Chapter 2

Cassian never came back to the room that night.

By early the next morning, he had already left for the south district casino to handle Family business.

I was in my room, sorting through the few personal belongings I actually owned.

There wasn't much that was truly mine — a few worn pieces of clothing, and one brass pocket watch.

It was the only thing my mother had ever left me. The only comfort I had in this cold, fortress of a mafia estate.

I had just picked it up when the door swung open.

Bianca stepped in on four-inch heels, two of the Moretti household maids trailing behind her. She swept her gaze around my room, and what she found there apparently didn't impress her.

"This is the cage he keeps you in? Dreadful taste."

I closed the drawer and looked at her, perfectly calm.

"Miss Falcone, this is my room. Please leave."

"Your room?" She laughed like I'd said something absurd.

She crossed the floor and snatched the watch straight from my hand, turning it over idly.

"Every inch of this estate, every object in it — including you — belongs to Cassian."

"Next month, I become the mistress of this house. What exactly gives you the right to use the word 'mine'?"

"Give it back." I reached for it.

"Getting sentimental over a piece of junk?"

"Does it have some kind of special meaning to you?"

"I said give it—"

The corner of Bianca's mouth curved into something ugly. Her fingers opened.

The brass watch hit the floor. The glass face shattered on impact, the gears skittering loose across the hardwood.

My breath stopped for a beat. It felt like an invisible fist had just closed around my heart.

I dropped to my knees and reached for the pieces. Bianca's heel came down without hesitation — directly onto the scattered parts — and ground them in.

"Oh my, so clumsy of me." She covered her mouth, her smile carrying all the sincerity of a knife.

Something white-hot surged up from the pit of my stomach. I was on my feet before I'd decided to move, my hand closing around her wrist.

"That's enough."

"Bianca, that was my mother's only keepsake. You had no right."

She clearly hadn't expected me to push back. She blinked, then let out a sharp, shrill cry, wrenching herself free and stumbling two steps backward into the cabinet by the door.

"What do you think you're doing?! Get your hands off me!"

At that exact moment, Cassian appeared in the doorway.

He took in the scene, and his brow pulled together.

Bianca's expression switched instantly — wounded, trembling — as she hurried to his side and wrapped herself around his arm.

"Cassian, you're back. I only came to check on Valeria, and she turned on me like this. She's claiming I broke something of hers. She actually tried to hit me."

I wasn't listening to any of it.

Every part of my attention was on the wreckage scattered across the floor.

I knelt down and gathered the pieces one by one — each tiny gear, each fragment of the broken case — closing my fingers tightly around them.

Cassian's gaze fell on me.

"What's gotten into you?"

I looked up at him. At this man I had loved for three years.

I thought he might at least ask if I was hurt. I thought he might at least see through a lie this transparent.

He didn't.

His eyes held nothing but cold impatience — the look he gave people who couldn't read a room.

"It was her mother's," one of the maids beside him said quietly, unable to stop herself. "The only thing she left her—"

"Enough." His voice cut her off like a blade. Then he looked back at me. "It's a watch. You're making a scene over a watch? I'll have Enzo pick you up ten of them tomorrow, diamond-set. Now apologize to Bianca."

I held his gaze for a moment, and suddenly I just felt… tired.

Not sad. Not angry. Just tired in a way that went all the way down.

I had cried myself to sleep over one sharp word from this man. I had fought to learn how to survive in his brutal, bloodstained world — fought to prove to him that I was worth keeping.

But looking at his face now, cold and utterly unbothered, I felt nothing at all. Not even the faint flicker of something dying.

"Fine." I stood, dropping the bloodied pieces of metal into my pocket. I turned to Bianca.

"I'm sorry, Miss Falcone. I shouldn't have left garbage on the table where you might dirty your hands."

Cassian went still for just a second.

He hadn't expected that. The version of me he knew — compliant, but stubborn when she hit her limit, eyes going red when something mattered too much — she didn't fold like this.

He studied me, his gaze narrowing slightly.

I gave him nothing to read.

"Mr. Moretti, if there's nothing else, I'd like to rest."

A cold exhale. He put his arm around Bianca's waist and turned for the door.

"Smart. Remember what you are — and don't make Bianca uncomfortable again."

The door clicked shut.

I took out my phone and typed a single message.

[Book the ticket for the tenth. Yes — the day of the Moretti wedding.]