Chapter 1

On the night before the Moretti succession ceremony, I found a post in the Confessional of the Dead that had been sent from ten years in the future.

“If you could rewrite your blood oath, whom would you erase from the family tree?”

The anonymous reply read:

“Leon Vita.”

“If not for that adopted son who used a life-debt to secure his place—a man destined to become my husband and consigliere—I could have had Matteo at my side years ago.”

The poster’s icon was a black iris.

Viola Moretti had used it as her private seal for seventeen years.

The birth year, family crest, and encrypted signature on the profile all belonged to her as well.

Only the date was wrong.

The post had come from ten years in the future.

At first, I thought it was a trap forged by a rival family. Then she mentioned my parents’ deaths in the comments.

Twelve years ago, an ambush erupted at St. Maria Docks.

My father shielded a young Viola from the first volley of gunfire. My mother rammed a car through the blockade and drove her out of the docks.

Neither of them came home.

Mr. Moretti adopted me afterward. Standing before my parents’ graves, he promised that I would be his son—and, one day, Viola’s husband and consigliere.

The two obsidian rings were the tokens of that promise.

I had always believed they marked the beginning of two orphaned children holding each other up.

When I first arrived at the estate, nightmares kept me awake every night. Viola would sit outside my door, hugging her pillow until dawn.

She stayed beside me while I learned how to hold a gun again. At my first family banquet, she announced in front of everyone that I was her brother, not some outsider they had taken in.

When we were sixteen, we exchanged rings in the harbor clock tower.

She said that no matter which of us became the head of the family, we would always stand on the same side.

I held on to those words for seven years.

But the Viola from ten years in the future had written:

“Everyone kept reminding me that his parents died for me.”

“If I showed him the slightest coldness, someone would accuse me of being ungrateful.”

“He never needed a gun to force me. All he had to do was stand there, and he became a chain around my throat.”

Someone below asked, “Did you finally get free of him?”

“Of course.”

She quickly uploaded a photograph.

In it, the woman wore the ruby signet of the Moretti boss. The man beside her wore the obsidian ring meant for the consigliere.

A crescent-shaped scar marked the web of his thumb.

It was Matteo Bellini.

The son of an allied family, he had grown up alongside us.

And the matching obsidian ring was still on my right hand.

“At the succession banquet, I admitted in front of every boss that Matteo was the man I loved.”

“I ordered Leon to surrender the ring and the consigliere’s seat. He refused.”

Someone mocked him in the replies. “A man who climbed into the family on borrowed gratitude would never give that up.”

Viola replied:

“So I suspended his grandmother’s family doctor and withheld the white transit pass she needed to leave the sealed district.”

“The old woman couldn’t wait. He signed the renunciation papers the next day.”

My eyes remained fixed on those words for a long time.

My grandmother had a weak heart. Every month, the family doctor delivered her medicine.

She was the last blood relative I had in the world.

Viola knew that.

Better than anyone, she knew what my grandmother meant to me.

I closed the page, then opened it again.

After doing that three times, I sent the older Viola a private message.

“I was bound by an old agreement to someone who did not love me either.”

“Were you happy after you left that person?”

The Viola from ten years in the future replied almost at once.

“I wouldn’t call it happiness.”

“But at least Matteo stayed with me for ten years.”

“We had fallen for each other long before that. Because of Leon, we could never be together openly.”

“How long before?” I asked.

“The first peace talks in Sicily.”

That was three years ago.

When Viola returned from those talks, she gave me a small silver saint’s medal.

She said she had been bored on the journey and bought it on a whim.

I had worn it beneath my shirt ever since.

So that same journey had also been when she and Matteo fell in love.

A knock sounded outside the study.

Mr. Moretti’s lawyer placed two documents in front of me.

The first was the blood-oath contract I was meant to swear at tomorrow’s ceremony, accepting the roles of both consigliere and fiancé.

The second was an appointment letter the North Sea Mercantile Association had sent six months ago.

They wanted me to oversee legitimate shipping and marine insurance, and they were prepared to secure permanent residency for both my grandmother and me.

I had already turned them down three times for Viola’s sake.

This time, I removed my obsidian ring and set it on the first contract.

Then I signed my name at the bottom of the second.