Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Vittoria
Sleep doesn't come.
I lie in my bed, staring at the ceiling where glow-in-the-dark stars still cling from when I was twelve. Papà helped me stick them up there. Said every principessa needed her own galaxy.
Now the stars have faded to a sickly yellow-green, and Papà is dead, and I'm twenty-four years old being told I need to marry for the family.
I roll onto my side, pulling the blanket tighter. The silk feels wrong against my skin. Everything in this house is expensive and beautiful and suffocating.
The truth sits heavy in my chest: I knew this was coming.
I've known since I turned twenty and Mamma started dropping hints about "suitable matches" and "family obligations."
I tried to beat them to it. I really did.
Fabio was my first attempt. Twenty-three, Harvard-educated, family money older than the United States. His father ran legitimate businesses that occasionally intersected with ours. Close enough to understand our world, far enough to feel safe.
Marco was... fine.
Handsome in that generic way that photographs well at charity galas. Polite. Wealthy. Boring as fuck.
The man couldn't make a decision to save his life. What restaurant, Tori? Whatever you want, Tori. What should I wear, Tori? I spent six months essentially dating a golden retriever in a Rolex.
When I finally ended it, he just... nodded. Accepted it without a single argument.
That was what broke me. Not his passiveness in restaurants or his inability to pick a movie. It was watching him fold the moment I pushed back, watching him crumble like wet paper because confrontation made him uncomfortable.
I need someone who can handle me.
My brothers don't understand this. They see their baby sister and think I need someone gentle, someone who'll worship the ground I walk on and never raise his voice.
They're wrong.
I need someone who won't flinch when I snap. Someone who'll snap right back. Someone with enough spine to stand next to a Sartori woman without wilting.
After Marco, I stopped trying to find someone. Started just looking for something.
Two men. Both strangers. Both one-night stands in hotels far from Chicago where Sartori meant nothing.
Neither of them knew my name. Neither of them cared who I was.
And somehow, that made it emptier.
I sit up in bed, pushing my hair back. The digital clock reads 2:47 AM.
This is pathetic.
I've spent years avoiding intimacy because every man who learns I'm Vittoria Sartori either runs or tries to use me. The runners are the smart ones.
The users are worse. They see dollar signs and power and connections. They see a shortcut to the top of Chicago's underworld. They don't see me.
Two years of nothing. Two years of watching my brothers find love while I built walls higher and higher around myself.
And now Mamma wants to tear them down with a stranger's ring.
The thing about being the family tech nerd is that nobody expects you to have a sex drive.
For years, my brothers assumed I was too busy with code to care about men. Too wrapped up in firewalls and encryption protocols to notice the opposite sex existed. Vittoria's in her room again, probably hacking something. Vittoria doesn't date, she dates her laptop.
And honestly? I let them believe it.
Easier that way. No Lorenzo giving me gentle advice about finding "the right one." No Pietro threatening to murder anyone who touched me.
Blissful ignorance on their part. Complete freedom on mine.
Because here's what my family doesn't know: I figured out what my body needed a long time ago.
The internet is a wonderful thing when you're a curious twenty-year-old with zero privacy and five overprotective brothers.
I learned to clear my browser history before I learned to drive.
Watched videos that made my cheeks burn and my thighs press together.
Discovered exactly what kind of touch made me gasp, what rhythm worked, what fantasies played behind my closed eyes when I finally let go.
My hand slides under my pillow, fingers brushing the silk storage bag hidden there.
My little secret.
I bought it a year after Riccardo died. Ordered it to a PO box three towns over, paid cash, smuggled it into the compound like contraband. Which, in this house, it basically was.
That first night I used it, I cried afterward. Not from shame. From relief.
Finally, finally, something that felt good. Something that was mine. Something that didn't require explanations or emotional availability or the risk of someone learning my last name and running for the hills.
For two years, this has been my only indulgence. My secret rebellion against the grief that swallowed everything else.
I roll onto my back, staring at those faded stars again. My body hums with restless energy, the kind that comes from too many emotions and not enough sleep.
Maybe...
I close my eyes. Let my mind drift.
And immediately, he's there.
Dmitri Baganov. Those eyes. That voice. The way he touched my face in his office, so gentle it made me want to scream.
"This is just the beginning, Vittoria."
Heat pools low in my belly. Traitorous, unwanted heat.
My hand moves without permission, sliding down my stomach. I'm wearing an old t-shirt and nothing else, and the cotton rides up as my fingers trace lower, lower—
No.
I freeze.
My eyes snap open.
Absolutely fucking not.
I am not touching myself while thinking about that manipulative bastard. The man who orchestrated fake business meetings just to corner me.
He's everything I should hate. Arrogant. Calculating. The kind of man who moves people around like chess pieces and calls it strategy.
The kind of man who held a gun to someone's head for touching my thigh.
Don't think about that.
But I am thinking about it. About how fast he moved, how calm his voice stayed, how his finger never even trembled on the trigger.
About how, for one insane moment, I felt safe.
I groan and press my palms against my eyes.
This is ridiculous.
I force myself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
The attraction isn't real. It's manufactured. He's handsome and dangerous and he wants me to want him, because that makes his little alliance easier to secure.
I won't give him the satisfaction.
My hand retreats to safer territory, resting on my stomach. The heat fades slowly, leaving behind frustration.
Two years without anyone's touch but my own, and now the first man who makes my blood run hot is the one I absolutely cannot have. Cannot want. Cannot think about while my fingers—
Stop.
I grab my phone from the nightstand. 3:12 AM. Amanda's last message glows on the screen.
Girl, you've been weird since that night at the club. Whatever happened, I'm here when you're ready to talk.
I type back: Can't sleep. Family drama. Tell you later.
I set the phone down and stare at the ceiling.
Dmitri
The smell of death clings to my father's room like an unwanted guest. The nurses try. Fresh flowers every morning, essential oil diffusers humming in the corners. But cancer doesn't care about lavender and eucalyptus.
Papa sits propped against pillows, his once-powerful frame now a collection of sharp angles beneath Egyptian cotton sheets.
Three months ago, he sent my brothers and sisters to the country house.
Didn't want them watching him waste away.
Didn't want me here either, but someone had to stay.
And the next pakhan seemed the best fit.
His words, not mine.
"You're late." His voice rasps like sandpaper over wood.
I close the door behind me and cross to the chair beside his bed. Same chair. Same routine. Every morning, I sit here and tell him everything that happened the day before. He listens, criticizes, occasionally approves. It's the closest thing to affection we've ever shared.
"Tell me." He waves a skeletal hand. "What required your attention the other night?"
I lean back, crossing my ankle over my knee. "Found the man selling counterfeit product with our mark. The one responsible for those three overdoses last month."
"And?"
"He's no longer a problem."
Papa's eyes narrow slightly. "Clean?"
"Clean enough." I don't elaborate.
"Good." He shifts against his pillows, wincing. I don't offer to help. He'd refuse anyway. "What else?"
This is the part I've been dreading. My fingers drum against my thigh once before I force them still. "Before he died, he told me something. About the Sartoris."
Papa's attention sharpens. Even cancer can't dull his instincts for business.
"They're arranging a marriage for Vittoria. Their princess." The word tastes bitter on my tongue. "Someone else is making a play for the alliance. Without paying a cent."
"And this surprises you?" Papa's voice carries an edge I recognize. Disappointment. "You've been circling that girl for a couple of months, Dmitri. Watching her through cameras. Having her tracked."
I don't flinch. "I'm aware."
"You're obsessed." His hand slams against the mattress with surprising force. "I've watched you these past weeks. You think I don't notice? The way you check your phone. The way you say her name."
My jaw clenches. I don't respond.
Papa's anger fades as quickly as it appeared, leaving exhaustion in its wake. He sinks back, chest rising and falling with labored breaths.
"Listen to me carefully, syn." Son. He rarely uses the word anymore. "This alliance with the Sartoris is everything. Our territories complement each other. Our enemies fear us both. Together, we control half of Chicago's underworld."
"I know."
"Do you?" His gaze pins me in place. "Because if someone else secures that marriage, all the business arrangements we've made mean nothing.
Another family will have their ear. Their loyalty.
Their guns." He pauses, letting the words sink in.
"And we'll have nothing but a handshake agreement that dies the moment it becomes inconvenient. "
The truth of it settles in my chest like a stone.