VOWS OF THE VEILED kING

Chapter 1The Gilded Ruins​Fiorenza Elettra De Santis POV​​The smell of mahogany and beeswax used to mean home, Now everything feels wrong and terrible.​I stood upstairs, holding the wooden railing of the second floor. I held the wooden rail so tightly that my fingers turned white. Below me, the ground floor of the De Santis Atelier, a space that had breathed life into Italian high fashion for over half a century was being stripped bare by men who didn't even have the decency to wipe their mud caked shoes on the welcome mat.​"Miss De Santis, the collection for the upcoming autumn runway has been taken to cover a huge debt.“a voice squeaked from behind me”​I didn't turn around immediately, I couldn't. I watched as two officers roughly dragged away a mannequin wearing a hand beaded red velvet gown, the last piece my father had ever touched with his own hands before he disappeared. I touched the small half moon shaped scar near my left collarbone. a nervous habit i always do whe

Chapter 3 The Ambush Meeting Fiorenza Elettra De Santis POV​The rain had turned the streets of Milan into black glass by the time the car pulled up outside Il Salotto, a private club hidden behind an unmarked limestone façade near the Galleria. There were no signboards, no paparazzi, only a heavy iron gate and a single guard who checked my name against a handwritten velvet guest list.​I got out of the car, pulling my wool coat tighter around my shoulders. My heart was beating closely, and I could feel it in my chest . I had refused the black sedan Valeriano had sent to my atelier a tiny act of resistance perhaps, but one I needed to keep my knees from buckling. Instead, I had driven myself, bringing only the leather folder containing the partially burned ledger and the notes Gianna had managed to pull from our server archives.​I was meeting a man named Signor Rossi, he is the chief rebuilding officer appointed by the central bank. Or at least, that was the name on the

Chapter 5 Whispers in the Atelier​ Fiorenza Elettra De Santis POV​The dawn light filtering through the high arched windows of the De Santis Atelier didn't feel like a new day,it made the place feel like something horrible had just happened.​I stood in the center of the main showroom floor, the silence thick and heavy around me. The men in polyester suits were gone.The bailiffs had disappeared into the damp Milan morning, leaving the atelier looking almost abandoned empty brass racks, stripped mannequins, and carpet track marks like shallow graves.​By six o'clock this morning, the emergency seal at Moretti Tower had ended as suddenly as it began a "system glitch," Valeriano’s chief security detail had called it with a face like carved ice, But I knew better. It had been a warning. A subtle reminder of the dark, invisible forces circling the man whose ring I was about to wear.​The front glass doors opened with a soft, quick click, and Gianna slipped inside.​She looked exhau