The ballroom was an opulent beast alive, breathing, watching. Gilded walls stretched upward like the spines of a cathedral, and chandeliers rained golden light onto the sea of masks and murmurs below. The air was thick with perfume, cigar smoke, and the lies of beautiful people who'd sold their souls for silk-lined power.
The San Giustino Masquerade was not a party. It was a theater of predators.
And Valentina Cruz was dressed for war.
Her gown was black, a liquid sheath of silk that clung to her like hunger. The slit traced the line of her thigh like a dare, and the corset cinched tight over her ribs as if to hold in the fury coiled in her lungs. A mask of obsidian lace carved sharp around her cheekbones, thorns bejeweled with jet crystals more weapon than ornament. Her eyes, dark and gleaming, cut through the crowd like twin blades dipped in venom.
She descended the staircase slowly, deliberately. A queen entering her court.
Every pair of eyes turned. Men watched her like a storm rolling in. Women whispered behind their fans. And at the center of it all, beneath the shimmering chandelier, stood the man she was meant to marry.
Emilio Moretti.
Polished. Serpentine. In a suit that likely cost more than most people's homes, and a half-mask of white marble to match his smile. He looked like a statue come to life gilded, hollow, and perfectly posed.
Their eyes met across the room.
He raised his champagne flute in a silent toast, that smug, princely smile curling like smoke from a gun.
Valentina mirrored the gesture with a tilt of her chin but her fingers itched for the dagger strapped to her inner thigh.
She knew.
Not everything, not yet. But enough.
The whispers about him and the Ferri girl. The sudden shifts in his father's private accounts. The tension at the last family council. Emilio wasn't just playing politics he was making his own rules.
And in this world, that made him dangerous.
But not nearly as dangerous as the man stalking her from the shadows.
Lorenzo.
He stepped into her orbit without announcement. Dressed in black like sin incarnate, his mask was matte leather, minimalist and brutal, revealing only one searing eye and the curve of his cruel mouth. He moved like smoke. Like something too wild to be tamed.
"You're late," Valentina murmured without turning, sensing his heat behind her shoulder.
"You're breathtaking," he countered, voice dipped in silk and gravel. "I got distracted."
"By what?"
"Imagining the chaos you'd cause tonight."
She felt his breath behind her ear, low and dangerous. "You were born to destroy thrones."
"And you were born to burn beside me," she replied, gaze locked across the ballroom.
He laughed low, wolfish.
"You look like a promise I'd kill to keep."
And then, without a word, he extended a hand.
She took it.
Their touch was a secret shared beneath centuries of blood-feuds. A middle finger to their fathers. A betrayal wrapped in velvet gloves.
They didn't speak as they danced. Their movements were too in sync, too intimate for words. She leaned into him only slightly, enough to feel the pressure of his hand at her waist, the curl of his fingers as they brushed the inside of her palm.
He smelled of spice and clean gunmetal.
He held her like he was deciding whether to kiss her or kill her.
And she wanted both.
But then
A name.
La Fiera.
It slithered out from the edge of the crowd, disguised in a whisper, dressed as gossip.
Valentina froze.
Two men near the column drunk, barely masked, lesser sons of lesser men were laughing.
"You see her?" one said, slurring. "That's La Fiera herself. The beast dressed like a bride."
"I heard she cut out a man's tongue in Barcelona just for looking at her wrong."
"She's fucking the wrong Moretti, that's what I heard"
She moved.
A flash of black silk and fury. She was on them before their tongues finished slithering.
The taller one blinked as she approached, confused.
"Do I look like a bedtime story to you?" she asked sweetly, her voice soft enough to sting.
"N-no, Signorina Cruz, we meant"
"I don't care what you meant." She stepped into his space. "If I ever hear my name in your mouth again, I will make sure it's the last word you speak. Am I clear?"
He nodded quickly, too quickly.
"Say it," she ordered.
"You're clear."
"Good." She smiled, but it didn't touch her eyes.
They scattered like roaches.
Lorenzo appeared behind her a second later, slow and dangerous.
"You shouldn't have let them off so easy," he murmured.
"They're irrelevant," she replied.
"No one who disrespects you is irrelevant."
His voice was dark silk. Her spine tingled.
"You like the name?" she asked.
"La Fiera?"
He stepped closer, his breath warm at her throat.
"I like what it means."
"And what does it mean to you?"
"That you're untouchable. Wild. Sacred." He touched her wrist, tracing the skin above her pulse. "And maybe the only thing in this world worth burning for."
Their eyes locked.
She should've stepped away.
Instead, she stepped into him.
Lorenzo's hand slipped around her waist, pulling her flush against his chest. The music drowned around them. The ballroom melted away.
"I don't fear the beast, Valentina," he whispered against her lips. "I am the forest it hunts in."
And then he kissed her.
Behind a curtain.
Behind centuries of blood.
Behind masks that no longer hid anything.