Vowed in Blood

A Vow ,a debt, a choice

The lecture hall hummed with a soul-sucking persistence. To the hundred other students in the room, the professor went on about his lecture. To Zoraya Montclair, it was a funeral March.

She sat at the back, her sketch book spread open but her attention wasn’t on the supply and demand curves glowing on the screen. Instead, her charcoal pencil moved in harsh,restless line, etching a cage into the heavy paper. Inside it wasn’t an animal , but a girl gripping the chisel, her face frozen in a soundless scream.

Bridging Dynasties

That phrase echoed In her head ever since her father cornered her at home last week. He spoke of the Morettis as if they were gods sent from heaven to save the humans on earth.

But to hell with that description.

She knew them to be blood soaking predators and she knew the truth.

Her papa had gambled the Montclair legacy on bad investments and even worse allies. Now he was selling his only daughter to clear off his debt.

“Is there a problem, Mademoiselle Montclair?”

Zoraya blinked as her pencil snapped due to the pressure of her grip. The professor was staring at her. The entire class too.

“Nòn”.

She replied, her voice sounding like it came from the bottom of a well.

“There’s no problem ”.

Not waiting for a response or for him to continue, she shoved her sketchbook into her bag and slung it over her shoulder , then walked out of the classroom room with all eyes on her. She could barely breathe in there.

Zoraya didn’t head to the parking lot where her father’s driver usually waited for her. Instead, she slipped out of a side exit and began to walk. She walked through the rain-slicked streets of the city, her boots splashing through the puddles, and her ginger hair beginning to frizz and cling to her neck in the humid Paris air.

She ended up in a small, shabby cemetery om the outskirts of the district. To her, it was a place where the dead didn’t demand anything from the living. She sat on the edge of a pedestal, staring at a headless statue of a cherub.

Although her mother was buried in that same cemetery, she didn’t know why she was there. Zoraya never knew her mother. At least she still had fragments of her from old photographs. Her mother was beautiful and looked innocent without much effort. But she was far from innocent. According to Inès, her mother had a very sharp tongue and was always stubborn without having a single care in the world. Her father always said she was like her mother. Maybe it was because her mother was also a redhead.

I could just keep walking, she thought. Change my name and probably work in a studio in Berlin or a café in London.

But she knew the reach of the Morettis. They weren’t just a family. They were a weather system. You didn’t hide from the rain. You either find shelter, or you drown. And she wasn’t one to run away and hide.

Moreover, she loved her father.

Regardless of his greed and weaknesses, he was the only family she had.

And he gave her a life. A meaningful one at that.

The sun began to deep below the horizon, bruising the sky with orange and red. The cold air finally seeped through her denim jacket.

She couldn’t stay here forever. Avoidance was a luxury she had officially run out of.

The Montclair penthouse was eerily quiet when she stepped off the private elevator. Usually, there was the sound of the television, the clinking of glasses, or Inès humming a Portuguese song in the kitchen.

Tonight, there was only the smell of ozone and expensive cologne.

She walked into the main living room, her heart began to pound. Her Papa was sitting in his favorite armchair, but he looked smaller than she has ever seen him. His face was a ghostly grey, and his hands trembling on his knees.

Standing by the floor- to -ceiling window, silhouetted against the sparkling lights of the Eiffel Tower, was a man who looked like he owned the night.

The man stands at an imposing 6’3” (190 cm), possessing the form of an athlete who trains for survival rather than aesthetics. His broad shoulders made his tailored suit hang with a lethal sharpness. He wore a heavy gold signet ring on his left pinky.His eyes a piercing grey the color of the Atlantic Ocean before a storm. His hair is midnight black, thick and kept short at the sides but long enough at the top to be swept back with expensive pomade/gel. He smells of sandalwood, expensive tobacco and rain which lingered in the room serving as a phantom reminder of his presence.

“You’re late, Zoraya”

the man said with his rich baritone voice while turning slowly.

Zoraya knew exactly who he was.

Darion Moretti.

He looked even more imposing than he had in her father’s descriptions. He was dressed in a charcoal suit that cost more than a year of her tuition, his dark hair swept back from a face that was terrifyingly handsome and utterly devoid of mercy.

“Traffic”, she said, her voice calm despite the dread building in the pit of her stomach.Her gaze turned to her father. “Papa, what is this?”

“He… he came early”, he said, his gaze unable to meet her eyes.

Darion stepped towards her and stopped a few feet away, his presence pressing against her like physical weight. “I don’t like waiting. Every minute I spend In this f*****g room is a minute i am not tending to my empire. Your father made a promise, and I have come to collect the collateral ”.

“What are you? Some sort of errand boy?”, Zoraya spat, her green eyes flashing with the fire she tried to suppress all day. “I need time. I have work to do, and a life”.

Darion’s expression didn’t soften. He reached out his fingers to touch her damp hair. She jerked backwards and his eyes darkened.

“You have a choice Zoraya and you will make it now” he said with a low melodic thrum.

“You walk out that door with me this second and we begin our life in Milan. Or,” he paused, his gaze shifting to her father, “I decide that the debt is better settled in blood than in marriage ”.

Zoraya froze.

“You’re threatening us in our own home?”

“It’s not his home anymore” Darion countered. “It’s mine. Everything is mine. Including the air you’re breathing ”.

He pulled a sleek silver hand gun from a holster concealed by his jacket. He held it at his side casually as if it was a cellphone.

“Five seconds, Zoraya” he said.

“Drop the theatrical bullshit and come with me, or I start removing the things your father loves”.

Zoraya’s heart raced. She looked at her father who was pleading silently. She looked at the door. She looked at Darion’s cold grey eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, to negotiate, to scream but her words failed her.

She hesitated, her pride warring with her fear and her soul refusing to bend to this monster’s will.

One.

Two.

Three.

“S’il vous plait, Mon tournesol”(Please, my sunflower), her father begged.

Even if Darion wanted to kill her, he wouldn’t. He needed the union. He needed the name. He needed me.

Four.

“I…I can’t”. Zoraya whispered, a final act of rebellion ”.

Darion didn’t blink. He didn’t even look at Montclair. Instead, he pivoted with lightning speed.

Inès had just stepped into the room with a tray of tea in her hands, her eyes filled with confusion and terror as she realized what was happening. She was the woman who had raised Zoraya, who had wiped her tears when her mother died, who had hidden her sketches from her father’s disapproval.

Boom!

The sound was deafening in the confined space.

Inès didn’t scream. The tray clattered to the floor, porcelain shattering like ice. She slumped on the ground, a bloom of crimson spreading across the polished marble tiles.

“No!” Zoraya shrieked, lunging towards Inès.

She knelt down beside Inès and tried to lift her up. However, she couldn’t. Their clothes got soaked with the red metallic blood.

“The next one is your father”, Darion said, his voice as calm as a graveyard. “Are you still hesitant? Or shall we continue the countdown?”.

Zoraya’s body went limp, her gaze still fixed on Inès still form on the floor. The world felt like it was tilting, the floor falling away.

She looked up at Darion. Her fear was gone. It had been scorched in the heat of that gunshot, replaced by a cold vacuum of pure hatred.

“I’ll go”. She whispered, her voice sounding dead.

Darion tucked the gun back into his holster. He didn’t look at the body on the floor, he didn’t look at Montclair who looked broken in the armchair. He looked only at Zoraya, a smirk playing on his lips.

“Good”, he simply said.

He began to lead her towards the elevator, his hand heavy on her shoulder. Zoraya didn’t look back. She didn’t say goodbye to her papa. As the elevator hissed shut, she looked at her reflection in the polished metal.

The girl who had been creating sculptures in her little studio was gone. In her place stood someone who had just been baptized in the blood of the only female figure she loved.

You think you’ve won Darion, she thought, her eyes meeting his in the reflection. But you didn’t just buy a wife. You invited an assassin into your own home.