Alesandro's POV
The memory of her soft delicate throat beneath my hand. The cold certainty that I should have ended her then for touching it, extinguished that little spark in her eyes but I was warred with this strong desire, a pull I felt towards her.
She was a ghost, a dream made flesh, a beautiful yet terrifying trap. That was what she was. Bella. The name echoed in my mind, constantly reminding me she wasn't my Rose.
I stood in the corridor. My usually controlled breath dragged in my lungs, hot and ragged. Her scent still clung to me, a tenacious ghost under the tailored wool of my suit, mocking my carefully constructed composure. She was in there, behind that polished door, and she had no idea the definite shift she had just caused in my world.
I heard heels clicking, moving toward me. The precision of her approach made me know who it was: Camilla. "Alessandro, what are you doing in here standing outside her room? So its because of her, thats why you left me? I saved you have you forgotten?" Her voice I once considered calming, was now screeching making my ears ring.
And I was in no mood for her. So I left, ignoring Camilla as she kept screaming at me. I head to my office, but I notice a female shadow figure, no one else than my sneaky sister.
"Well, you almost choked her to death," she stated, her voice flat, devoid of judgment, simply reporting a fact. Her eyes were still fixed on the camera feed in Bella's room.
"She touched the photo," I clipped, the words tight, a defense that sounded pathetic even to my ears. "So you decided to strangle her?" Her tone remained level, cool.
That was Lucia. Her words were always logical, and unvarnished. I turned my head slowly, my eyes locking onto hers. "She looks like her." The confession tore from me, raw and unbidden. It was more than just a passing resemblance.
"I see it too," Lucia acknowledged, her gaze flickering towards the camera feed, then back to my face. I exhaled, dragging a hand through my thick hair, feeling the familiar stirrings of the volatile beast within me threatening to kill something.
"It's not just the face. It's the way she behaves. The smart mouth. The eyes. It's like fate is screwing with me, Lucia. Deliberately."
"She might not be her, Alessandro have you thoughtof that." Lucia's voice was calm, but her eyes held a flicker of something close to alarm.
"What if she was" The words were a defiant whisper against the crushing weight of reality. The rational part of my brain screamed at the absurdity, but the desperate, hopeful part clung to it like a deranged man to a spar.
Lucia looked at me like I'd descended into madness, her gaze piercing. "She's not. The girl in that photo died. You know that, and it's time to let go and move on." she murmured the last part almost silently.
"Do I?" My voice was low, sharp, laced with the bitter taste of a decade-long lie. Her body was never found. The house burned to the ground and now this girl shows up. Looking just like her" My mind was racing, connecting threads, weaving a terrifying tapestry of possibility.
"Well she might be dangerous, she's making you lose control, when last did you take your meds," Lucia reiterated, her voice cutting through my spiraling thoughts. "If you lose control again you might kill her."
"I won't kill her, after all her father hasn't paid his debt."
"Okay if you say so." Lucia held my gaze, unwavering. "She's waking up something in you, And You're unraveling."
I smiled then, a cold, humorless twist of my lips. "I was never stitched together in the first place." I was a creature of cracks and fissures, of death and controlled chaos.
Lucia sighed, a breath that spoke volumes of weary resignation, and stepped away. "Don't make me bury another girl, especially when the one I wanna bury is still alive." Her words hung in the air, then she disappeared into the shadows, leaving me alone with the buzzing of my thoughts.
My rose. The words are written on the back of the picture. The only picture I had of her, was the only means to remember what she looked like. I had been a child then, powerless, watching everything I cared for turn to ash. I had failed her. But Bella… was she a second chance? Or was she a trap, meticulously set, designed to exploit the deepest, most dangerous part of me? The thought sent a jolt of cold suspicion through me, sharpening my focus.
I retreated to my private study, needing the structured logic of my domain to push back against the emotional whirl she evoked. A dozen monitors flickered along the wall, a silent symphony of surveillance, showing every inch of my heavily guarded estate – the gates, the labyrinthine hallways, every meticulously secured room. One screen, centered and magnified, displayed Bella's room.
I clicked a button, rewinding the hallway footage, and I watched her drag a chair to the vent, her fragile frame surprisingly strong. Clever girl. She tried the vents, the window, and the main door. Every escape route was tested and failed. She wasn't stupid to give up. She was plotting.
Good. I like the thought of knowing she wasn't going to give us easy. It gave me an excuse to break her. And a twisted sense of validation. And it would be more satisfying when she eventually submits. My blood thrummed with a dangerous anticipation.
I poured myself a drink – something strong and sharp, the burn of the whiskey was a welcome distraction from the internal fire. I walked to the back of the room, to the old, oak-bound chest. I hadn't opened it in years.
The lid groaned open with a rusty protest. I pulled out a stack of written notes I had kept. And a rose she had given me. The first day she told me her name was Rose, I had preserved it to last a lifetime.
It hit me then, a punch to the gut that stole my breath. Bella Rossi, could it be more than a coincidence? A mere contraction of a name? No. Not with everything else. The face. The mannerisms.
The girl in the photo had vanished after a fire orchestrated by the Russian mafia, it was a calculated act of terror. She was the daughter of Johann Krüger the head of the German mafia who was also missing.
But after the fire the families separated, and they were at war with themselves, Johann betrayed our family's trust by breaking the alliance and forming another with the Russians, and he was fed lies.That was when everything shattered. The German mafia no longer exists.
A knock at the door, I didn't answer. Lucca, my most trusted enforcer, knew better than to wait for an invitation when I was in this room. But he entered anyway.
"The debtor you requested is in the basement," he stated, his voice even. Not caring where he had.
"Good." The word was a vicious pleasure.
"Alessandro…" Lucca paused, his voice tinged with a familiar concern that bordered on exasperation. "There's something else. We traced his paperwork. His been doing business with the Russians.
My gaze sharpened, the photographs forgotten. This was new. "What?"
"It was a proxy account. Hidden in deep Russian channels. It was a deliberate setup." I stood slowly, the glass of whiskey forgotten, its contents sloshing dangerously.
A setup. My bipolar mind, always racing, began to connect the dots with terrifying speed. "Who?"
"We're still tracking the origin. But it could be the Russian mafia they've been quiet lately." Lucca's voice was grave now, sensing the sudden shift in my mood, The tension in the room was a living thing, thick and suffocating.
"You mean, Dante Giovanni." My blood boiled. Dante. The Russian mafia's golden son. The man who'd sworn to cause havoc if he was looking for war then so be it.
I could feel Lucas' watchful eyes, his quiet concern morphing into wary apprehension. "What do you want to do?"
"Lock down the estate. No one gets in or out without my permission. Double the patrols." My voice was flat, devoid of emotion, but laced with absolute command.
"And her?" he asked, his eyes flickering to the monitor displaying Bella, curled up on the bed, hugging her knees. She looked so small. So breakable. But there was steel in her. I could feel it. A defiance that sparked something feral and possessive within me.
"Make sure she doesn't try escaping," I said, my voice a low, chilling whisper. "Not until I know who she is or what she is." She was my captive, my prize.
Lucca nodded, understanding the unspoken implications, and left me in silence, the heavy door clicking shut behind him. I stared at her image a moment longer, the sight of her vulnerability and the immense danger she represented a dizzying contradiction. And then, with a chilling certainty, I opened the bottom drawer of the desk.
Inside was a black box, sleek and unyielding, fingerprint-locked. I placed my thumb on the reader, and it clicked open with a hiss, revealing the ledger. The original copy. This ledger held secrets that could bring down the entire mafia syndicates, damning evidence of their illicit dealings, their hidden assets, their entire network.
It was encrypted with a biometric lock. Only two DNA profiles could open it—mine… and Arabella's. I need to submit Bella's blood. But my gut, a primal instinct, screamed the truth.
I felt it. She was her. Arabella. My Rose.
She was mine. Fate, that cruel, mocking bastard, had given me back what the world had tried to take. She was my second chance. My redemption. My obsession.
Now I just had to keep her alive long enough to remember. And to make her stay.
Even if I had to chain her soul to mine, bind her to me so completely that escaping would be an act of self-immolation. Later That Night
The darkness of my study was a welcome shroud, matching the bleak landscape of my thoughts. I stood at her door again, a shadow in the silent corridor. It was after midnight.
She was asleep, the monitor showed her still sleeping form. I opened the door with the soft click of the lock a prelude to my intrusion. The door swung open slowly, revealing the soft glow of the nightlight within.
She stirred slightly, a soft sigh escaping her lips, but didn't wake. I stepped in, my footsteps silent on the polished floor. Her face was peaceful in sleep, an innocence I knew she wouldn't tolerate when awake. The bruise around her throat, a stark, angry purple, bloomed ugly against her porcelain skin.
My hand, the one that had gripped her, clenched. Guilt stabbed me—sharp and unwelcome, a foreign emotion I usually suppressed with ruthless efficiency. I did that. I had almost broken her. I knelt beside the bed, my fingers twitching, an agonizing urge to touch her. To smooth her hair, to trace the curve of her cheek. But I didn't.
Her peace felt too fragile to disturb with my chaotic touch. "You should have died in that fire," I whispered, the words a raw confession to the sleeping girl. "It would've been easier. For both of us." Easier to mourn a ghost than to be haunted by a living, breathing one who stirred such dangerous, uncontrollable emotions within me.
She shifted again, a soft murmur escaping her lips, unintelligible. I leaned in closer, my ear near her mouth, desperate to catch a fragment of her subconscious. She whimpered like she was having a nightmare. A soft, childlike sound that tugged at something deep within me, a protective instinct so fierce it borders on violent.
"Shhh…Don't cry, Rosa Mai," I murmured, my voice a low, rough rumble. "I'll keep you safe and protected." My protection was a cage, a gilded prison, but in my twisted mind, it was salvation. She was safer with me, bound to me, than she would ever be in a world where Dante Giovanni still breathed and hunted.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a chain. A rose-shaped pendant. The last thing she'd given me, a clumsy, innocent gift before she vanished. I had kept it, a solitary flicker of light in my dark childhood. I slipped it beneath her pillow, a silent promise, a desperate gamble.
Then I stood, my presence a heavy shadow in the moonlit room. I left, closing the door behind me, the soft click echoing in the silent corridor. She'd find it when she woke up.
And maybe—just maybe—it would awaken the truth. The truth of who she was. And despite it all. She was irrevocably, utterly, mine. And I would burn the world to keep her.