om the world below. Valentina sat across from Rafael De Luca, her fingers wrapped

uldn't

ked the door, and drowned Da

that afternoon,calm, self-assured, with

That's all

ere sh

things strictly business," she said,

exceptions for people w

You think surviving

s elbows on the table. "Men like Dante... they don't let g

ers who saw her as Dante's discarded lover or a woman who got l

you know exactl

ned, and for a moment, th

aid. "Shot in the back of the head in a restaura

tilled. "I

line. "I was seventeen. That night changed everything. I stopp

" she sai

Survival. Then rev

ology in his vo

through Dante, through his empire, through his cold, calcula

pulled

sked. "Why did you sta

ought love could fix everything. I thought bei

d n

self." She smiled, bittersweet. "And I've le

is glass. "To e

against his. "T

sharp decisions. Rafael told her about escaping Italy in his twenties, how he built his influence t

aning closer, drawn to his energy-ma

nk beca

n t

ndlelight and quiet music, and Rafael's ha

e didn't resist when his lips found hers-warm, dem

ed before her

e, and she gasped against him, the years of restraint shattering like glass.

drowned un

de it to her p

never leaving hers. The moment he touched her-slow, reverent-it wasn't Dante's fir

he woman who had o

iming what she wanted

-

through the curtain

. Her head throbbed faintly, her body deliciously sore, her

side of the

eart

ed, her voice stil

le

re of the vulnerability-the room still smelled like him

e sat on the

breath, she r

d to leave before it became one. Don't

e words, her fingers c

omach

. A man who had every reason to destroy him.

.. a man

e owed him nothing. But because she knew the rules. She

hone

rom her

ff an hour ago. I'm on my way the

ulse

andle it,"

houghts of Rafael aside, her m

mething else on the floor near the entrance-

le red

oat tig

s sign

, the implicatio

k

g was too

was about to get compl

carefully, its thorns

have