Chapter 2 Belle
BELLE
This has to be the fanciest prison in the world.
Fine, prison is a stretch. Real prisons don't let you lock yourself in.
Which is exactly what I do the second those walking refrigerators in suits deposit me here like lost luggage.
"Your room, Miss Donovan," one says, like I've checked into the fucking Ritz.
The lock clicks under my fingers. Pathetic protection, but it makes me feel better.
I sag back against the door and slide to the floor, my head dropping into my trembling hands.
All of me is shaking, with rage, shock, and I'm pretty sure a dozen other emotions I've never had to identify before, because my life was relatively normal.
But normal's a joke right now, and I'm the new cautionary tale for rock bottom.
Goodbye, stable-headed Belle. Hello, Belle feeling things she doesn't even know.
What the hell just happened?
"You must have a twisted sense of humor." I tip my head back to the ceiling, praying someone's getting a laugh out of this, and claw my fingers through my hair.
My father just sold me to the Beast of New York.
Welcome to what the actual fuck, Belle. Population: you.
I take a few deep breaths and let my eyes sweep around the room.
Gorgeous, a four poster bed with a mattress that looks like it's been donated by angels, beautiful windows sweeping over the grounds of Moretti's estate.
The furniture in this room is worth more than my dad's entire house.
Hell, it's probably worth more than my entire existence, according to the going rate for daughters these days.
And here's the worst part—mixed in with the fury and fear is something else I can't even dare to name.
The way Luca looked at me had my heart fluttering like a string of papers, and it wasn't from fear.
He took up space like I was already his, and part of me hated how my stomach twisted at that.
I sit right there, with my ass on the carpet, and replay it over and over.
"You belong to me now."
"You're not serious," I'd said to Moretti. "People don't do this. This isn't... This isn't medieval times. You can't just claim me like I'm some archaic bride price."
"Call your father back in," was all he said. "Hear it from him."
Of course, I didn't believe him. What sane woman would?
Turns out, he wasn't crazy. I was.
Dad's face when he explains what Luca really is? I'll never forget it.
"The Morettis aren't just businessmen, Belle." His voice cracks like cheap paint. "They're... they run things. The kind of things that don't show up on tax returns."
"You borrowed money from the mob?" The words taste impossible.
"I borrowed money from the only people willing to lend it." He still won't look at me. "When the banks said no, when we were three days from closing..."
The rest clicks into place like bullets into a chamber.
It was then, from the way his voice trembled, that I knew they didn't call Luca Moretti The Beast of New York for the fight moves I saw out the window.
This man ran a criminal underworld, and somehow, I'd stumbled straight into the knots of his web.
And in that moment, I felt the first real taste of terror, like a fly realizing too late the spider's already watching.
"Belle, I owe Mr. Moretti a significant sum. The company... it's not just struggling. We're finished. And I… I made promises I couldn't keep."
"What promises?" I'd asked, watching my father squirm for an answer.
Luca had stood there, leaning against his desk like some GQ model who moonlights as a hitman.
He was the one who told my dad to quit stalling.
"Dad?" I asked again.
"I promised him my most valuable asset."
"No," I'd said, laughing because surely this was a joke. A really bad, tasteless joke. "You're kidding, right? Dad? Tell me you're kidding."
But Dad just looked at the floor.
And Moretti... God, Moretti just kept staring at me like I was his latest conquest.
A part of me remembered how, once upon a time, I'd longed to be looked at like that, by a man just like him.
Maybe that's why I didn't totally black out.
If I had to be traded like a damn poker chip, at least the guy collecting me looked like he walked off a movie set.
Lucky me, right?
Well, I tried to look on the bright side while Dad laid out the ugly truth of how bad things had really gotten.
He'd sold off every investment we had just to keep the company breathing. There was even a point where he thought about selling the whole thing… but the buyers wanted to clean house.
"What about their families, Belle?" Dad had asked, and their faces went running through my head.
My rage faltered, folding in on itself. How hadn't I seen it?
The sleepless nights, the nervous phone calls, the way he'd aged ten years in one.
If I'd paid attention and stopped being wrapped up in my own little world, maybe I could have helped before it came to this.
He screwed up. He sold me. Sure.
But those people on the factory floor, the ones who had trusted us with their livelihoods? They weren't just employees.
They were family too.
So, there I was, caught between hating my father, grieving for him, and feeling like it was my responsibility to carry the pieces he'd left shattered.
And looking at Luca Moretti, with his expensive ego and his taste for pretty things, I was pretty sure he would have preferred the cash back.
Instead, the Beast of New York was stuck with me, just as I was stuck with him.
I get off the floor and think back to what Luca said, just before the guards showed me to my room.
"I'm not a monster, Belle. I don't hurt women. Ever."
I must have looked more shaken than I thought, because then he asked if there was anything I needed.
"Meatball," I'd somehow found the strength to say.
"Meatball?" His lips twitched, and for one insane second, I noticed how ridiculously full they were. Dangerous men weren't supposed to have lips like that.
"My cat," I snapped, glaring like that could erase the way my pulse stuttered.
"I've got a dog," he said, smiling just enough to knock the air out of me. A kind, lethal smile, like a real-life John Wick. "Hope they get along."
"So, I can have Meatball here?" My heart raced at how easy that was.
"Sure." He shrugged, his eyes clouding all my thoughts. "I'll ask your father to send him over, along with your clothes."
He leaned in, just close enough for me to feel the heat rolling off him. "Better hope Bruno doesn't have a taste for little kittens."
I'd shivered at how I felt his words deep somewhere inside my bones.
I pace the room with my mind spinning. I need a plan.
Sitting here replaying every awful second won't get me anywhere.
I've already clocked the security cameras in the halls, their little red eyes tracking every movement.
There are four armed guards downstairs, all carrying guns. There's no way in or out, except through those eight feet high gates, wired with motion sensors.
This place isn't just a mansion. It's a fortress.
And I can't just walk out of a fortress.
But every fortress has a weakness. I just have to find it—before he finds me breaking.
In the meantime, I can handle one ridiculously hot mafia boss.
Even if the thought of him makes my stomach flip like I'm sixteen again.
I crack the door open. No guard. Just cameras dotting the hallway like electronic breadcrumbs.
"Watch me all you want," I mutter to the nearest one. "Hope you enjoy the show."
The mansion is schizophrenic—crystal chandeliers hanging above military-grade locks, priceless art watched over by men with earpieces and barely concealed weapons.
Like Martha Stewart decorated a maximum-security prison.
Every door I pass is closed. Every window has bars disguised as decorative ironwork.
Pretty cage is still a cage.
I head downstairs, ignoring the staff and guards I pass by.
No one said I couldn't get a feel of the place, and no one tells me to go on back to my bedroom.
So maybe, I'm not a prisoner after all. Or maybe, this whole estate's my jail.
Fuck do I know.
A wall of windows catches my eye, and I drift toward it.
The view is spectacular, with manicured grounds stretching out to the distant trees, a slice of the city skyline visible beyond.
But it's what's happening on the lawn that stops me dead in my tracks.
Below, in a courtyard that looks designed for violence, Luca Moretti is destroying people.
There's no other word for it.
He moves through opponents like death through a nursing home—inevitable, efficient, almost gentle in its brutality.
Shirtless, because apparently God has a sense of humor.
Sweat runs rivers down his chest, following lines of muscle that belong in anatomy textbooks under "how to make women stupid."
A tattoo I haven't noticed before wraps his ribs—a serpent eating its own tail, with words in Italian curved inside: Il dolore è temporaneo, la morte è permanente.
I don't need Google Translate. The way he fights makes the meaning clear: Pain is temporary, death is permanent.
One man rushes him from behind.
Luca doesn't even look—just steps aside and drives an elbow back that drops the guy like God hitting the delete key.
My thighs clench.
My pulse goes nuclear.
And my brain—my traitorous, virginal brain—wonders what those hands would feel like on my skin.
If he'd be that controlled. That powerful. That devastating.
This is insane. He owns me.
I should be running, not standing here getting wet watching him commit casual violence in designer sweatpants.
My underwear is becoming a situation.
This is Stockholm Syndrome on fast-forward.
Three hours ago, I was a normal woman with normal problems. Now I'm pressed against bulletproof glass, fogging it with my breath, watching my captor fight like foreplay.
"Get it together, Belle," I whisper to myself.
But my body has gone rogue.
Twenty-six years of careful control, of waiting for the right guy, the right moment, and now my virginity is staging a coup.
Demanding to be sacrificed to a man who collects debts in human currency.
He looks up suddenly, directly at the window. At me.