RUTHLESS VOW

Chapter One: The Debt Collector

My father died owing two point three million dollars to a monster, and somehow, I became the payment.

I learned this while standing at his grave in the pouring rain, watching a stranger in an expensive suit walk toward me with an envelope that would destroy my life. The other mourners had fled an hour ago, clutching umbrellas and murmuring empty condolences. My mother had been taken home by her sister, too sedated to stand. It was just me, my father's fresh grave, and the man who'd been watching me from the shadows since the service began.

I knew who he worked for before he even spoke.

Everyone knew the Morettis. Old money. Immense power. A family that ran the city from behind polished doors while pretending to be respectable. The kind of family you didn't cross unless you had a death wish.

Apparently, my father had crossed them anyway.

My fingers found the delicate gold chain at my throat—the necklace my father had given me two weeks before he died. "For my Elena," he'd said, his hands shaking as he clasped it around my neck. "To keep you safe when I can't." a dying man's last gift to his daughter.

I should have known better. Michael Russo never did anything without an angle.

The man stopped in front of me, water sliding down his perfect suit. He stared like I was a number, not a person.

"Miss Russo." He knew exactly who I was.

My stomach dropped. "Who are you?"

"My name isn't important." He pulled a cream-colored envelope from his jacket and held it out. "I'm here to deliver a message."

I didn't take it. "What message?"

"Your father had business with certain people. That business remains unfinished." His tone was patient, almost bored, like he'd had this conversation a hundred times before. "There's an address and a time. I suggest you keep the appointment."

"And if I don't?"

Something flickered in his expression. "Then the people will pursue other methods of collection. Methods that tend to be less pleasant for everyone involved." He pushed the envelope toward me again. "Take it. And be grateful you're being given a choice."

I took the envelope with numb fingers.

He turned and walked back toward the black sedan idling near the cemetery gates. I watched the car pulled away, the rain swallowing, and then I was alone again with my father's grave and the weight of something I wasn’t ready for.

I opened the envelope with shaking hands.

Inside was a single card with an address in the financial district.A time: tomorrow, 2 PM. And at the bottom, a name that confirmed my worst fears.

Moretti.

My stomach dropped. My father had really been that reckless.

I drove home in a daze, barely seeing the road through the rain. My apartment, usually quiet and comforting, felt cold and hallow.

I poured myself a glass of wine I couldn't afford and sat at my kitchen table with my father's ledger—the one I'd found hidden in a shoebox in his closet. I'd been avoiding it, telling myself I'd deal with it after the funeral. Avoidance was not an option anymore

I opened the ledger and started reading.

The numbers blurred at first, but the truth became clear fast. He hadn’t just gambled. He’d borrowed. From people who charged the kind of interest that ruined lives.

And the biggest debt—the one that swallowed everything else—was owed to the Moretti family.

Two point three million dollars.

I stared at the number until it stopped being a number and became a threat. Two point three million. I made forty-two thousand a year. I had six hundred dollars saved. My car was barely worth three thousand.

There was no version of reality where I could pay this debt.

I thought about my mother, her little house she'd lived in for thirty years, the garden she tended every spring, the bedroom where she'd cared my father through his final illness. If this debt fell on her, she'd lose everything. Her home, her security, the fragile stability that was that was holding her together.

I couldn't let that happen.

I didn't sleep that night. I sat at my table running numbers that refused to add up, searched for solutions that didn't exist, and watched the sky slowly lighten outside my window. My fingers kept drifting to the necklace at my throat, rubbing the delicate chain as if it could shield me from what was coming.

"To keep you safe” My father had said.

But he never kept me safe. And whatever he'd gotten me into, I'd have to face alone.

By the time dawn broke, I'd accepted the truth.

I had to keep the appointment.

The next afternoon, I put on my best blazer and took the train to the financial district. The address led me to a high-rise tower of—glass and steel, sharp against the gray sky. I'd expected somethinghidden. Something criminal looking.

This was worse. This was power that didn’t have to pretend.

The lobby was all marble and silence. A security guard checked my name on a list and led me to a private elevator. I stepped inside and my reflection stared back at me pale and small in the mirrored walls.

The elevator opened onto a penthouse office.

Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the entire city. The furniture was sleek and expensive—leather, chrome, dark polished wood to a quiet shine under the recessed light. Everything in the room spoke of money and control, Everything radiated control.

And there, standing at the window with his back to me, was Dante Moretti.

I’d seen pictures of him in articles, and heard endless rumors. But nothing had prepared me for the reality of him. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his dark hair pushed back from a face that looked carved—sharp jaw, full mouth, cheekbones like blades . He wore a black suit like it was made for him, and when he turned to face me, his eyes were the coldest thing I'd ever seen.

Dark. Empty. The eyes of a man who had forgotten how to feel anything at all.

But when they landed on me, something flickered there. Something that made my breath catch and my pulse stutter. Like he already know me. Like he’d been waiting.

"Miss Russo." His voice was low and smooth, the kind of voice that could seduce or destroy with equal ease. "Please. Sit."

He gestured to a chair across from his desk. I remained standing.

A faint lift of his brow—surprise, maybe amusement. He wasn't used to people refusing him. I clung to that small victory.

"I prefer to stand."

"As you wish."He sat behind his desk, studying me with a focus that felt too sharp. His gaze dropped to my necklace for a moment before returning to my face. "Do you know why you're here?"

"You're going to tell me my father owed you money."

"Two point three million dollars." He said the number like it was nothing, "Your father is dead. The debt remains."

"I'm not responsible for his mistakes."

"No." he said calmly. "But you are the only one left to pay for them."

My stomach tightened. I thought of my mother, Her house, everything that could be taken from her "I don't have that kind of money. No one in my family does."

"I'm aware." His eyes never left my face, and I had the strangest feeling he was memorizing every detail—the curve of my mouth. the way my fingers touched the necklace at my throat. "Which is why I’m offering you an alternative arrangement."

My stomach knotted. "What kind of arrangement?"

Dante smiled. it’s wan’t comforting , it was a warning.

"One year of your life, you live in my home. You work as my personal assistant. At the end of twelve months, your father’s debt is cleared. Your mother keeps her home. And you walk away."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I collect through legal channels. Your mother loses her home. Your credit will be destroyed. You'll spend the rest of your life buried under a weight you can never escape." He tilted his head. "The choice is yours."

I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to throw his offer in his face and storm out of his gleaming tower and never look back.

But I had no choice. We both knew it.

"One year," I said. "And then I'm free."

"One year," he agreed. "I'll send a car on Thursday."

He returned his attention to the papers on his desk, dismissing me as easily as he'd summoned me. And then I turned and walked out.

The elevator doors closed behind me, and I caught my reflection again—pale, terrified, trapped.

What had I just agreed to?

And why, when Dante Moretti had looked at me, had I seen something in his eyes that looked almost like hunger?