**Chapter Eleven: Do I Know You?**

**Sam's POV**

*You belong to me now, and you're my property*

I exhaled nervously and stared at the big rock sitting on my ring finger as I rubbed it clearly to be sure of what It really was. I knew exactly what those words meant when he whispered them to me Seventy-two hours ago.

The dress I was wearing tonight was elegant, black, the kind that cost more than most people made in a year, and it fit me perfectly, like it had been made for a body I hadn't fully grown into yet. My hair was styled neatly, every strand accounted for. My makeup was flawless, precise in a way that felt less like beauty and more like armor. I looked exactly like who Adrian wanted me to be — the wife of a dangerous mafia boss, rich, poised, untouchable.

I picked up the mask from the vanity, a handheld one, black with a matte finish, gold lining the edges around the eyes, a small cluster of black feathers arranged along the top. I turned it over once in my hands before Rosa opened the bedroom door and stepped aside, waiting for me.

By the time I reached the end of the hall, my heartbeat had already gone uneven, thudding somewhere too high in my chest.

My new husband was already standing downstairs.

Theo stood beside him, speaking quietly about something that stopped the moment I got close enough to hear it. I'd learned enough over the last few days to understand that Theo was not just an underboss standing around for decoration. If Adrian gave an order, Theo made sure it happened, quietly and completely, without anyone ever needing to ask how.

Adrian turned, and the moment his eyes landed on me, something inside me pulled tight without my permission. His gaze moved over me slowly, unhurried, pausing for half a second at the curve of my waist before lifting back up to my face. I swallowed nervously as I stood there and let him look.

Theo cleared his throat quietly, breaking whatever had settled over the space between us.

"I'll have the vehicles brought around."

Adrian stepped closer once Theo was gone.

Tall, dark suit, calm the way he always seemed to be, like nothing in the world had ever managed to catch him off guard. He placed a hand on my waist, light but firm enough that I felt every finger of it.

"Remember the rules?"

I nodded slowly, my throat too tight to trust with actual words yet.

"Stay close to me. You haven't met them before. Not even Diego himself.” His hand tightened slightly as he added it, quieter than the rest.

Seventy-two hours had passed far too quickly. In a few minutes I would be walking into a room full of people who'd once known me as Celine. People who believed, with total confidence, that I was dead.

—————

As we drove off the mansion that has been caging me, I couldn't help but imagine the reasons why I was doing it… why I was attending the gala tonight. My mind drifed to my father, I wondered how his condition was, if he was improving from the stroke that had him handed over seventy percent of our family's business to Diego... His perfect son-in-law.

Unlike the beautiful wedding I had with him three years ago, this new one was different. Marrying the most heartless and ruthless mafia man was my second chance to take back my father's business.

The drive lasted almost forty minutes before a set of tall iron gates finally came into view. The car eased through them, tires gliding smooth over the long driveway before easing to a stop in front of an estate that was once my home.

Valets moved briskly across the entrance, and luxury cars lined the circular driveway in a way that made it look less like a party and more like a display. Adrian came around to my side and opened the door himself, holding out his hand without saying a word. I hesitated, just for a second, then took it. His palm was warm, and the contact sent a strange heat crawling up my arm more that his scent does.

Inside, the ballroom opened up wide and impossibly bright. Crystal chandeliers threw light down across the marble floor, and somewhere in the corner a string quartet played something soft enough to blend into the background instead of demanding anyone's attention. Men in dark suits stood in small clusters, laughing the easy laugh of people used to being important.

Women moved past in gowns that probably cost more than most people's yearly rent, jewelry catching the light every time they turned their heads, each one of them carrying herself like she'd learned young never to look surprised by anything.

As we moved further into the crowd, the air around us seemed to change, voices dropped lower. Conversations trailed off mid-sentence, one after another, like a current running ahead of us through the room. A few men stepped aside before we'd even reached them, angling their bodies out of Adrian's path without seeming to decide to do it.

I recognized the look on their faces immediately — fear, tangled up so tightly with respect that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Nobody looked directly at him for longer than a second. Nobody dared to.

I felt it too, walking half a step behind him, my hand resting where he'd placed it against his arm.

And she stood at the center of it all.

Bianca.

I could recognize her even with her mask on, a microphone in one hand, delivering a welcome speech in the tone people use when they want a room full of strangers to believe that power is really just good management.

"...and for twenty years the Salvatore name has stood for resilience," she said, lifting a glass of wine in her free hand.

"We started with nothing but a promise to assist the less privileged…"

Whispers rolled in from the edges of the room like water finding the lowest point, gathering speed as they moved, until they landed right at her feet.

"Is that Dela Cruz's men?"

"The biggest Mafia boss…"

"Who is the lady behind the mask?"

She paused mid-sentence and turned toward us. Her eyes moved from Adrian to me, slow and assessing, trying to work out exactly who we were as we finally stood with the crowd .

She cleared her throat, and a short, awkward laugh slipped out before she managed to catch it.

"And this empire stands because of men like him. Men with pure hearts. Please, everyone… welcome my lovely husband, Diego Salvatore."

Her lovely husband?... They are married?

The applause started slow, hesitant, then built as more people joined in, heads turning to scan the room, expecting him to step out from somewhere at any second.

"Diego! Where are you Darling?"

A gap opened in the crowd and closed again just as fast as whoever it was cut straight through the center of it, moving with purpose, not slowing for anyone in his way.

A strong impact from someone spun me sideways a full step, knocking the breath clean out of my chest. My fingers loosened around my handheld mask and it slipped free, clattering against the floor between us.

"Shit… so sorry," the man muttered, already crouching down to retrieve it while I steadied myself against nothing at all. For a second all I could focus on was the mask in his hand and the dark fabric of his suit. Then he straightened up, holding the mask back out toward me.

"I believe this is yours…" His sentence caught halfway, his eyes locking onto my face and staying there.

He tilted his head slightly. "Do I know you?" His voice was calm, familiar, almost polite, like the question cost him nothing at all. He didn't wait for me to respond, he reached up and pulled his own mask away, slow, deliberate, and let his face come fully into the light.

For one long second, my mind refused to complete the thought. It hovered right at the edge of recognition, pushing back against it, trying to deny what was standing directly in front of me. Then it all came at once, faster than I could brace for it.

The rope, biting into my wrists.

The wind, screaming across the bridge.

*The Salvatore's legacy stays clean*

The blade against the rope. The fall.

And underneath all of it, quieter than the rest but somehow louder than everything else combined, the doctor's voice through the hallway wall, saying my baby had already been gone before I ever hit the water. Every one of those moments slammed into me in the space of a single breath, so hard that for a second I forgot to keep my face still, forgot every rule Adrian had given me.

He stood there like nothing had touched him at all, like the world had kept moving forward in a perfectly straight line while mine had been thrown off a bridge and pieced back together around the shape of his absence.

It was the same face I'd looked at right before I hit the water. The same eyes that hadn't flinched, not even once, when the rope snapped.

Diego.