Till Death DO Us Part

The House of Moretti

Valentina POV

Morning in the Moretti house never arrived quietly. It arrived in layers.

Sunlight spilled through the tall windows first, turning the cream stone walls gold and drawing pale bands of light across the dark wood floors.

Then came the scent of espresso drifting through the halls, followed by the faint murmur of staff moving through the lower level with the polished discretion only very expensive households ever seemed to master.

Security changed shifts outside before most of the city had even thought about waking. Somewhere on the grounds, tires crunched over gravel. Somewhere farther down the hall, a door opened and shut.

The house breathed around me.

I woke before my alarm, staring up at the pale ceiling of my bedroom with the strange, heavy certainty that Something had shifted while I slept.

For one brief, disorienting second, I thought I was younger.

That if I opened my bedroom door, I would hear my mother somewhere downstairs. Her voice in the kitchen. Her laugh drifted in from the terrace. The soft rustle of her robe against the hallway floor as she crossed toward my father’s study to remind him, gently and unsuccessfully, that he was supposed to be taking a day off.

Then reality settled over me, cold and familiar.

My mother had been dead for thirteen years.

And I was twenty-two, lying in a bed far too large for one person, staring at a ceiling I had memorized years ago.

I sat up slowly and pushed my hair back from my face.

The room was still dim, the curtains half-drawn against the early-morning light. My bedroom had always felt more private than grand despite its size, probably because I had spent years quietly fighting against the kind of room everyone expected the daughter of Alessandro Moretti to have.

Yes, there was silk.

Yes, there were antiques, art, and a walk-in closet large enough to offend most people. But there were also books stacked on the side table, a cardigan tossed over the reading chair in the corner, and two candles on the dresser that smelled like vanilla and cedar instead of whatever rich women were supposed to prefer.

Money made things beautiful.

It did not always make them mine.

I reached for the glass of water on my nightstand and drank half of it before standing.

The marble floor was cool beneath my feet as I crossed to the windows and pushed the curtains wider.

The grounds stretched out below, neat and manicured. Gardens, gravel paths, trimmed hedges, and old trees that had been standing on Moretti land longer than I had been alive.

Beyond them, the security detail moved in dark suits along the perimeter, discreet enough to be mistaken for drivers if you did not know what to look for. Cameras were hidden in the ivy. Two men stood near the gate. Another walked the east side of the house with an earpiece pressed into place and one hand near his jacket.

Protection had always looked beautiful in my family.

That was one of the first lies wealth ever taught me.

My phone buzzed on the table by the window.

Rosalia.

A small smile touched my mouth before I answered.

“Good morning.”

“Is it?” Rosalia asked.

I leaned one shoulder against the glass. “That depends. Why do you sound like you’ve already judged the entire day and found it lacking?”

“Because your father wants everyone downstairs in thirty minutes.”

The smile left my face.

My father did not call family meetings over nothing before breakfast.

I straightened. “What happened?”

“I’m not completely sure.” I could hear movement on her end, the rustle of fabric, a drawer closing. “Adriano came home late. Alessandro was already waiting for him in the study. Rafael showed up half an hour later looking like he wanted to put someone through a wall. They were all in there until nearly three.”

That was enough to wake every nerve in my body.

I looked back out over the gardens, suddenly too aware of how still the house felt around me.

“Did Adriano tell you anything?”

“You know your brother.” Rosalia’s voice turned dry. “He kissed me goodnight, told me not to worry, and then very obviously gave me a reason to worry.”

I let out a soft laugh despite the tension. “That does sound like him.”

“It does.” She paused. “Are you all right?”

The question was simple, but Rosalia had always had a talent for asking the questions she actually meant. She did not ask whether I was awake or coming downstairs. She asked if I was all right because she knew me well enough to hear the shift in my breathing and understand that my mind was already running ahead.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You’re lying.”

“Probably.”

“Do you want me to come up?”

I glanced toward the door, then back at the grounds below. “No. I’ll get dressed and come down. I’d rather hear whatever this is before Rafael starts threatening furniture.”

Rosalia laughed softly. “Too late for that, I think.”

“Wonderful.”

“I’ll save you a seat.”

She hung up before I could answer.

I stayed where I was for another moment, phone still in my hand, watching the security detail move across the lawn in clean, practiced lines.

A family meeting.

My father, both brothers, and Rosalia all woke up before eight in the morning, and tense enough that Rosalia was calling me before anyone else could.

Something had happened.

I could feel it in the silence of the house. In the way, the air seemed heavier than it should have. In the old, ugly part of me that had never stopped listening for disaster after the night my mother died.

There were some mornings when I woke up and felt twenty-two.

There were others where I woke up and felt nine all over again.

Today felt like both.

I set my phone down and headed for the shower.

The water was almost too hot, but I let it run over my shoulders anyway, letting the sting of it keep me anchored while my mind sorted through possibilities. A territory issue. A betrayal. Another family is pushing too far. A business problem. A threat. Something involving my father. Something involving Adriano. Something involving Rafael, which, statistically, was always a possibility.

Or Something worse.

I pressed my palms to the marble wall and closed my eyes.

At nine years old, I learned that a normal day could split open without warning.

One minute, I had been in the back seat of a car, listening to my mother hum under her breath. The next, metal screamed, glass shattered, and my mother’s body was covering mine while the world folded in on itself.

There were pieces of that night I remembered too clearly.

My mother’s perfume.

The taste of blood in my mouth.

Her hand in my hair.

The weight of her body over mine as if she could still protect me from death by simply wanting to.

She died before the ambulance reached the hospital.

I lived because she made sure I did.

The doctors called it a miracle. My father called it murder. He spent years making sure the people responsible never got the chance to beg.

I learned Something different from it.

No one was ever safe just because they were loved.

By the time I stepped out of the shower, steam had fogged the mirror, and my thoughts had settled into a colder shape. I dried off, wrapped myself in a robe, and crossed into the dressing room.

Public Valentina was easy to assemble. She always had been.

A cream silk blouse. Black tailored trousers. Gold hoops. A fitted jacket. Hair blown smooth and tucked behind one ear. Light makeup, just enough to make me look polished without making me feel like I was wearing a mask.

In private, I preferred comfort. Cashmere, oversized sweaters, bare feet, soft fabrics, and silence. But if my father was calling a family meeting before breakfast, then comfort had no place in it.

I slipped my gun into the holster hidden beneath my jacket and fastened it in place.

Then I left my room.

The upstairs hall was quiet, lined with framed art and old photographs that made the house feel less like a museum and more like a memory given architecture.

I passed my mother on the way to the stairs. It had been taken years before she died. She stood in the garden wearing a pale dress, one hand lifting her hair off her neck as she smiled at someone behind the camera.

My father, most likely.

He used to keep that photograph in his bedroom. After she died, he moved it into the upstairs hall where all of us would see it every day. I had never asked him why.

Maybe because I already knew.

Some griefs were too heavy to keep private.

I touched the edge of the frame lightly as I passed.

“Good morning, Mama,” I murmured.

Then I continued downstairs.

The lower level of the house opened around me in cream stone, dark wood, and soft morning light. Staff moved quietly through the hallways, carrying trays, flowers, and fresh linens. One of the housekeepers smiled when she saw me. I smiled back automatically.

The breakfast room sat at the back of the house overlooking the gardens, one of the brightest rooms on the ground floor and one of my favorites when the house did not feel like it was holding its breath.

Today, voices drifted from behind the half-open doors, low and tense enough to make me slow my steps before I entered.

I knew those voices.

My father’s calm authority.

Adriano’s quieter, colder tone.

Rafael’s sharper edge.

Rosalia said very little, which usually meant she was listening harder than anyone else in the room.

I reached for the door just as Rafael’s voice carried clearly through the gap.

“I’m telling you this is a mistake.”

I froze.

Adriano answered, his tone clipped. “You think I don’t know that?”

“It doesn’t sound like it.”

“Rafael,” my father said.

That one word held enough warning to quiet him.

I stayed where I was, hand still on the door, my pulse suddenly too loud in my ears.

A mistake.

What mistake?

I should have walked in immediately. Announced myself. Refused to linger outside the room like a child listening at doors.

Instead, I stayed very still.

“You’re asking for trouble,” Rafael said after a beat, quieter now but no less furious.

“You know what Mikhail Sokolov is.”

“I am aware,” my father replied.

The name landed like a blade dropped onto marble.

Sokolov.

Every instinct in my body sharpened at once.

I knew that name. Everyone in our world did. Russian Bratva. Old brutality wrapped in money and influence. Dangerous men with colder reputations than most people were smart enough to test.

I pushed the door open before I could hear anything else.

Four heads turned toward me.

The breakfast room fell silent.

Sunlight poured through the glass doors behind them, spilling over white roses, silver coffee service, crystal, and the faces of my family, all of them suddenly too still.

Rafael stood first.

“Vale.”

He crossed the room in three strides and pulled me into a hug before anyone else could speak. I laughed softly, more from surprise than amusement, and wrapped my arms around him.

Rafael had always loved like he fought, with his whole body and no real interest in subtlety. To the rest of the world, he was sharp smiles and bad decisions waiting to happen. To me, he was warm hands, too-tight hugs, and the kind of protective instinct that bordered on homicidal if someone looked at me wrong.

He kissed the top of my head before pulling back to study my face.

“You slept?”

“Enough.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It’s the one you’re getting.”

His mouth twitched, but it did not quite reach his eyes.

That was enough to tell me this was bad.

I looked past him toward the table.

Adriano sat in a dark suit, immaculate as always, one hand wrapped around his coffee cup. Rosalia sat beside him in pale blue silk, elegant and composed, though the tension in her shoulders betrayed her.

My father stood at the head of the table, one hand resting on the back of his chair, his expression unreadable.

Too unreadable.

Something cold slid through me.

“What happened?” I asked.

No one answered.

Rafael glanced toward our father. Adriano’s jaw tightened. Rosalia looked down at her tea for a brief second, then back at me.

The silence stretched.

And I knew, with the kind of certainty that makes your stomach drop before your mind catches up, that whatever waited on the other side of this moment was going to change Something I could not get back.

“Papa,” I said quietly.

My father looked at me for a long moment.

Then he said, “Sit, tesoro.”

I did.

And as I lowered myself into the chair Rosalia had clearly saved for me, I had the sudden, terrible feeling that somewhere in New York, another family was having this same conversation for a very different reason.