Chapter 39
The late-night air felt heavy when I pulled up to the mansion. Headlights cut through the dark and stopped on the marble drive.
For one terrible second, I sat there, palms pressed flat on the wheel, lungs too tight to work.
My chest still smouldered from the morning, the way Dominic's fever burned, the way his voice had gone raw, the memory of his hands clinging to me.
Every nerve in my body screamed. And still, a pull I couldn't explain sat under my ribs.
I didn't go inside right away.
Moonlight silvered the fountain. I leaned on the gate, letting the cool wash over my face while my mind ran a hundred guilty circuits.
This was survival. This was politics. This was a man who could kill me with a sentence and save me with a look.
I dug my hands in hair, frustration gnawing at me.
By the time I stepped through the front doors, my legs felt like lead. I kept telling myself about the same things on loop.
He's sick. He's dangerous. You have a fiancé. You have a mission.
Yet those words were thin against the memory of him, raspy, pleading, unarmoured.
Sanaa and Asvika were waiting in the sitting room.
Sanaa's eyes flickered to me the second I came in. Careful. Worried. She always looked as if she'd been carved from two feelings at once.
"Everything okay?" she asked, voice cautious.
I gave a small, automatic nod. "Just errands. Nothing serious."
They both watched me, eyes that wouldn't let me lie to myself. I felt their stare like a tide.
Inside, I was fraying. Every sound in the house reminded me of him. The hollow thunk of a closing door, breath in a corridor, the way silence could hold a man's confession.
I went to my room and paced until my calves cramped. My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
Thanks for today. — Old man.
My heart did a stupid, dangerous jump. That message carried more heat than any shower, more threat than any gun.
He remembered. He meant it. And the idea of that, his text on my phone, made something coil inside me I didn't want to name.
I curled up on the bed, knees to my chest. Sanaa's safety. Aurelio's pride. All of it knotted into the same impossible question: what do you do when the problem you should destroy is the only thing making you feel alive?
A soft knock at the door.
"Vee?"
My mother stood in the frame, hands folded, the same calm she wore for a thousand negotiations. She crossed the room and sat beside me like she'd always known where to land.
"Let me fix your hair," she offered.
My brows furrowed.
Since when did my mother do my hair? Since when did she touch me without a reason?
"Wha—" I caught my reflection in the mirror and stopped. I looked wrecked. The kiss, the pulling, the chaos—it was all written on my face in tangled knots.
I swallowed the rest of my question and slid onto the floor. I waited for her to settle behind me, my heart thumping against my ribs until I finally tucked myself between her legs. Her fingers were cool as they began to work, a sharp contrast to the heat still under my skin.
"Sometimes," she said, her voice small, stripped of its usual armour. "I think I should've told you more when you were younger. Maybe it would've helped."
The rhythm of her hands faltered for a fraction of a second. Her eyes found mine in the glass, dark and searching. She waited for me to push her away, to demand the truth she was finally dangling.
I didn't. I just let her.
She took a breath.
"Before I was who you call your mother, before I took the House of Versace responsibilities, I was someone else.
I was adored, people called me the Flower of the House of Versace.
I had many suitors, but I only ever wanted one man.
My fiancé." She paused as if weighing each word.
"On our wedding day, one of his rivals, jealous, decided that if he couldn't have me, neither would my fiancé. He killed him that day."
I blinked. "Your fiancé?"
"Yes." She pressed my hand. "A few weeks after your mother gave birth, she and my brother, your real parents, died.
I couldn't let you be used as leverage. I adopted you because I wanted to keep you safe.
" Her voice trembled, then smoothed. "I promised myself I would never risk love again.
We protect what we have by not letting anyone hurt us the way they hurt me. "
The story landed in my chest like a stone. "You adopted me."
"Yes." She gave me a small, sad smile. "I did what I had to do. Love is too dangerous when you're the centre of everyone else's plans. It was the only way to keep you safe. Everyone important had left me. I promised myself I'd never go for love again. I only wanted to protect you."
I leaned in and hugged her, letting the warmth soak into my shaking body. "I... I'm sure he's in a better place."
Her eyes glistened, and she whispered, "Your biological parents are too."
I rolled my eyes, smirking despite the heaviness. "What a shame."
We sat in silence, letting the past settle like dust in the room. She searched my face. "Do you hate Sanaa?"
Do I hate her? The question felt cheap. "Not hate," I said. "I feel betrayed. Confused. I built a life around the idea that she was gone."
My mother squeezed my hand. "Give her a chance. If not for her, then for what it would mean to you. Not everyone in our circles is glad she's alive. It would mean something to her if you aren't one of their claws."
Her words were part advice, part order. I didn't promise. Promises in our world were contracts and weapons.
I stood at the window and watched the fountain. The axis of my life tilted. Sanaa's return rearranged strategy and expectation.
Dominic's text shifted something else entirely. It meant the board had changed, and not in my favour.
Those hazel eyes.
His stare had opened something I'd kept locked. I inhaled slowly and forced the empire face back on. Composure first. Everything else had to wait.
But under that mask, a dangerous recognition had woken. Dominic wasn't a problem to solve. He was a combustible, complicated thing I could not simply set aside.
KASHANI
The city slept beneath me, but I did not. Sleep was for those who were complacent, for those who thought control was permanent. I swirled the last amber of whiskey in my glass, listening to the clink of ice like the faintest warning.
A knock at the door broke my concentration.
"Enter," I said.
The boy who came in was nervous, hands trembling as he extended a thick envelope sealed in red wax. I did not recognize the stamp.
Unfamiliar.
I took it from him, my fingers brushing the cold paper, and motioned for him to leave. Once alone, I tore it open, scanning the contents.
Sanaa Khalighi... alive.
I froze.
The words burned through me, sharp and unrelenting. She was supposed to be dead. Every precaution, every assassination, every move I had made to extinguish her, obliterated by this single revelation.
I laughed, bitter and low, a sound that held more danger than any gun in my arsenal. Impossible.
But the paper did not lie. The photographs did not lie.
She was alive. And someone had delivered this message directly into my hands. Someone was testing me. Prodding me. And I would not be tested.
I slammed the letter onto my desk, whiskey sloshing dangerously close to the edge. I ran a hand through my hair, black as the night outside, feeling the cold edge of rage sharpen in my chest.
Dominic had been my scapegoat in this whole affair, my loyal nephew I had manipulated into taking the fall. Had he let her live? Had he been reckless enough to let her slip through my fingers?
How dare he?
I clenched my fists until my knuckles whitened. Every scenario played in my mind, each more dangerous than the last.
And no one crosses me and walks away.
That little Khalighi girl messed with me and my stupid nephew, Dominic seemed to have forgotten how to use a gun.
If the girl, Khalighi's daughter, was alive, then all the careful fires I had fed, the scapegoats I had chosen and burned in public, the tidy illusions I'd cultivated for years, risked turning to ash.
I let the implications roll over me like cold water.
Dominic had been useful. He had been my hand where my name could not be sullied. If he had allowed her to live, whether by choice or miscalculation, then he had stepped on my chessboard and moved a piece without asking.
My grip on the letter tightened until the wax cracked.
How dare he? How dare any of them test me?
I leaned back, glass in hand, eyes narrowing as I looked out over the city.
Aurelio, my son, my heir, smiled in some penthouse far below, oblivious to the shifting currents. I had raised him to see the world as I saw it, to play the game of power without emotion. Yet the game had changed overnight.
Sanaa's survival was more than a personal affront. She was a threat. A symbol. And now, a wild card in the game I had perfected.
I poured another glass, feeling the burn trail down my throat, steadying the storm inside. Strategy first. Rage second. Control always. I would not let emotion dictate my moves. I would calculate. I would predict. I would dominate.
This letter was not mere information. It was a warning.
Sanaa had returned, and with her came danger, exposure, and the possibility that the Khalighi line could rise again, and I would not allow it.
I considered Dominic. Loyal. Dangerous. Possibly compromised. Someone would need to watch him closely. Any misstep, any indication that Versace had been involved, would be exploited. She was clever, too clever for her own good, and I would not underestimate her.
Yet beneath the anger, a flicker of admiration burned. She had survived. Years of hiding. That alone deserved recognition, but not mercy.
I tapped the letter against my desk, pressing the wax seal flat, thinking of the precise moves I would make. Sanaa would be contained. Dominic would be monitored. And Versace... Well, Versace would learn exactly how far the Kashani name could reach when it was crossed.
The city continued its quiet hum beneath me, oblivious. Shadows shifted in the corners of my mind. The chessboard had changed, but I was already several moves ahead.
Let them come. Let them test me. Let them try.
Because I would not fail. Not again.
And this time... there would be no mistakes.