entered like she owned the room, because in some sense, I suspected she believed she did.

Dark hair fell in perfect waves over one shoulder, and every piece of jewelry she wore probably cost more than the dress I'd been married in. She crossed the hall with the unhurried confidence of someone who had never once been told to wait, and her eyes landed on me before she'd even fully entered the room.

"So." She stopped a few feet away, tilting her head as she studied me the way one might study a stray dog that had wandered in off the street. "This is the girl everyone is whispering about."

"Isabella," Marco said, a note of warning in his voice.

She ignored him completely, circling me slowly, her gaze dragging over my ruined dress, my bare feet, the fading bruise on my cheek. "Where did Dante find you?"

Nobody answered right away. Finally, one of the guards near the door offered, "The auction."

Isabella laughed, a bright, cruel sound that echoed off the marble. "A servant from an auction. How fitting." She stopped in front of me, close enough that I could smell her perfume, sharp and expensive. "Tell me, did you cry when they sold you? Or were you already used to being on your knees?"

"I didn't kneel then," I said. "I won't kneel now."

Something flickered behind her eyes, surprise quickly buried under contempt. "You'll learn," she said. "Everyone learns eventually. Now kneel. Lower your eyes. Remember your place in this house."

"No."

The word hung in the air between us, and I watched her face shift from amusement to something colder.

"No?" she repeated softly. "You say no to me?"

"I say no to you."

The crack of her palm against my cheek echoed through the hall like a gunshot. My head snapped sideways, pain blooming hot and immediate, and for one long second, nobody in that hall breathed. I heard Sofia's sharp intake of breath. I heard a guard shift his weight, uncertain whether to intervene.

I turned back slowly, my cheek burning, my eyes locked on hers.

Then I slapped her back.

Harder.

The sound was louder this time, sharper, and Isabella staggered a half step, her hand flying to her own face, her mouth falling open in something between shock and outrage. The silence that followed was absolute. Sofia's hand covered her mouth. Marco froze mid-step. Luca's hand had already drifted toward the weapon at his hip, though I couldn't tell if it was meant for me or for the scene unfolding in front of him.

Nobody in that house, I realized, had ever seen anyone strike Isabella De Luca back.

"You—" Isabella's voice cracked with fury. "Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea what I could do to you?"

"I know exactly who I am," I said, my voice steadier than I felt, my cheek throbbing in time with my pulse. "I was born a Moretti. I will not spend what's left of my life kneeling to anyone who thinks a slap makes them powerful."

"Enough."

Dante's voice cut through the hall before Isabella could respond, quiet as always, but the effect was immediate. Isabella's fury visibly folded in on itself the moment he stepped into view, and even Marco straightened.

He looked at Isabella first. Studied her for a long moment, his expression unreadable, and when he finally spoke, his tone carried no anger at all. Just certainty.

"She hit you because you deserved it."

Isabella's mouth fell open. "Dante—"

"If you strike someone in my house," he continued, as though she hadn't spoken, "don't complain when they strike back."

"She's a servant. A nobody from an auction block. You expect me to let her—"

"I expect you to remember whose house this is." His voice never rose. It didn't need to. "You knew the rules before you raised your hand. You chose to ignore them."

Isabella stared at him, betrayal etched across her face, but she said nothing further. She turned on her heel and swept out of the hall, heels striking marble like gunfire, leaving a silence behind her that felt heavier than anything that had come before.

Dante turned to me next. I braced myself, uncertain what judgment waited for me, uncertain if his fairness toward Isabella extended to me as well.

"Next time," he said, studying me with an expression I still couldn't read, "use fewer emotions."

Then he walked away, footsteps unhurried, leaving me standing in the middle of that grand hall with my cheek still burning and my heart pounding out a rhythm I didn't have a name for.

Sofia found me an hour later in a small guest room near the east wing, a cool cloth pressed gently to my cheek before I'd even asked for one.

"You shouldn't have done that," she said, though there was no real reproach in her voice. "Isabella doesn't forgive easily."

"I couldn't kneel," I said. "Not to her. Not to anyone."

Sofia studied me for a moment, something like respect settling into her expression. "No," she said quietly. "I don't suppose you could." She patted my hand once and rose to leave, pausing at the door. "Get some rest, child. Tomorrow will demand more of you than today did."

Sleep never came.

I lay in the unfamiliar bed for hours, staring at a ceiling I didn't recognize, replaying the crack of Isabella's hand against my face, the shock in her eyes when I hit her back, the strange, unreadable calm in Dante's voice when he'd taken my side. None of it made sense. None of this house made sense.

Eventually I gave up on sleep entirely and slipped out onto the balcony attached to my room, hoping the cold night air might quiet my thoughts.

Voices drifted up from somewhere below, low and urgent, carried on the still night air. I recognized Marco's voice first, and moved closer to the railing without quite deciding to.

"—says the assassin failed," a guard was saying, his voice tight. "Barely got past the second checkpoint before Luca's men caught him."

"And the second one?" Marco asked.

"Waiting for the right moment. They'll try again before the week is out."

My stomach dropped. I gripped the railing, straining to hear more, my pulse suddenly loud in my ears.

"Does the Boss know?" the guard asked.

"No one tells the Boss," Marco said, his voice low and final. "Not yet. Not until we know who sent them."

Someone is trying to kill Dante.

I stood frozen against the railing, the cold forgotten, my mind racing through everything I'd witnessed in the last few hours, the discipline, the fear, the loyalty that bent but never quite broke around him. Someone wanted him dead badly enough to send an assassin twice in one week, and his own men were keeping it from him.

Footsteps echoed against stone somewhere below, approaching fast.

I stepped back from the railing, my heart hammering, and pressed myself into the shadows of my room just as a shape moved into the light beneath the balcony.

I didn't breathe again until the footsteps faded into silence.