Chapter 1

I was Elena DeLuca, the orphan Lucian Vestri pulled out of a massacre.

The night two mafia families turned the docks into a graveyard, my parents died taking bullets meant for him. He carried me out in his arms, brought me back to the Vestri estate, and kept me by his side ever since.

For five years, he gave me everything. Protection. Privilege. A place no one else could touch. He made me the most untouchable woman in the city.

So I was foolish enough to believe I meant something different to him.

Then I told him I loved him.

He gave me silence.

And for the next three years, he gave me nothing else.

Until the day he went to another family to formalize his engagement.

His bride was Sofia Bellini.

The woman who once watched me humiliate myself for him.

That same day, another family placed a marriage alliance in front of me.

This time, I did not cry.

I did not beg.

I lowered my eyes and said, calmly,"If my marriage can repay the Vestris and serve the family's interests, then I'm willing."

The moment I was no longer his, Lucian went mad trying to make me stay.

...

The moment I said yes, the tension in the room broke.

Everyone looked relieved.

Lucian's mother, Isabella Vestri, took the marriage file from me, closed it, and smiled. "That's the right decision. Focus on the wedding. We'll handle the rest."

Beside her sat the steward from the other family, polished and polite, speaking in smooth, practiced phrases about respectability, compatibility, and what a good match this was.

I sat there quietly, listening to them discuss the date, the guest list, the announcement.

When they left, I picked up the file again.

The edge of the paper sliced my fingertip. A thin line of blood stained the page.

Mia, my longtime maid, saw it and immediately panicked.

"Miss, let me talk to Lucian one more time. Maybe this can still be fixed."

I looked at her and managed a smile.

It felt thin and wrong even on my own face.

"Silly girl," I said, my voice light in the way it only ever was when I was trying not to break. "Isn't this a good thing? You saw them. They looked happier than they've been in years."

Mia fell silent.

But we both knew the truth.

If I agreed to marry, the person most relieved in this house was probably Lucian.

Mia didn't understand that.

She only whispered, "But he used to care about you more than anyone."

That was enough to drag me back.

Back to the night the docks ran red.

There had been a shootout. Gunfire. Explosions. Fire splitting the dark apart.

My parents died in it.

Afterward, everyone connected to my family vanished. No one wanted an orphan tied to a bloodbath like that.

When Lucian found me, I was curled up in the wreckage, covered in blood, too shocked to cry.

He brought me back to the Vestri estate.

From then on, I lived at his side.

No one would have called him gentle.

But he remembered I was afraid of thunder. On stormy nights, if I woke up shaking, the hallway lights came on.

He remembered what I liked. What I hated. The little things I'd forgotten myself.

Whenever he came back from a trip, he brought me something.

He never let anyone hurt me.

Little by little, he gave me too much, and I grew foolish enough to believe I was different.

For five years, he made me untouchable.

So three years ago, at a winter charity gala by the harbor, when he handed a custom diamond bracelet to Sofia Bellini, I lost control.

I smashed it.

The sound cut through the room, and then everything went quiet.

I looked at him and said the one thing I should have kept to myself.

"Lucian, I love you."

He said nothing.

He stopped giving me warmth, but never quite stopped watching.

At first, I told myself he couldn't be completely indifferent.

If he didn't care, why did his face darken whenever I stood too close to another man?

If he didn't care, why had he protected me so fiercely for years?

The gossip around the estate got uglier by the day.

People stopped saying Lucian and I looked good together.

Instead, they called me shameless. The girl the Vestris had raised who thought she could climb into the boss's bed.

And Lucian never said a word in my defense.

So I waited.

I waited until the hallway lights stopped turning on during storms.

I waited until every gift he had ever given me was locked away and forgotten.

I waited until the man who became cold, powerful, unreachable.

I refused to marry for three years.

Then, a few days ago, Mrs. Vestri finally said what no one else would.

"What he gives you is guilt, protection, and indulgence. That is not the same thing as choosing you."

She sat by the fireplace, looking at me with something close to pity.

"When he was young, he lost his little sister in an accident. He's carried that guilt ever since."

"That's why he brought you home. Why he protected you. Why he indulged you. But it was never love."

"He was only giving you what he couldn't give her."

"You need to wake up."

That was the moment everything became clear.

What I had clung to all those years had never been love.

It had only been my mistake.

So when the marriage alliance offer was placed in front of me today, I lowered my eyes and said,

"I'll marry him."