01

Audrey Sullivan awoke in a strange bed, trapped between silk sheets and the sin of a night she had sworn would be her liberation, only for it to become her sentence. The silence in the room was so oppressive that the young woman could hear the erratic pounding of her own heart hammering against her ribs. The soft, rhythmic sound of another's breathing greeted her upon opening her eyes. Her eyelids felt as heavy as if they had been sealed with lead. The light filtering through the curtains of the hotel suite blinded her for a fraction of a second, forcing her to blink clumsily until the luxury surrounding her came into sharp focus.

The first sensation Audrey experienced was the cold brush of the sheets against her bare skin. A shiver raced down her spine when, turning her head, she encountered a sight that stole her breath: a man lay beside her. The stranger was sleeping soundly, bare-chested, revealing a broad back and tanned skin that betrayed an imposing masculinity.

What have I done? she asked herself in a silent scream, while panic began climbing her throat like poison ivy.

Her mind, still clouded, began to conjure fragmented memories. The bar, the flash of crystal glassware, and the laughter of Hanna and Gael. She remembered how her friends had urged her to drink, celebrating that Audrey Sullivan was finally snapping the invisible chains of her surname. That night, alcohol was not merely a beverage; it was the fuel of a desperate rebellion to feel, if only for a few hours, that she was the master of her own destiny.

Yet now, looking at the man beside her, freedom tasted like ash.

She tried to sit up carefully, avoiding any creak from the mattress. As she looked closer at the man, a stab of recognition struck her with the force of a lightning bolt. The sharp features, the firm jaw... it was him. The exact dark-haired man she had impulsively kissed at the bar. Judging by his designer clothes, he was someone of formidable social standing.

She slipped out of the room barely touching the floor, her heart hammering against her eardrums and carrying the bitter certainty that this night would become the heaviest chain she would ever bear.

Audrey crossed the threshold of her mansion attempting to conceal the turmoil of her spirit, but the customary quiet had been replaced by the roar of a violent argument. Nearing the study, the voices of her parents filtered through the wood, laden with a desperation she had never heard before.

"We've lost everything, Olivia!" Eliot bellowed, his father's voice sounding completely shattered. "That damned business was a trap. I was swindled right before my own eyes."

"But someone bought the shares, Eliot..." her mother sobbed. "You said an investor would save us. All isn't lost..."

The young woman stood frozen behind the door. Walking in, she found her father slumped in his armchair, his face buried in his hands. The company, the pride of the Sullivan dynasty, was in technical bankruptcy.

"It's not a savior, Olivia, it's an executioner," Eliot retorted, looking up to meet his daughter's gaze. "Alessandro Di' Giovanni has bought every single one of our debts. But he didn't do it out of charity."

That name represented the sector's most relentless rival—a man whose ruthlessness in business was already a legend.

"What does he want in return?" Audrey asked with a bitter foreboding.

Eliot kept silent, incapable of holding his only daughter's gaze, and slid a document across the desk.

"He wants you, Audrey," Eliot dropped with a thread of a voice. "Alessandro Di' Giovanni bought our debts. The contract demands that you become his wife, or we end up on the street."

Audrey felt a hollow ache in her stomach. The Di' Giovanni name was synonymous with power and cruelty, yet he had no face. As she walked up to her room, a question burned within her. Who was this executioner? And what were the odds that destiny would be twisted enough to cross her path with the stranger from the hotel suite once more? Fear was real, but doubt was an even worse torture.