GIULIANA POV
The piano notes filled my London apartment like water filling a drowning room.
I sat cross-legged on the floor, Debussy pouring from the speakers while rain hammered against the windows. My philosophy book lay open in my lap, but I hadn't turned a page in twenty minutes. Same paragraph. Over and over.
Kant thought he understood human nature.
He didn't.
Six years in this apartment. Six years teaching literature to rich kids who didn't care. Six years pretending I was normal. Just another person living an ordinary life.
Six years running.
The phone rang.
I stared at it vibrating across the coffee table. Unknown number. But I recognized the international code immediately.
Sicily.
My hand shook when I answered.
"Miss Moretti?" A man's voice. Formal. Distant. "This is Antonio Ricci, your father's attorney."
Not my father. His attorney.
Cold spread through my chest.
"I'm calling to inform you that Vittorio Moretti was killed this morning. Assassinated in his study. I'm very sorry for your loss."
The words landed like bullets.
I should have cried. Normal daughters cry when their fathers die.
I closed my laptop instead.
"How?" My voice sounded strange.
"We don't have all the details. The family is gathering in Sicily. Your presence is required immediately. There are matters of inheritance to discuss."
Inheritance.
He meant the empire. The violence. Everything my father built that I'd spent six years escaping.
"I'll be there tomorrow," I said.
I hung up before he could respond.
The apartment felt too small suddenly. The rain too loud. Debussy too beautiful for what was happening in my chest.
My father was dead.
Someone killed him. Someone he trusted enough to let close.
And now I had to go back.
I packed one bag. Clothes. Passport. The small knife I kept in my bedside drawer even though I'd never used it.
My hands moved automatically while my brain tried to process reality.
Vittorio Moretti. Don of the most powerful crime family in Southern Europe. Dead.
I should have felt grief. Should have felt loss.
Instead, I felt terror.
Not terror that he was gone. Terror that I would become him.
The flight to Palermo took three hours. I spent them staring out the window, watching England disappear beneath clouds, watching the Mediterranean appear like a wound across the world.
I'd left Sicily when I was twenty. Told my father I wanted to study literature. Needed space. Couldn't be part of his world.
He'd laughed. Called me soft. Useless. Let me go because keeping me would have been more trouble than I was worth.
Now I was coming back to inherit everything he built.
The plane descended. Sicily appeared beneath me. All cliffs and stone and secrets.
The Moretti compound sat on the eastern coast. I could see it from the air. Sprawling. Fortified. A castle pretending to be a home.
My childhood prison.
My inheritance.
A car picked me up from the airport. Bulletproof windows. Driver who didn't speak.
We drove through winding coastal roads while the sun set over water that looked too beautiful for the ugliness happening beneath its surface.
When we approached the compound, my heart started racing.
Iron gates. Twenty feet high. Security cameras everywhere. Men with guns at every checkpoint.
This was my father's kingdom.
Now it was supposed to be mine.
The gates opened.
My car rolled through.
The main courtyard was full of people. Family members. Soldiers. Everyone dressed in black. Everyone looking grim.
And in the center of it all, I saw him.
My father's body being carried out of the main house on a stretcher. Covered in a black sheet.
Vittorio Moretti. The man who terrified entire countries. Reduced to a shape under fabric.
I should have felt something.
Instead, I felt numb.
The car stopped.
People noticed me. Started turning. Started staring.
The driver opened my door.
I stepped out into Sicilian air that smelled like salt and violence.
Family members moved toward me. Offering condolences. Asking questions.
But I wasn't looking at them.
I was looking at the man standing beside my father's body.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dressed in black like everyone else, but somehow darker. More dangerous.
Dante Russo.
I recognized him from old photographs. My father's enforcer. His most trusted weapon.
The man everyone whispered about.
He stood perfectly still while chaos moved around him. Like a statue. Like something carved from stone and violence.
Then his eyes found mine.
Dark eyes. Cold eyes. Eyes that had seen things I couldn't imagine.
Eyes that looked at me like he'd been waiting.
Everyone else was focused on my father's body being loaded into the ambulance.
Dante was focused entirely on me.
The air between us felt electric.
My breath caught.
I didn't know this man. Had never met him before.
So why did his gaze feel familiar?
Why did it feel like he knew me?
Family members surrounded me. Pulling my attention away. Offering sympathy I didn't want.
But I could still feel Dante's eyes on me.
Watching.
Assessing.
Waiting.
When I finally looked back, he was gone.
Disappeared into the crowd like a ghost.
But the feeling of being watched didn't disappear with him.
It followed me into the main house. Followed me through hallways I remembered from childhood. Followed me to the room they'd prepared for me.
Someone was watching.
Someone had been watching for a long time.
I just didn't know who yet.
That night, I stood at the window of my childhood bedroom, looking out over the compound.
Guards patrolling. Security lights cutting through darkness. The ocean beyond the walls, black and endless.
I'd escaped this place six years ago.
Now I was trapped here again.
Except this time, I wasn't just a daughter.
I was the heir.
Movement in the courtyard below caught my eye.
A figure standing in the shadows. Tall. Still.
Watching my window.
Dante.
Even from this distance, even in darkness, I knew it was him.
He stood there for a long moment. Not hiding. Not approaching.
Just watching.
Then he turned and walked away.
Disappearing into shadows like he belonged there.
I stepped back from the window. Heart racing.
What did he want?
Why was he watching me?
And why did part of me want him to keep watching?
I crawled into bed and stared at the ceiling.
Tomorrow was the funeral. Tomorrow I would face the family. Tomorrow I would discover what inheriting an empire actually meant.
But tonight, all I could think about was Dante Russo's eyes.
And the way they looked at me.
Like I was prey.
Or something more dangerous.