His Enemy’s Biker Bride

The Last Dance

Valentina’s POV

The night before my wedding, I discovered that my future husband had paid someone to kill a man who was already dead, and when I found out why, I realized my wedding was never supposed to end with me becoming a wife.

It was supposed to end with me becoming a widow before I even had the chance to escape.

I stood in my father’s private study, holding a folder I had stolen from his desk, Everyone was celebrating my engagement to Alessio Varga, the man my father had chosen for me, and downstairs, people were raising glasses to a marriage that would unite two powerful families. My wedding dress was hanging in the room beside mine, and my father had invited enough important guests to make sure nobody forgot the day his only daughter became the property of another man.

They called it an alliance, but nobody had asked whether I wanted it.

Three days ago, I had overheard Alessio speaking to my father about a shipment arriving at the docks after the wedding. They mentioned the Iron Hounds, a motorcycle club that had been at war with our family for years, and something about making sure their president never discovered what had happened to his brother.

I had tried to forget the conversation until I found the folder.

Now, staring at the papers spread across my father’s desk, I wished I had never opened it.

There were bank transfers, shipment records, and copies of messages between companies I recognized from our family business. One document contained a payment made four years ago, two days before Nico Vescari was killed at the docks. Another showed that the same company had received a new payment last week, with a note about a shipment scheduled for the night of my wedding.

The name Roman Vescari appeared several times.

Everyone knew Roman, the president of the Iron Hounds, a man who had turned his motorcycle club into an organization powerful enough to frighten people who owned entire buildings. My father hated him, and the older men at our family dinners spoke about him as though he were a disease that needed to be removed.

I had never met him, but I knew his younger brother had died in a dispute between our organizations.

At least, that was the story I had been told.

I turned another page and found a list of names, several crossed out in black ink, with one sentence written under them.

The Vescari problem must be finished before the alliance is announced.

My father had always insisted that Nico’s death was the result of a business dispute, something that happened when dangerous men fought over things they could never share. Now I was looking at a document suggesting that his death had been planned, and the people responsible were preparing to do something similar again.

The study door opened, and my father walked in.

“Put those back, Valentina.”

“Did you arrange Nico Vescari’s death?”

He shut the door behind him.

“That is not a question you should be asking.”

“Then tell me why his name is on these papers, why there is another shipment planned for the same place, and why Alessio thinks the Iron Hounds need to be finished before our wedding is announced.”

He took the documents from me and placed them on the desk.

“You have spent your entire life protected from things you cannot understand. Tomorrow, you will marry Alessio, and this family will finally have the security it needs. That is all you have to concern yourself with.”

“What happens if I refuse?”

“You will not refuse.”

“I am not a company you can sell.”

“No, you are my daughter, which is precisely why I expect you to understand what is at stake.” He opened a drawer and took out an envelope with my name written across it. “Your mother understood the sacrifices required to protect this family. I hoped you would have learned the same lesson.”

My mother had been dead for six years, but I still remembered the promises she made about the life I would have when I grew older. She had told me I would be free to choose whom I married and the kind of woman I wanted to become.

My father had spent six years proving those promises meant nothing.

“Do not use Mum to make me feel guilty. She would never have agreed to this.”

“You have no idea what your mother agreed to.”

Before I could demand an explanation, he locked the envelope inside his desk.

“Go downstairs, smile for our guests, and stop looking for trouble where it does not belong.”

I left the study, but his words followed me all the way to my bedroom, you have no idea what your mother agreed to.

For the first time, I wondered whether the stories I had been told about her death were as false as the story about Nico Vescari.

I waited until the house became busy preparing for the guests, then called Tessa, the only person I trusted enough to tell about the papers. When I explained what I had found, she stopped speaking for several seconds.

“Val, you need to leave that house.”

“I know.”

“No, tonight. Do not wait until tomorrow, and do not try to confront your father again.”

“I have nowhere to go.”

“Come to me. We will work something out.”

I packed clothes, cash, my passport, and the documents I had managed to photograph before my father caught me. I also took the little gold key my mother had left me, though I had never discovered what it opened.

At eleven thirty, I slipped out through the servants’ entrance and crossed the garden. I had almost reached the gate when my phone vibrated.

It was a message from Tessa.

Do not come to my apartment. Someone is waiting outside.

A second message followed.

I am sorry, I think your father knows.

I could not risk calling her, so I turned toward the road and paid a driver to take me across the city. Nobody followed us, and when he dropped me near an old shopping district, I walked to a small hotel where I had once stayed with Tessa.

The receptionist barely looked at me when I paid for a room under a different name.

For the first time in my life, I had a door I could lock without asking my father for permission.

I opened the pictures of the documents, trying to understand what I had taken. One shipment record contained an address I recognized, an old warehouse near the docks, and behind it was a handwritten note with a date, and the date was tomorrow.

Whatever Alessio and my father were planning would happen on the night I was supposed to marry him.

I needed someone who could understand the documents, someone who knew what had happened to Nico Vescari. The only name I could think of was Roman Vescari, the man my family had spent years teaching me to fear.

It was a terrible idea, but everyone else I knew was either loyal to my father or too scared to help me.

I searched for the Iron Hounds and found the address of their motorcycle repair shop. At six the next morning, I left the hotel and took a taxi there.

The shop stood behind a row of warehouses, its large metal doors covered in faded paint and old stickers. Several motorcycles were parked outside, and men in black jackets worked around a vehicle near the entrance.

I approached one of them.

“I need to speak to Roman Vescari.”

“Who wants to know?”

“Valentina Moretti.”

The man stopped working and called someone inside. A moment later, the doors opened, and a tall man dressed in black came out, I recognized Roman from the pictures I had seen online.

“You’re a long way from home, Moretti.”

“I need your help"

“Your family has spent four years making my life a living hell, and now their little princess wants my help?”

“I know what happened to your brother.”

I pulled the picture of the shipment record from my bag and handed it to him.

“Where did you get this?”

“From my father’s study. There is another shipment planned for tonight, and I think your brother’s death was connected to it.”

Roman read the document before turning to one of his men.

“Bring her inside.”

I followed him into a small office

“Start talking,” he said. “And if you lie to me, you will wish your father had found you first.”

I told him about the folder, the wedding, and the planned shipment.

When I finished, he asked one question.

“Why should I believe the daughter of the man who helped kill my brother?”

“Because I am supposed to marry the man who ordered it, and I ran away before he could put a ring on my finger.”

Then Roman’s phone rang, he answered it, and listened for a while

“What happened?” I asked.

It was a security picture taken outside the repair shop less than ten minutes earlier. A black car was parked across the road, and a man stood beside it holding my picture, there was a message behind the picture from an unknown number.

We know you have Valentina Moretti. Hand her over before midnight, or the next body we send you will be hers.

Before I could speak, Roman’s phone rang again.

This time, the caller ID showed a name, Dante Moretti.

Roman answered and put the call on speaker.

“Vescari, I believe you have something that belongs to me" my father said

“Bring my daughter home, and I will tell you the truth about your brother’s death.”

Then my father said something that made me realize my escape had been a mistake.

“Because the man who killed Nico Vescari is standing right there in that room with you.”