2
Arianna
I woke in silk sheets that weren’t mine.
The air was heavy with quiet, too still to be natural. For a moment, I lay frozen, trying to piece together how I got here. Then I remembered the signature. My father’s trembling hands. Dante Moretti’s eyes on me like a sealed fate.
Collateral.
I sat up. The room was the size of my old apartment. Cream walls, gold trim, windows draped in thick velvet. Everything was too perfect and too expensive like a cage built to make you forget you’re imprisoned. My clothes from yesterday were gone. In their place, on a chair at the end of the bed, was a folded white silk slip with no underwear.
I didn’t wear it.
Instead, I stormed out of the bedroom in Dante Moretti’s estate barefoot, in a robe, teeth clenched, and ready to make a scene.
The h
