Between Blood and Breath

Prerana’s Introduction

Prerana learned early that silence could be a place to live.

She had grown up between walls that smelled of antiseptic and boiled rice, where names changed often but beds did not.

The orphanage was never cruel, but it was never kind either. It functioned the way the world does—efficient, distant, unmoved by tears that came too often. She learned not to cry loudly. She learned to fold herself inward. She learned that if you expected nothing, loss had fewer teeth.

The only constant had been Sister Christy.

She wasn’t a nun by oath, only by habit. A woman with tired eyes and a voice that softened when it spoke Prerana’s name. Christy braided her hair every Sunday, pressed warm palms to her forehead when fevers came, and told her stories about women who crossed oceans and survived. Not fairytales. Survival stories. The kind that ended quietly, without applause.

When Christy died, the world didn’t pause. It rarely does.

Prerana was twenty-two then. Old enough to understand that grief was a private thing. Old enough to know that no one would wait for her to be ready. She packed her life into one suitcase. Clothes. Certificates. A photograph she never looked at. And a job offer that had arrived like a sealed door opening somewhere far away.

Italy.

She didn’t choose the country because she loved it. She chose it because it was far. Because distance felt like safety. Because starting over required unfamiliar streets.

Milan welcomed her with cold air and tall buildings that didn’t care who she was. That suited her. She rented a small apartment close enough to walk to work, far enough that no one noticed when she came home late.

Her life folded into a pattern quickly—wake up, dress neatly, pin her hair back, walk into glass and steel, work until her body forgot it was tired, return to silence.

She liked routines. They didn’t ask questions.

At the office, she became what people needed her to be.

Efficient. Invisible. Reliable.

Personal Assistant to the CEO of Moretti Global Holdings.

It was not a small role. The company breathed money and power. Meetings flowed through her calendar like controlled storms. International calls. Contracts. Names that carried weight. She handled them all without flinching. Her English was fluent. Her Italian careful but respectful. Her presence quiet enough to never interrupt, sharp enough to never miss anything.

No one asked where she came from.

No one asked why she lived alone.

No one asked what she did on weekends.

And she didn’t offer.

Because Prerana had learned that being unremarkable was a form of protection.

Except… Vittorio Moretti noticed everything.

She didn’t know when that started.

Maybe from the first week, when he corrected a scheduling conflict she hadn’t even realized existed.

Maybe from the first time she handed him a file without speaking and he looked at her—not her face, but her hands, steady and unadorned, as if measuring something. Or maybe it was simply the kind of man he was.

Vittorio Moretti did not miss details.

He was not loud. Not dramatic. Not the kind of man who raised his voice to command attention. Silence followed him naturally, like people instinctively stepped aside for storms they sensed before seeing. His suits were dark. His gaze colder than Milan winters. His presence filled rooms without effort.

People feared him. That much was obvious.

Executives stiffened when he entered. Board members spoke carefully. Even men older than him lowered their voices without realizing it. There were rumors—always rumors. Whispers of violence wrapped in polished corporate language. No proof. No questions.

Prerana never listened.

Not because she didn’t believe them.

But because belief changed nothing.

She was careful around him. Respectful. Professional. She addressed him as Sir. She never lingered. Never spoke unless spoken to. Never allowed her eyes to stay too long.

Still… there were moments.

Small, unexplainable moments that unsettled her more than anger ever could.

The way he noticed when she skipped lunch and sent coffee without comment. The way he corrected others sharply but spoke to her in a low, even tone. The way his gaze softened—not warm, not kind, but… less sharp—when she handed him something she’d anticipated without instruction.

It frightened her.

Because affection—real or imagined—was dangerous.

She knew her place.

She was an employee. An orphan. A woman with no safety net.

And he was untouchable.

Prerana did not believe she deserved love. Not romantic love. Not the kind people wrote about or promised. Love required roots. History. Someone waiting if you fell.

She had none of those.

So she buried what she felt deep enough that even she pretended it wasn’t there.

At night, alone in her apartment, she sat on the edge of her bed and listened to the city breathe. Milan was beautiful in a distant way—lights glowing without warmth, laughter drifting up from streets she never walked. Sometimes she imagined what it would be like to belong to something. To someone.

Then she turned the thought off like a switch.

Because survival had taught her one truth very clearly:

Wanting was a weakness.

And yet… her world was about to shift.

She didn’t know it yet, sitting at her small kitchen table with untouched dinner cooling in front of her. She didn’t know that the life she had carefully flattened into silence was about to be pressed between forces she didn’t understand.

Blood.

And breath.

She only knew that tomorrow was another workday. Another schedule. Another quiet walk through glass doors into a world ruled by a man she should never love.

And that somewhere within the walls of the Moretti legacy, there was another presence she had never met.

Someone who would look at her and see something entirely different.

The silence around her tightened, as if holding its breath.

And Prerana, unaware, stepped deeper into it.

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