Chains of the past

Chapter Three

It didn’t take long for Aria to realize she wasn’t just a prisoner in Luca’s estate, she was a secret.

The morning after that haunting image of Luca and the mysterious woman in the garden, Aria tried to walk through the front entrance. She needed air, needed something other than suffocating walls. But before she could reach the grand staircase, two guards stepped into her path.

“Mr. De Rossi’s orders,” one said. “You’re not to leave the third floor.”

Humiliated, Aria turned back. Her heart pounded not with fear, but with rage.

Later, she cornered one of the maids, Francesca, who had been kind to her when no one else was. “Why?” she asked. “Why am I not allowed to go downstairs?”

Francesca hesitated, eyes darting toward the hall. “He says... you are not to be seen by anyone.”

“Why not?”

But the woman only bowed and scurried away.

Aria sat at the edge of her bed, trying to make sense of it. Was he ashamed of her? Where did she come from? Of what she represented piece of debt he’d claimed like property?

She confronted Luca that evening when he came by, as he sometimes did, checking on her like one might inspect a painting they’d grown bored of.

“Why am I hidden away like some dirty secret?”

He said nothing at first. Just leaned against the doorframe, watching her with that infuriating calm.

“You don’t belong in this world,” he said finally.

“I didn’t ask to belong,” she snapped. “I didn’t ask for any of this. But you took me. You could at least have the decency not to lock me away like a ghost.”

“I’m protecting you.”

“From what?”

His eyes darkened, but he didn’t answer.

“From the truth,” she whispered. “From your own shame.”

He turned and walked out.

The next day, Aria went to the dining hall. She was starving and fed up with waiting for permission. But when she entered, the staff didn’t look at her. Plates were cleared away. The cook said, “We’ve been instructed not to serve you directly.”

Humiliation burned through her.

Back in her room, she stared at herself in the mirror. Her reflection was tired, eyes sunken. She barely recognized the girl in the glass.

If this was protection, it felt like slow death.

Every knock at her door made her jump. Every sound in the hallway made her hope, foolishly, that he’d come with an apology, an explanation. But most nights passed in silence.

Sometimes, she heard parties downstairs. Laughter. Clinking glasses. The sound of life without her.

One night, she crept out of her room, padding down the hallway. She stood at the top of the grand staircase, just beyond the shadows.

She saw him.

Luca, laughing. Arm around that same woman. Their intimacy was effortless.

And her heart shattered all over again.

She no longer blamed him for breaking his promises.

She blamed herself for believing them.

So she did what she never thought she could: she stopped waiting.

She stopped hoping.

Aria began writing letters she never sent, pouring her pain into pages. She made notes of guard schedules, watched the estate from the windows. She didn’t know how, but one day, she would leave.

She would disappear so completely that even Luca De Rossi, with all his power, would never find her again.

The silence became Aria’s only companion.

Each day blurred into the next, a grey smear of boredom, confusion, and pain. No more visits. No more glances. Luca had disappeared from her world completely. As if locking her away wasn’t enough, he had gone a step further. He had erased her.

When Aria asked the maids for news of her family, they avoided her eyes. “We aren’t allowed to speak of them,” one muttered before fleeing the room.

She tried to send a letter, begging Luca to let her contact her parents. It came back unopened, with her name slashed in red across the envelope.

She was no longer a daughter. No longer a sister. Just a shadow kept behind locked doors.

One afternoon, Aria crept into the back garden when the guards changed shift. She crouched behind a marble pillar, eyes on the horizon. It was there that Francesca found her, whispering frantically.

“They’ll punish you if they find you here,” she said.

“I don’t care,” Aria muttered. “I need to know how my family is. Has Luca done something to them?”

Francesca hesitated. Her lips trembled. “There were... threats. Men have been seen near your father’s vineyard. It’s not safe anymore. Luca said it’s to teach them respect.”

Aria’s blood ran cold.

She thought of her mother’s soft hands, her father’s gentle laughter. She had once believed that if she endured this nightmare, they would be spared.

But Luca had lied again.

When she returned to her room, her bed was stripped. The furniture is gone.

“I was ordered to have it removed,” Francesca explained in a choked whisper. “He says you no longer deserve comfort.”

“But why? What did I do?”

“You looked at him in a way he didn’t like,” Francesca said, then added, “He says you remind him too much of the past.”

That night, Aria curled on the floor, her cheek pressed against cold marble. Hunger gnawed at her. Loneliness blistered her skin like fire. The only thing stronger than her pain was her growing hatred.

She watched Luca from afar whenever she could, his expression unreadable, his path ever gilded in power and ice. She began to realize he wasn’t just punishing her, he was punishing himself. And her family had become collateral.

Word reached her that men in De Rossi uniforms had surrounded the Valente estate. Business was failing. Shipments were blocked. Her father grew sick under the pressure.

She scribbled a note to Luca and left it in his office: “I don’t care what war you’re fighting with your demons. Let my family go.”

He never replied.

Instead, the next morning, the guards at her door were doubled.

The next week, the servants stopped speaking to her altogether.

One stormy evening, she heard shouting below her window. A voice she recognized, her stepbrother Marco. She ran to the window, but it was too dark. All she saw was a flash of lightning and the blur of a body being forced into a car.

Francesca refused to speak about it. “Don’t ask questions,” she begged. “Please, Aria.”

But Aria knew something had changed. Something violent.

She clung to the hope that one day, the answers would come. And when they did, she would face Luca not as a prisoner, but as the reckoning he deserved.

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