Chapter 20
Vittoria
The world tilts as I feel my body being dropped to the ground. I think Enzo was holding me up before but I’m not sure. I can barely keep my eyes open. My limbs feel dead weight and my thoughts sluggish. Enzo undoubtedly drugged me to keep me weak. To keep me from fighting back.
Somewhere beyond this hazy and suffocating darkness, I hear it—shouting, then the crash of something breaking. A struggle. My pulse picks up, but my body doesn’t respond the way I want it to. I try to move, try to push myself up, but it’s like I’m trapped in my own skin, drowning in exhaustion.
Then I hear his voice. Dario.
And I force myself to stay awake.
Through the haze, I watch them—Dario and Enzo, their bodies colliding in a vicious, unrelenting fight. Their knives flash, catching what little light there is and slicing through the air as they twist, shove, and tear at each other.
Dario is lethal, controlled, every move is premeditated. He doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t stumble. Even though Enzo is a bit bigger in size, Dario is faster and his reflexes are razor-sharp as though his blade is an extension of his own will.
Enzo slashes with his knife, but Dario steps aside, barely missing the blade as it cuts through the space where he stood. Dario retaliates with his own knife, sinking deep into Enzo’s side.
A gasp. A gurgle.
Blood drips onto the floor. Enzo staggers, but he isn’t done. He lunges, and they crash against the wall and grapple for control.
Enzo gets in one last, desperate strike, his knife slicing across Dario’s ribs, but it’s sloppy. Weak.
Dario catches his wrist and slams the blade from his grip before driving his own knife deep into Enzo’s chest.
Enzo chokes, his face twisting in pain and his breaths coming in ragged, broken gasps. His knees buckle as his body sags against Dario, but Dario holds him there, for a while, his grip firm like he isn’t done with him yet.
“For the past,” Dario growls. He yanks the knife out, then drives it back in with a force that, even from where I stand, looks like it’s tearing the man apart.
“For what your father did to me.” He stabs again.
“For stealing my future.” Another.
“For Juilliard.” And another.
“And most importantly—for hurting her.”
Enzo coughs, blood staining his lips. His eyes are dull, but he still musters a weak, bitter smirk. “Maggot,” he croaks. “Join your father in the pits of hell. Say hi to him for me.”
“You’ll be meeting yours—and mine—long before I do. Say hi yourself.”
Dario drives the knife in deeper and twists until Enzo's body jerks, then goes limp.
Then he pulls the blade out and, without an ounce of hesitation, stabs him again. And again. And again.
I should look away. I should be horrified. But I can’t.
I watch as he makes sure there’s nothing left of Enzo Castelli but a lifeless figure slumped on the floor and surrounded by a pool of his own blood.
Then, finally, Dario turns to me.
He strides forward, scooping me up into his arms without a word. I barely register the movement, barely feel anything except the secure and solid warmth of him beneath me as he carries me away from the wreckage.
From the blood. From my former home. From Enzo.
***
I wake up in my bed back at Dario’s. The sheets are different from the ones I last slept in. They’re clean and soft, but my body aches like I’ve been through hell. My head throbs. My mouth is dry.
And Dario is there.
He’s pacing. Fuming.
The second he sees my eyes open, he stops.
“You,” he says, voice barely calm and rough. “Are out of your goddamn mind.”
I blink at him. “Good morning to you too.”
He stalks toward me with hands braced on his hips and breathing sharp and not exactly controlled. “You went to see him. Alone.”
“Yes, well, you were too busy being a crime lord and ignoring my existence to hold my hand.”
His jaw tightens. “You let him drug you.”
“Not on purpose.”
His eyes darken. “Do you have any idea what could’ve happened?”
I push myself up, my arms shaking from the effort. “I don’t need you lecturing me like I’m some helpless idiot.”
“You are a helpless idiot.”
I glare at him. “Oh, please. And what about you? Throwing yourself into a damn death trap? Dario, you walked straight into it like some action hero with a death wish. What if you didn’t survive?”
“But I did,” he says, deadpan.
I throw my hands up. “Oh, well, that makes it fine then! Let’s all just run into traps because Dario Bellini is apparently immortal.”
His lips twitch. “Good to know you care.”
I scoff. “And let’s not forget the part where you turned his body into fish food. You didn’t just kill him—you made sure there was nothing left.”
He doesn’t even try to deny it. “Yeah. Sharks have to eat too. And I’d do it again.”
The room is quiet, but inside me, everything is loud. My pulse, my thoughts, the slow, creeping warmth that spreads through my chest.
I should be horrified. I should be grieving. But I’m not.
I feel... relief.
Not for the way my husband died. Enzo was all I ever knew. And sometimes it takes a cataclysmic force—like Dario Bellini—to shake the foundations of a life built on something hollow.
I watch him. The cut on his cheek. The blood on his hands. The way he looks at me—not like a possession, not like something to be controlled, but like I’m something worth fighting for.
His voice softens. “You should’ve let me handle it, princess.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “I just wanted it to be over.”
Dario exhales then sits on the edge of the bed. When he reaches out, I don’t pull away. His fingers brush my wrist, barely there, but enough to make my breath catch.
“It is.”
I close my eyes as he kisses my neck, his breath warm, his scent wrapping around me. Then he inhales deeply, like he's trying to commit me to memory. The growl that rumbles from his chest sends a sharp jolt through me and settles low in my stomach.
"So now what?" I whisper.
He leans in even more, his body surrounding mine, his heat pressing into every inch of me. There’s no space left between us—no air, no pretense that something hasn’t shifted. The scent of him—something dark, something clean, something purely him—coils around me, seeping into my bones.
"Now," he murmurs, his voice like steel wrapped in silk, "I protect you. No matter what. You're locked into my world now, princess."
I look at him. Really look at him. And I know—I have him back.
It might take time. It might take work. Honestly, jumping from one psychotic man to the next probably isn’t the healthiest life choice, but hey, I never claimed to make good ones.
And maybe that’s what makes this even more exhilarating.
Because deep down, I know Dario could never be like Enzo.
They may exist in the same brutal world, but one look at Dario tells me everything I need to know.
He’s different. Because he cares. Because he doesn’t demand things from me or withhold affection when I don’t meet his expectations. Because he looks at me like I’m the only thing that matters.
And when he touches me—every chance he gets—his fingers skim my skin like he’s memorizing it, like he’s terrified I might slip away. The way he traces the inside of my wrist, the way his entire body strains with the effort to hold back, to not devour me whole, tells me everything I need to know.
I’m his. And he’s mine.
His jaw tightens, and something glints in his eyes. A hesitation. “I get it if you want to leave.”
My stomach twists. “What?”
“You’ve seen what I am. What I’m capable of.” He shakes his head. “You don’t have to pretend you’re okay with it.”
“I’m not pretending.”
His eyes search mine, like he’s waiting for the moment I flinch, for the moment I decide he’s too much, too brutal, too dangerous to love.
But I don’t.
I tilt my head, studying him—not the man who kills without hesitation, not the one who tore my husband apart, but the one sitting here now. The one who came back to me, who looks at me like I’m something beautiful, something worth keeping safe, even when I’ve never asked him to.
“I can’t change you, Dario. You are you, you’ve always been this way before you met me, and I can’t fathom a world where you aren’t... the way you are.”
His brows draw together slightly. “Do you want me to change?”
I reach for his face, fingers brushing the cut on his cheek. He stiffens but doesn’t pull away.
“You think I don’t see you, Dario? I do.
I see the man who would burn the world for the people he loves.
The man who never had a damn choice in what he became.
” My voice drops an octave. “I don’t give a shit what men like Enzo say.
Or your father. Or his. They don’t get to define you.
You are not them. You will never be them. ”
His throat bobs, and his eyes darken. I catch the low, rough, “Fuck” that slips from his lips, as if my words make me suddenly so much hotter in his eyes.
I can tell he’s barely holding himself back, imagining it just as I am: his fist tangling in my hair, pulling me closer as he mounts me and thrusts his cock inside me.
I can envision the way he’d take me—slow at first, then with a force that leaves me breathless.
“I don’t want you to change,” I whisper.
His lips curve just slightly. “Good. Because I’m not going to.”
And when he kisses me, slowly but ravenous, I know I don’t want him to change.