Chapter 1 One
Elena’s POV
I am going to lose my virginity tonight to a stranger.
The thought isn’t a whisper; it’s a cold, flat statement in my mind, as factual as noting the color of the sky. It doesn’t feel shocking. It feels like the first sane decision I’ve made in a month
I am not a wayward girl. I’m a restorer of Baroque paintings, for God’s sake. I spend my days in a silent, sunlit lab at the Museo Nazionale, coaxing 300 year old saints and martyrs back to life with solvent and scalpel. I find sanity in the smell of linseed oil and the precise, patient work of repair.
But sometimes, the canvas is too far gone. Sometimes, the fire or the flood damage is so profound that all you can do is document the loss, fold what remains into tissue, and store it away in the dark.
I understand that now.
My hands don’t shake as I line the kohl along my lash line. They are steady. They have to be. This is my final act of restoration on myself before I am stored away.
---
One month earlier, my hands were just as steady, but for a different reason. I was lost, and that was the point.
I was in the conservation lab, bent over a damaged Madonna col Bambino. A long, ugly gash tore through the Virgin’s azure robe, a violent wound on the serene scene. My world had shrunk to the millimeter of canvas under my magnifying visor, to the single bristle of my tiniest brush, dipped in a custom pigment I’d spent a week matching. Here, there was no debt, no decaying family name, no pressure. Just the problem and the solution.
My phone vibrated on the table, I ignored it. It buzzed again. And again. Insistent.
With a sigh, I lifted my visor. The screen showed my father’s name.
“Papà? Is everything—”
“Elena.” His voice was a strained crackle, a sound of splintering wood. “You need to come home. Now. Don’t argue. Just come.”
“What’s wrong? Is it Luca?” My brother’s name was a constant, low-grade dread.
“Just come home.” The line went dead.
A fist of ice formed in my gut, and it didn’t melt during the frantic bus ride across Naples, or as I pushed through the ornate, heavy gate of the Villa Moretti. The house wasn’t a home; it was a monument to a fortune that had bled away years before I was born. All gilt and cold marble, echoing with empty pride.
My stepmother, Celia, waited in the grand sitting room. She looked like a perfectly preserved orchid all beautiful, delicate, and utterly poisonous. My father sat slumped in a high-backed chair by the dead fireplace, his eyes fixed on his own intertwined fingers as if they held some terrible secret.
“Elena. Sit.” Celia’s voice was calm, surgical.
“What’s happened? Where’s Luca?”
“Luca,” Celia said, settling her teacup onto its saucer with a precise click, “has been an idiot. A spectacularly costly idiot.” She looked at me, her gaze devoid of anything resembling warmth. “He attempted to broker a deal. A shipment. He used the Valtieri name as collateral without their permission.”
The ice in my stomach turned to lead. Valtieri. The name wasn’t spoken; it was breathed in fear, a dark undertone to the city’s bustle.
“How much?” I heard myself ask.
Celia named a figure. Seven digits. It was a number so large it ceased to be money and became a pure, abstract force of destruction. The room tilted.
“That’s impossible. We don’t have… sell the house, the cars—”
“The house is mortgaged to its roofline. The cars are leased. We have nothing. He,” she jerked her head toward my silent father, “has nothing. But Don Valtieri is a… traditional man. He prefers alternative forms of payment.”
She let the words hang in the perfumed air. My father flinched but said nothing. A portrait of cowardice.
“What does that mean?” My voice was a thread.
“It means,” Celia said, leaning forward, her eyes gleaming with a horrible, pragmatic light, “that he has accepted an offer. The debt will be forgiven. In exchange for you.”
The words bounced off me, senseless. “For me? To do what? Work for him? I’m a conservator, I’m not—”
“His wife, Elena.” She said it slowly, as if explaining to a child. “You will marry Don Silvio Valtieri.”
The world didn’t go black. It went horrifically, hyper-clear. I saw every thread in the Persian rug, every flaw in the marble floor, every trembling vein on my father’s hands.
“No.” The word was a breath. Then a roar. “NO! You can’t be serious! He’s a monster! He’s old, he’s—”
“Corpulent. Cruel. A man with tastes rumored to be… sadistic.” Celia listed the attributes dispassionately. “He collects beautiful things and breaks them for his amusement. He is everything you say. And you will be his wife.”
I turned to my father. “Papà. Look at me. You can’t let them do this. Please.”
He finally raised his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, hollow. “Elena, cara… it is done. The documents are signed. It saves the family. It saves Luca’s life.”
“You signed me over? Like a title to a car?” Rage, white and hot, scalded my throat. I screamed, I pleaded, I threw a porcelain vase that shattered against the hearth. They just watched. My hurricane met the immovable, cold wall of their desperation.
Celia waited for my fury to spend itself into ragged sobs. “The wedding is in one month. You will be prepared. He’s been… observing you. They have eyes everywhere. Trying to run would be… unwise. For you, and for Luca.”
The finality of it crushed the air from my lungs. I was a ledger entry. An asset to be liquidated.
They locked me in my old bedroom. I stared out the window at the manicured garden, my future narrowing to a single, dark point.
That’s when the cold, clear thought arose, cutting through the panic like my scalpel through damaged varnish.
If my body is the currency they’ve chosen… then I will spend its value first.
On my terms.
---
Which is why, tonight, I stand before a mirror in a borrowed apartment, painting my face into a mask of boldness. The emerald green dress I bought with my last savings hugs my body as my armor. I am not a blushing bride. I am a woman walking to her own execution and choosing the firing squad.
I am going to L’Ombra, the most exclusive, discreet club in Naples. I will find a man. Not just any man. The most magnetically, dangerously attractive one I can see. I will give him this one thing my family sold without my consent. I will reclaim the transaction.
I will have one memory that belongs only to me.
I take a final, shuddering breath. The girl in the mirror looks back, her eyes wide with fear and furious resolve.
I turn off the light, and walk out into the humming, indifferent night.