The morning after the storm, the dynamic shifted. Dante was back to his impeccable, controlled self, but the memory of his vulnerability hung in the air between them like a secret.
He began to include her in his daytime world, though always under Leo's watchful eye. He took her to one of his "legitimate" businesses—a high-end art gallery in Chelsea. He watched, silent and imposing, as she instinctively gravitated toward a haunting impressionist piece, her fingers itching to trace the brushstrokes.
"You see it," he stated, coming to stand beside her. He didn't look at the painting; he looked at her profile.
"See what?"
"The loneliness. The artist was surrounded by crowds, but he only ever painted the emptiness between people."
His perception startled her. "You know his work?"
"I know what it is to be surrounded and alone," he said, his voice low. He turned then, his gaze sharp. "Your father had a piece by this artist. A small, unsigned landscape. He acquired it twelve years ago in Palermo."
Valentina frowned, searching her memory. Her father's collection was vast, but she knew every piece. "No. He never collected this artist. He thought his work was 'morbid.'"
Dante's eyes turned to chips of ice. "He lied." He took her elbow, his grip firm. "We're leaving."
In the car, the tension was thick. "Why does that matter?" she pressed.
"It matters," Dante bit out, "because that painting wasn't his to acquire. It was taken. From my mother's villa, the night she was killed."
The words landed like physical blows. Valentina recoiled. "Killed? My father… he was a collector, not a thief. Not a… a murderer."
Dante's laugh was a hollow, terrible sound. "Your father, cara, was the most elegant thief I've ever known. And his debts weren't just financial. They were paid in blood. My mother's blood."
He told her then, in clipped, brutal sentences. A deal gone wrong in Sicily. A valuable, secretly coded ledger hidden inside a shipment of antiquities. Enzo Rossi, tasked with retrieving it, had instead seen an opportunity. He'd taken the ledger and a few "souvenirs," including the small painting. The rival family, blaming Dante's, had attacked. His mother had been caught in the crossfire.
"The ledger held proof of high-level political bribes," Dante finished, his jaw taut. "It was the key to legitimacy, to moving my family completely into the light. Your father sold it to the highest bidder, condemning us to another decade of war and darkness. He hid behind his galleries and his charity balls while my world burned."
Valentina's head swam. The father she'd adored, the gentle man who'd taught her about brushstrokes and chiaroscuro, was a phantom. A lie. "I didn't know," she whispered, her voice broken.
"I am aware," he said, and for the first time, there was no malice in his tone, only a weary finality. "Your ignorance was your only innocence. But you are his daughter. His blood. And the debt remains."
That night, she didn't hide in her room. She went to his study. He was at his desk, documents spread before him, but he was staring into the middle distance.
"What will you do with me?" she asked quietly.
He looked up. The raw pain from the storm night was back in his eyes, now tempered with something else—a conflicted calculation. "I intended to use you. To lure out the men who still hold pieces of that ledger. To make you a pretty, tortured bargaining chip until your father's debt was paid in full." He stood, walking around the desk toward her. He stopped close, too close. "But you look at that painting and see the loneliness. You defy me with every quiet breath. You are not what I expected, Valentina Rossi."
He reached out, his fingers barely grazing a strand of hair that had escaped her braid. The touch was electrifying.
"I don't know what I will do with you," he admitted, his voice a rough whisper. "And that is a more dangerous problem than any rival family."