She wasn’t supposed to be anyone’s. She wasn’t even supposed to be whole. Sofia Falconetti turned sixteen three days ago, and the ceremony that was supposed to claim her — body, blood, bloodline — never happened. No one will tell her why. Her grandmother just grips her wrist and whispers that they didn’t finish it. What her family gives her instead is five men. Roc. Dante. Emi. Julian. Mars. Five guys who grew up in her brother’s shadow, sworn by blood to protect her — and sworn, in the same breath, to never, ever want her. One rule. One pact. One burn seared into five palms at once. They weren’t supposed to feel it answer in hers too. Sofia tells herself the math is simple: want one of them, lose all of them. Want none of them, keep everyone safe. She repeats it to herself in the dark so often it almost works. It doesn’t survive contact with Roc’s hands not-quite-touching her. Or Dante almost saying the real thing, miles outside the city where no pact can hear him. Or Emi fixing what she didn’t ask him to fix. Or Julian’s charm slipping just once, just for her. Or Mars, steady as a heartbeat, telling her he was never waiting for permission. Five men who’d burn the city down for her. One rule that says none of them can have her. And now a sixth hand is reaching for her too — a rival family’s heir, offered to her like peace, meant like a claim, and backed by a debt three hundred years old that no one in her family will name out loud. Sofia Falconetti isn’t choosing. She refuses to make this a competition with one winner. But refusing to choose is its own kind of choice — and the ritual that was supposed to protect her from all of this, the one her family never finished, is still waiting. Her grandmother has the missing piece. She’s just been waiting for Sofia to want it. When five men who swore never to claim her finally tell her, together, exactly what they want instead — she runs. The binding she finally chooses for herself will cost more than anyone warned her. Because when the ritual completes, and the smoke clears, and Sofia counts the hands that bled for her there are only five.