All Chapters of The Don's Ruthless Empire: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Point of view: Isabella"Pay by Friday, Miss Conti, or we take the house. Your brother signed this, not you, but the debt does not care whose name is on the paper."I counted the money in the kitchen drawer three times that morning, as if the number might change if I asked it kindly enough. It did not. Two hundred and eleven euros, a house with a leaking roof, and a debt collector standing in my mother's foyer holding a folder with the Rossaro family seal stamped across the top.The house had been beautiful once, back when my father was alive and the shipping business still turned a profit. Now the paint peeled along the hallway ceiling, and the good silver had been sold months ago, piece by piece, so quietly that my mother still asked where it had gone."There is no more money," I told him. "Not this week. Not this month."He smiled the way men smile when they already know they have won. "That is not really my problem to solve."Behind me, my mother gripped the back of a chair so har

Point of view: Isabella"You are not what I expected, Miss Conti. That is not a compliment yet. It is simply true."The woman who said it stood in the entrance hall of the Rossaro compound like she owned the marble floor beneath her feet, arms folded, studying me the way you study something that might bite. Behind her, two guards watched the gate close, and I understood in that instant exactly how far away from my old life I had just walked."I am Carmela," she said. "I run this house. You will learn the rules quickly, or you will learn them the hard way. Either is fine with me.""I would prefer the quick way," I said.That earned the smallest twitch of something near a smile before it disappeared. She led me through hallways lined with paintings older than the city itself, past a study where I caught a glimpse of Matteo speaking quietly with an older man who looked at me with open suspicion as I passed. I kept my chin level and did not look away first, even though every instinct in m

Point of view: Isabella"He used to hide here when our father was still alive and the arguments got too loud. I should have thought of it hours ago."The old boathouse sat at the edge of Conti property, half collapsed and forgotten by everyone except the two of us who had grown up ducking inside it whenever the house upstairs became unbearable. Matteo followed me down the narrow path without a word, his men fanned out somewhere behind us in the dark, close enough to protect but far enough to give the illusion of privacy.The path had not changed since I was a girl, roots pushing up through the dirt in the same places, the same salt smell rolling in off the water. It should have felt like coming home. Instead every step felt like walking backward into a life that no longer belonged to me, with a stranger who controlled more of this city than my father ever had walking silently beside me.Nico was there, curled against the far wall with a bruise blooming along his jaw and fear written i

Point of view: Isabella"Say it." My voice did not shake, though everything inside me did. "Say the words you have been swallowing since the moment you walked into my mother's house, because I would rather hear the truth break me than keep living inside your silence."Matteo sat across from me, his hands folded so tightly his knuckles had gone pale. For a long moment he said nothing, and I thought he might close the door on this conversation the way he closed every other door in this house. The lamp between us threw a small circle of light that did not reach his eyes, and I found myself watching his hands instead, waiting for them to move, waiting for anything that would tell me what was coming before the words did."You already suspect part of it," he said finally. "I saw it happen the moment I mentioned your father's name that first night in your mother's kitchen. You have been carrying a version of this truth for years without proof. I am only about to hand you the proof.""Then st

Point of view: Isabella"You do not have to protect me from your own household, Matteo. I have survived worse than a few cold stares from men in expensive suits." I said it lightly, but the tightness in my chest told a different story.Three days had passed since the night in the study, three days of Matteo watching Salvatore with a wariness he tried and failed to hide, three days of me learning the rhythms of a house that still did not know what to make of me. The staff whispered when I passed. The soldiers watched my hands more than my face, as if I might produce a weapon from thin air. I told myself it did not matter, that I had not come here to be liked, only to keep my family standing. Some nights that reasoning held. Other nights, alone in a room too grand to feel like mine, it did not hold at all.Today, for the first time, one of them spoke to me directly.Her name was Marisol, and she ran the kitchens with a precision that reminded me of my mother before grief hollowed her ou