Chapter 2 The Bodyguard
The designs burnt faster than she thought they would.
She fed them into the fireplace one by one — her sketches, fabric scraps, the floor plan of that tiny studio in Milan under a fake name. Six months of dreaming about her real life. Gone in forty minutes. Ash and smoke. Nothing else.
She didn't cry. She watched the paper blacken and curl. It felt like cutting out a piece of her own heart. Necessary. But fuck, it hurt.
She was still wearing the gala dress. It still smelt like Ivy's perfume mixed with gunpowder and fear.
If he's been watching me for six months, he's probably already told my father everything. That thought had been spinning since 2 a.m. She didn't know how much Marco had reported. Didn't know if her secret bank account had been found. Didn't know shit anymore.
The only thing she knew — look like you have nothing to hide. So she burned every trace. Then sat in her dirty dress with ash on her fingers until the sky got light.
She looked at the ash and felt the full weight of what it meant.
If she didn't get out of this house she would end up exactly like her mother — reduced to a secret, kept alive only as long as she was useful to a man who called it love. That was the thing nobody ever said out loud in the Lombardi house. The thing she had been running from since she was nine years old and old enough to understand that her mother hadn't just disappeared.
She had been erased.
And nobody had stopped it.
Twenty-one days had been her entire insurance policy against becoming that story.
Now it was ash.
At 6:47 a.m. she opened her bedroom door and walked straight into Marco's presence.
One foot from the door frame. Hands loose. Back straight. There. Like a wall that didn't give a shit if you liked it or not.
She had showered. Put on white trousers and a silk blouse. Done her makeup to look like she'd slept.
She hadn't. Not even ten minutes.
She looked at him. He looked back. Same blank mask. Nothing.
She started walking. He fell in step beside her — not behind her like a normal bodyguard, beside her. Close enough she could feel the heat from his body without touching.
She stopped. He stopped.
"We need rules," she said.
"I have one rule."
"Good for you. I'm making mine." She turned and faced him. "You don't come into my studio without asking. You don't listen to my calls. You don't run to my father with every damn thing I say."
Something flickered in his eyes. Not agreement. Not anger. Watching. Assessing her like a problem he needed to solve.
"You don't leave my sight," he said.
"That's not a rule. That's a fucking prison sentence."
"Those are my terms."
"And if I say no?"
"You don't have a choice."
She stared at him. Most men would look away. He didn't. He waited, calm and patient like a damn stone.
She turned and kept walking.
He followed.
First fight. She lost. She kept moving.
Breakfast was the same fake quiet it always was. Morning light, fresh flowers, everyone pretending to be a normal family.
Sofia was already there — ivory blouse, pearls before eight in the morning, not a hair out of place. Gia's stepmother never said anything she hadn't already calculated. When Gia walked in she stood slightly and put on that soft sympathetic face.
Too smooth. Too fast.
"Gianna, my darling. How are you holding up?"
All the right words about Ivy. Warm but not too much. Sofia had always been excellent at pretending to care.
"Thank you, Sofia," Gia said and sat down. She grabbed the coffee. Her hands were shaking and she pressed them hard into her lap so nobody could see.
Luca was at the far end. He looked like shit. Quiet in a different way than his mother — like he hadn't slept either. Eyes glued to his plate. Twenty-five years old, Gia's half-brother, the heir their father always wanted. Right now he looked like a man sitting with something heavy he didn't know how to put down.
"Luca," she said.
He looked up for one second. "I'm sorry about Ivy." Rough. Cracked. Real — nothing like his mother's version.
Gia nodded and looked away fast. She couldn't handle real right now.
Marco stood against the wall, eyes moving across the table. Sweep. Check. Move on.
Her. Luca. Sofia.
He held on Sofia two extra seconds longer than anyone else at the table. Then moved on like nothing happened.
She watched him do it and felt something cold settle in her chest.
He wasn't looking for an outsider.
He was looking at someone already in the room.
She drank her coffee and said nothing. Kept her face tired and blank.
At ten o'clock she told him she needed to go to Ivy's apartment.
"I'll set up a secure line," Marco said. "The rest can be handled from here."
"Ivy deserves better than being handled from here."
"Ms. Lombardi—"
"She was my best friend." Her throat closed and she swallowed hard against it, jaw so tight it ached. "The only person who actually knew me. And now she's dead. I'm not sitting in this room making sad phone calls like it's just another Tuesday. I'm going to her apartment."
His hand gripped the door frame. Knuckles white for one second. Then let go.
She looked at him and said quieter, meaner, "You think men like you don't pay a price? Ivy is dead because someone in this family decided her life was worth nothing. You work for this family. So don't stand there and tell me what Ivy deserves."
His jaw went tight. For one tiny second his eyes looked different. Something raw flickered there and disappeared just as fast.
She still didn't get to go to Ivy's apartment.
By four in the afternoon she was exhausted from being angry.
She went to her studio. The one room she had fought hard to keep as hers. Marco stood at the door but didn't step inside. Good.
She sat on the worktable with Ivy's portfolio on her lap. Turning pages slowly. Going nowhere.
Ivy's handwriting was everywhere. Try the burgundy with the ivory, G. Trust me. This neckline needs to be braver. You are so much better than you let them see.
Her thumb stopped on that last line.
She pressed it against the ink. Her eyes burned. She blinked hard and kept her face still.
Marco was watching from the doorway. Silent. Not going anywhere. Like he understood that some pain didn't need fixing — someone to witness it was enough.
For a moment she hated him a little less.
Then she turned the next page and froze.
A small folded paper hidden between the pages. Ivy's handwriting. Dated three days before the gala.
If something happens to me — don't trust the family. Start with S.
Her heart slammed so hard against her ribs she felt it in her throat.
She kept her face calm. Folded the paper. Slipped it into her trousers under her blouse in one smooth motion.
Then she looked up.
Marco was still watching her from the doorway.
Not the portfolio. Not her hands.
Her face. Like he was trying to read every thought she had.
She let him see the sadness. The real exhaustion. The red eyes. All of it true.
But the note was burning hot against her skin like a secret brand.
She didn't know if he saw her take it.
She didn't know if he already knew what it said.
And in that long heavy silence — his dark eyes on hers, Ivy's last words pressed against her body — something hit her that dropped her stomach straight to the floor.
His first name wasn't Marco.
It was Santino.
Start with S.