Chapter 5 Ashes and Obsession

Family dinners don’t exist in the Moretti house. What we have are battlefields disguised as oak and china—three men chewing meat while swallowing secrets.

Luca starts in with his usual precision, cutting into his steak like it’s a cadaver on the table. “The Rossi shipment came through last night. Dockside. Quiet.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it, doesn’t need to. Numbers and timing matter more than names for him.

Matteo snorts, tossing back his wine. “Quiet, sure. Except for the two idiots who thought they could skim a cut.” He grins, sharp teeth flashing. “I fixed it.”

“Fixed it,” Luca repeats blandly, not looking up. “Meaning there are two more bodies rotting somewhere in your collection.”

“Meaning they won’t be stealing again.” Matteo leans back, boots tapping against the table leg. He lives for this—shock value, violence dressed up as loyalty.

Luca finally sets down his fork, eyes cutting toward me. “You’re not eating.”

I lift my gaze. “I’m not hungry.”

“That makes three nights,” Luca says. He doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t need to. His questions always land like scalpels, slicing without blood. “What’s distracting you?”

Matteo laughs, low and mocking. “We all know what’s distracting him. He saw her.”

I don’t react, but that only fuels him. He leans forward, voice a growl wrapped in amusement. “Six years, brother. Six years of building an empire on ashes, of punishing strangers through your little hotline. All that time chasing whispers. And now? She’s not a ghost after all.”

“Matteo.” Luca’s tone carries warning, but it doesn’t stop him. Nothing ever does.

“She’s not a ghost,” Matteo continues. “She’s flesh and blood. And she’s back in your orbit. Question is----what does that mean for us?”

I take a sip of wine, slow and deliberate. “It means nothing changes.”

“That’s a lie,” Matteo fires back, all sharp edges. “Everything changes. If Isabella Valentino survived, then someone knows. If someone knows, we’re exposed. Do you want our enemies sniffing around, Adriano? Do you want them asking how she fits into that night?”

The table stills. Even Luca can’t mask the weight of the silence.

He speaks carefully, eyes locked on mine. “Matteo’s right about one thing. The timing matters. Whoever covered her survival either wanted her hidden… or wanted her forgotten. Neither option sits clean.”

My jaw tightens. They’re not wrong. But they don’t understand. They never did.

“She isn’t a threat,” I say finally.

Matteo laughs again, but there’s no humor in it this time. “Everything’s a threat in our world. Especially the things we think we own.”

The room sharpens, the air thick enough to cut.

Luca breaks it with his calm, clinical cadence. “Then decide, Adriano. Is she to be protected, or erased? Wavering will cost us more than you realize.”

Their eyes are on me, waiting. One brother hungering for blood, the other for order. Both of them expecting me to carve the path.

I set down my glass. My voice comes low, steady, final. “She stays alive. She stays close. And anyone who touches her answers to me.”

Matteo shakes his head, muttering under his breath. “Obsession dressed up as strategy.”

“Discipline,” I correct him. My shadow stretches long across the table, swallowing both of theirs. “You think this city bends because of fear or numbers. It bends because I decide where the fire burns. She’s not the weakness, Matteo. She’s the fuse.”

Neither of them argues further, Luca and Matteo’s voices are long become background noice, I should be reviewing shipment reports, calculating risk, drawing bloodlines on maps.

Instead, I’m drowning in a memory.

Six years ago.

The night my world tilted.

It wasn’t supposed to be anything more than another gala—gold chandeliers, music too loud, laughter too fake. Men shaking hands with smiles they didn’t mean, women in gowns sharp enough to cut glass. I played my role, the dutiful Moretti heir, the devil in a tuxedo.

And then I saw her.

She didn’t belong there. I knew it instantly. She stood near the edge of the room, a glass of champagne she barely touched in her hand, her eyes darting as if she’d stumbled into the wrong story. Her dress wasn’t the kind that screamed money. Simple. Elegant. Black silk that clung to her like it had been made for her, though I knew it hadn’t. She wasn’t dripping in jewels, only a thin silver chain at her throat. And still, somehow, every man in that room dimmed when she walked past.

I told myself I was just curious. That’s how it always starts.

When our eyes met, something shifted. Not the polite recognition of strangers—no. It was a collision. The kind of look that strips you bare in an instant.

She smiled, nervous, tucking a curl behind her ear. And I knew I was ruined.

Later, I found her on the rooftop. She was leaning on the railing, city lights flickering against her skin, breathing like she was trying to catch stars in her lungs.

“You don’t like crowds,” she said without looking at me.

Neither do I. But I lied. “I like watching them.”

She laughed, low and soft. “That’s a terrible answer.”

I should’ve walked away. Instead, I stayed. Stayed and let her pull the truth out of me in pieces, like it was the easiest thing in the world. She didn’t know who I was—not really. Not what my family name meant. And for the first time, I didn’t want her to know.

We talked until the music below faded, until the city grew quiet. She told me about books she loved, about dreams too fragile for a world like ours. I told her nothing I should’ve, and everything I shouldn’t have.

When she shivered, I gave her my jacket. She teased me for being cliché, but she kept it anyway.

And when she turned to leave, I caught her wrist.

“Don’t go yet,” I said.

She tilted her head, curious.. “Why not?”

Because I’d never felt like this before. Because the weight I carried, the empire I was born into, the sins that clung to me—none of it mattered when she looked at me.

“Because if you leave now,” I murmured, “I might never see you again.”

Her eyes softened. She stepped closer. And then she kissed me—quick, trembling, a spark that set fire to everything I thought I was.

That was the moment. The night everything changed.

And then—sirens. A message slipped into my pocket. Duty, betrayal, blood waiting just beyond the glittering lights. I pulled away, and she frowned, confused.

“I’ll come back,” I promised.

She nodded. But even then, some part of me knew promises were lies dressed in silk.

I never made it back to her that night---thought I lost my chance,

The glass trembles in my grip as the memory fades. My office is silent, the city sprawling beneath me,

I thought I’d buried that rooftop, that kiss, that girl. But fate isn’t merciful—it’s cruel. It brings back the things you can’t afford to lose, just to watch you unravel.

“Bella,” I whisper to the glass. “You were never supposed to survive me.”

And yet, she did--- to be mine again