Todos os capítulos de The Heir He Never Knew: Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 9

Half an hour later, we returned to the Santoro estate we once shared. For years, I had believed that being brought into the family grounds meant recognition—that one day, I would stand here openly, not as a shadow or a tool, but as the acknowledged woman of this house. I had mistaken proximity for belonging, and silence for consent. I was wrong. Today, the Santoro estate had never been this alive. The engagement banquet drew in the entire city—every major crime family, political intermediaries who spoke in riddles, union bosses with blood on their ledgers, and men whose names never appeared on paper but decided the fate of those who did. Crystal chandeliers burned overhead, throwing light across marble floors polished to a mirror sheen, while the air itself felt heavy, saturated with expensive perfume, practiced smiles, and the unspoken pressure of loaded guns resting beneath perfectly tailored suits. It was only when I was led away from the crowd, back into the private wing of t

The next day, Dominic came. Juliana was on his arm. She did not wear white this time. Juliana stepped into the room in a pearl-gray Dior dress, the kind reserved for state banquets and royal audiences, tailored to absolute perfection. The cut was severe, the fabric heavy, the silhouette unmistakably authoritative. On her feet were stilettos too elegant for a hospital ward, and on her finger gleamed the Santoro family ring, large and merciless, catching the light with every movement. She looked like someone who had already been crowned. Dominic walked beside her, unhurried, composed. He stopped a few steps from my bed and studied me briefly, the way one assessed a weapon after it had been damaged. “I heard you woke up,” he said calmly. “I knew you wouldn’t die so easily.” I smiled faintly, the movement pulling at my ribs. “Yes,” I replied hoarsely. “I’m hard to kill. Always have been.” There was no concern in his eyes, no relief. Just confirmation. Juliana released his arm a

Victoria POVI didn’t disappear into the city.I left it from above.The helicopter rose before dawn, rotors tearing Chicago into shrinking grids of light, and I didn’t look back as we crossed the lake and turned east, because what I was carrying no longer belonged to that skyline. My father’s men said nothing during the flight, not out of obedience but certainty, because they had been waiting five years for this call and had never truly believed I would not make it.Italy received me without questions.The private clinic sat outside Genoa, buried behind vineyards and old stone walls that predated modern records.And when the stretcher rolled through the doors, the staff already knew what not to ask, which was the first sign that my father’s arrangements had not decayed with time.I woke to white ceilings and the disciplined silence of expensive medicine.The wound in my leg pulsed where the bullet had torn through, my back burned where fragments had scraped flesh during the explosion

Dominic POVVictoria vanished the way only someone who knew my systems could vanish—cleanly, without noise, without residue.For the first week, I told myself she was angry, that this was her version of silence, sharp and theatrical, meant to punish me just long enough to make a point. She had always understood pressure, always known how to apply it without fracturing the structure. I assumed she would return once the message had landed, once I had time to cool, once the balance between us reset the way it always had.After all, she was pregnant.That fact anchored my patience more than anything else. Victoria didn’t run when there was something to protect. She never had.Two weeks passed. Then four. By the end of the second month, there was still nothing—no sightings, no financial movement, no hospital records, no border triggers. It was as if she had been edited out of the world.That was when I stopped waiting and started searching.“Still nothing?” I asked, my voice even as I re