Fire to fire || 18+

Chap 2

The air in Lake Como didn’t smell like freedom. It smelled like expensive cologne, aged grappa, and the faint, metallic tang of gun oil…the scent of the Sartoni estate.

I stepped out of the black town car, my scuffed leather boots hitting the gravel with a crunch that sounded far too loud in the oppressive silence of the driveway. I wasn’t wearing silk. I wasn’t wearing the "velvet gowns" my mother used to drape over my shoulders like a gilded shroud. I was wearing faded black jeans, a t-shirt that had seen better days, and a jacket I’d bought at a thrift store in Lyon.

I looked like a girl who struggled to pay rent. I looked like a ghost.

"Naesa."

The voice was thin, reeking of practiced authority and failing health. I turned to see my father, Don Sartoni, standing on the marble steps of the villa. He looked older - thinner, but his eyes were still two chips of flint, cold and unyielding. Beside him stood Lorenzo, my younger brother. At twenty-four, he was the picture of a pampered prince: tailored suit, perfectly coiffed hair, and a smirk that made my fingers itch for the silver knife they’d taken from me fourteen years ago.

"Father," I said, my voice raspy from the flight. "You said there was an emergency. I expected a funeral, not a welcoming committee."

Lorenzo chuckled, a dry, irritating sound. "Always so dramatic, sister. You’ve been playing 'peasant' for so long you’ve forgotten how we handle business."

"Business," I spat the word. "You called me back from a life I built with my own hands for business?"

"Inside," my father commanded, turning his back on me.

The villa hadn't changed. The vaulted ceilings, the Renaissance frescoes depicting gods and monsters…monsters that looked remarkably like the men who lived beneath them. But as we walked into the grand study, the atmosphere shifted. It wasn't just my family waiting.

There were guards I didn't recognize. Men with the Lombardi crest pinned to their lapels.

My heart hammered a slow, rhythmic warning against my ribs. My training, the lethal instincts I’d tried to bury under layers of spreadsheets and morning coffees, screamed at me. I scanned the room. Four guards. Two exits. A heavy bronze bust on the desk that could crush a skull if swung correctly.

Then, I saw him.

He was sitting in the high-backed velvet chair usually reserved for my father's most honored guests. He didn't stand when I entered. He didn't even look up at first. He was leaning back, one leg crossed over the other, idly flicking a gold lighter open and shut. Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

Rafaele Lombardi.

The sanguaccio. The bastard who had turned the underworld on its head while I was busy learning how to be "meek."

Up close, the descriptions didn't do him justice. He was a landscape of sharp angles and shadows. His suit was charcoal, fitting his broad shoulders with a precision that felt aggressive. His hair was dark, shorter than the last time I’d seen a grainy photograph of him, and his jawline looked like it had been carved from the very marble of the villa.

"You're late," my father said, taking his seat behind the desk.

"I was busy living," I countered, keeping my eyes fixed on the side of Rafaele’s head. He still hadn't acknowledged me.

"The Russians have taken the port in Brindisi," Lorenzo blurted out, his voice high and thin compared to the heavy silence of the room. "They’ve hit three of our warehouses in the last month. They aren't just skimming. They’re hunting us."

I looked at my brother with pure, unadulterated disgust. "And you, the 'sole heir,' are so incompetent that you need to call your sister back from exile to save your skin? I told you fourteen years ago you weren't fit to hold a gun, let alone a legacy."

Lorenzo’s face flushed a violent shade of red. "I didn't call you back to fight, you b***h. I called you back to be a bridge."

The air left the room. I felt the trap snap shut before I even heard the words.

"A merger," my father said, his voice devoid of emotion. "The Sartoni and Lombardi families will unite. We will pool our resources, our soldiers, and our territories to erase the Russian threat from the map."

"And how do you propose to 'unite' two families that have spent fifty years trying to slit each other's throats?" I asked, though I already knew the answer. It was the oldest, foulest trick in the book.

"A marriage," my father stated. "Between the first-born of the Sartoni and the head of the Lombardi."

I laughed. It was a jagged, hysterical sound that echoed off the frescoes. "I’m not the heir, remember? You made sure of that. Marry Lorenzo off. Let him be the 'quiet support' to a Lombardi bride."

"The contract specifies the first-born daughter," a new voice broke in.

It was deep. A low, resonant vibration that seemed to settle in the marrow of my bones.

Rafaele Lombardi finally turned his head.

I expected fire. I expected the legendary brutality of the man who had executed his own half-brothers at age seven to be written in his gaze. I expected a challenge, a sneer, or at least a glimmer of the hatred I felt for him.

Instead, I got... nothing.

Rafaele looked at me with an expression of profound, soul-crushing boredom. His icy grey eyes flicked down to my thrift-store boots, up my worn jeans, and settled momentarily on my face as if he were inspecting a piece of luggage that had been misplaced in transit.

He didn't look like a man who had found his match. He looked like a man who was sitting through a tedious board meeting. He looked at me as if I were a minor inconvenience, a line item on a balance sheet that he was forced to sign off on to get to the more important parts of his day.

My blood turned to acid.

I knew that look. I’d seen it on the faces of the men in the small town where I’d lived for fourteen years, the way they looked at a stray cat they felt sorry for, or a waitress they were about to tip out of a sense of obligation.

He thinks he’s doing me a favor, I realized, the thought burning hotter than any insult.

In his mind, I wasn't the "killing machine" of the Sartoni. I wasn't a threat. I was a "poor girl" who had been "struggling" in the world, and he, the great Phoenix of Lombardi, was swooping in to provide me with a life of luxury and a name that actually meant something. He saw my exile as a failure, not a choice.

He gave the gold lighter one last click and pocketed it. He stood up, and the room seemed to shrink. He was taller than I’d imagined, an imposing pillar of dark elegance.

"Is she always this loud?" Rafaele asked, his gaze drifting to my father. He didn't even address me directly.

"She has forgotten her place," my father said coldly.

Rafaele let out a short, huffed breath, not quite a sigh, but close enough. He stepped toward me, stopping just outside my personal space. The scent of him, sandalwood and something sharper, like ozone before a storm, hit me like a physical blow. He was looking down at me, his face a mask of weary indifference.

"I have a war to win," he said softly. His voice held no malice, which was somehow worse. It held the patronizing patience of a king speaking to a peasant. "I don't particularly care which bed I sleep in, as long as the flank of my empire is secure. If this marriage keeps the Russians from my throat, I will endure it. I suggest you do the same."

He reached out, his fingers grazing my chin. I didn't flinch, I was too busy calculating exactly how fast I could jab my thumb into his windpipe, but the touch felt like a brand.

"Try to dress like a Sartoni for dinner," he added, his tone trifling, as if he were reminding a child to wash their hands. "It would make the transition... easier for you."

He turned on his heel and walked toward the door, his guards falling into step behind him like shadows. He didn't look back. He didn't need to. He had already dismissed me as a non-factor.

I stood in the center of the study, my hands shaking, not with fear, but with a violent, volcanic rage.

He thought I was a charity case. He thought he was the one doing the "enduring." He thought he was bringing a lost lamb back to the fold.

He had no idea.

Fourteen years ago, I had left because I refused to be a pawn. I had come back because I thought the family was in danger. But standing there, watching the "Bastard of Lombardi" walk away with his bored shoulders and his arrogant stride, I realized the emergency wasn't the Russians.

The emergency was that I was going to have to kill my husband before the honeymoon was over.

"Naesa," Lorenzo said, his voice dripping with smug satisfaction. "Go to your room. The maids have prepared a dress. Try not to embarrass us further."

I turned to my brother, and for a split second, the "normal girl" from the small town vanished. The princess of the silver knife looked out through my eyes, and Lorenzo actually took a step back, his smirk faltering.

"The dress," I said, my voice deathly quiet, "had better be red. It saves time on the cleaning."

I walked out of the study, every step a promise. Rafaele Lombardi wanted a quiet support? He wanted a bored alliance?

He wanted fire?

I would give him an inferno that would turn his "sole heir" ambitions to ash. He thought he was doing me a favor by marrying me. By the time I was through with him, he’d be begging the Russians to kill him just to escape the bed we shared.

The game had changed. I wasn't just back in the family. I was back in the hunt.

~•~