The mirror reflected a stranger.
Valeria was barefoot in the moonlit bedroom, wearing silk pajamas—white with delicate silver piping, too soft, too expensive, chosen for her by someone else. Her wedding hair had been kept up, but not the wedding gown. Matteo must have torn it off her when she was outside. The pajamas were likely meant to humiliate her—another sign that she was now in his world.
Her mother once said: "Silk may bind softer than chains, but it holds all the same."
She drew cool glass across the back of her hand, recalling.
You will wed Don Bellini," her father had dictated weeks earlier, voice steel. "He's the only means I have left of rebuilding what's left of my empire."
"I am not a piece."
"You're the sole move I have left."
She'd begged him. Negotiated. Threatened.
But in the end, she'd been lacquered in lace and paraded down the aisle. And now—kidnapped. Shipped from one jail to another.
She curled her hands into fists. If Matteo thought that restraining her in silk made her forget who and what he was, he was wrong.
She would not run down the aisle. She would run to freedom—and to her friends who still had contacts outside. Matteo Santoro was the enemy.
And she would outsmart him.
She had stood guard over the guards for what had seemed like hours, eyed their watch through the beat of boots against cold stone corridors. When finally, the corridor was quiet, she slipped the stolen pin into place and turned the lock on the door. Her fingers were trembling, but the door opened quietly with a click.
The Santoro villa was maze-like—fresh stone against centuries of building, hallways curving where they shouldn't, doors opening into strange dead ends. She breathed shallowly. Bare feet padded soundlessly across marble. She grasped the pin like a blade.
She stepped from one corridor into another, attempting doors, her heart pounding. Fingers running lightly over a chill handle. Open.
She opened it and froze.
Steam curled past the hall like fog. The room was dark, tiles wet. There was a shower in the corner of the room, and he was under it.
Matteo.
Water lashed over his cut chest, down the ridges of his belly, glinting on the tops of muscles. He moved an inch, and she caught sight of his penis. Big, unmarked. He did not move to take the towel.
Her breath caught—revulsion and heat twisted in her chest, a betrayal of instincts she hated.
And he turned to face her.
"Valeria," he said, low and rough and amused.
He didn't move. Just stood there, dripping and deadly.
"You think a cage is in charge of you?" she spat.
He nodded his head, clutching a towel now. "You think you're not mine yet?"
Her rage blazed. "You should destroy your enemies—not walk them around on leashes."
She stepped back, pounding pulse. Her heel slipped on the wet floor. She stumbled—
—and he was. A grasp around her wrist, pinning her there.
Their eyes locked. For a moment.
The atmosphere was electric.
Then he let her go.
"Run all you can," he said to her quietly, his voice harsh against hers. "Do whatever you like. Everything you do is just telling me more about you."
He turned and disappeared into the steam once more, as pleased with himself as ever.
She didn't make it very far.
The alarms around the villa were unseen, but effective.
Along the edge of the property, shadows pushed in around her, into wet blades of grass. A whisper, husky and teasing, against her ear.
"Fast," Rocco muttered. "But too fast."
The stolen loot's hot pin pulsed in her hand. She would not let it go.
The dining room reeked of cigar smoke and power.
Crystal chandeliers catch the morning light along the long oak table. Matteo sat at one end, still dressed, sipping coffee as if he hadn't just caught her escaping from the estate.
Rocco shoved her into a chair.
She didn't blink. She committed their faces—Matteo's calm mask, Rocco's evil grin. Details were crucial. Vulnerabilities would be exploited.
Matteo's gaze lingered on her. His lips curled a fraction.
"You'll make enemies faster than friends with moves like that," he said.
"Enemies?" Her voice was cold. "I'm already surrounded by them."
A quiet exchange passed between Matteo and Rocco. Rocco leaned in, whispered low, but she couldn't catch the words. His final sentence was clear, though.
"She's not a hostage. She's a liability. Finish it before it tears us apart."
Matteo did not respond. Silence was eloquent.
Rocco shut the door.
Valeria gave Matteo a fierce glare. "You're an enemy of my family. Kidnapped me. Ruined my wedding. So—now what?"
Matteo's gray eyes glowed. "A wedding you didn't want. A merger consummated by your body. Ask yourself—would you have finalized it?"
She did not respond.
He stood up from the chair. "Come with me."
She followed behind, begrudgingly. Her insides trembled, but she strode like a queen.
The room they entered was dimly lit, with an unmade bed and a photo on the nightstand—two boys, younger, hugging one another. One of them was Matteo. The other… gone.
"This was my brother's," Matteo explained. "He got murdered five years ago. I've had nobody in here since."
Valeria seethed.
"Your father," he continued, "partnered with Nico. Proposed you as a bride to marry into the Bellini cartel. That's the way Costa operations survive."
"You think I agreed?" she sneered.
"I think you didn't stop it."
"I tried—"
He raised his hand. "I won't kill you. Not yet. But listen to this—your family has destroyed me. I will kill them. I'll leave their legacy ashes."
She glared at him, hate and pity struggling within her.
"You'll stay here until," he continued, his voice as chill as the stone. "But the next time you try to run—Go on, try to run." "Run again—and you won't wake up next time."
And he left her alone.
Thoughts curled like smoke.
She had no notion who she hated more—him, or herself for wanting to know the war in his eyes.
But one thing was certain.
She had to survive.
And surviving meant going away—even if she torched the entire villa to the ground so that she could flee.
: Later That Day
Rocco and Matteo, with a detail of guards, left the compound to visit one of Matteo's significant sites.
They didn't have time to worry.
Gunfire erupted out of the trees. Nico's men, hidden, ruthless, attacked from the shadows.
Screams filled the air.
Blood splashed the earth.
Matteo was thrown over the edge of a truck as bullets rained down. For the first time, Valeria froze, watching him fall. A sick ache coiled in her chest—was it triumph… or something she didn't dare name?