Ruthless Heir (Stirpe #1)

Chapter 1

PIETRO

The first time I saw Emily Hart, she was sitting at my usual table in the library of Hawthorne University, surrounded by a fortress of history books and entirely unaware she had just ruined the order of my afternoon.

I stopped at the end of the aisle and looked at her for a moment.

Wild blonde curls spilled around a bright pink headband that should not have suited her but did.

Her glasses kept slipping down her nose, and every few seconds she pushed them back up with an absent motion that told me she was too deep in her work to care how she looked.

She was writing in the margin of a thick paperback.

“Would you like me to?—”

I lifted a hand, cutting Olivero off before he could offer whatever idiotic solution he thought I required.

Olivero, my bodyguard, was the only concession I had made to my father.

Alessandro Benetti, head of the Chicago outfit, had agreed to let me attend Hawthorne in Boston on two conditions: that I kept security with me and that I stayed on territory controlled by our people.

Hawthorne was safe enough, at least by mafia standards.

Few of the students wandering these halls had any idea just how carefully protected this place really was.

Summer term made the campus quieter than it would be in September, but not empty.

Hawthorne never truly slept. There were always graduate students haunting the library, professors guarding their research time, and undergraduates trying to convince themselves accelerated classes had been a wise choice.

My gaze drifted back to the woman at my table.

I wasn’t arrogant enough to assume the world moved around me, but that table had been mine since the beginning of the semester. Routine mattered. I liked the same seat, the same light, the same silence. Control made things easier on days when my body insisted on reminding me of its limits.

My grip tightened around the cool silver handle of my cane.

I had spent my whole life making sure no one mistook those limits for weakness.

And yet, as I stood there watching a stranger bury herself in Renaissance warfare with no idea she was wrecking the order of my afternoon, weakness was not what I felt.

It was irritation.

Curiosity.

And something far more inconvenient.

I wasn’t the type to socialize, not here. I was here to finish my degree and step fully into the life I had been born to. By December, once my final summer and fall credits were done, I would officially become my father’s sotto capo.

It was legacy, obligation, and expectation braided so tightly together I had stopped bothering to separate them.

I knew any connection formed within these walls would be temporary at best, and I had never been interested in offering more than polite acknowledgment.

The woman sitting at my table should have meant nothing.

And yet I found myself standing there, looking at her longer than necessary.

At last, she seemed to feel it. Her head lifted, and a pair of clear blue eyes met mine through oversized glasses that had slipped halfway down her nose.

She blinked once, then glanced at the books spread around her, and back at me.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice soft but steady. “Were you heading here? I can move.”

No fluster. No rambling apology. No awkwardness.

Just a simple offer.

“Don’t bother.”

Something flickered across her face. Surprise, maybe, though it vanished quickly.

“There’s enough room if you still want it,” she said, gathering a few loose sheets into a neater pile. “I sort of exploded.”

I looked at the walls of books surrounding her. Medieval warfare. Political dynasties. Church history.

“You did,” I said.

Her mouth twitched.

I moved forward before Olivero could decide to intervene again and took the seat across from her. The scrape of the chair against the floor seemed louder than usual, but she had already gone back to underlining something in one of her books, as if I were no more than a passing inconvenience.

That, more than anything, caught my attention.

Most people reacted to me in one of two ways. They either stared too long or worked too hard not to. She did neither.

For several minutes, the only sounds between us were the faint rustle of pages and the scratch of her pen.

I told myself to focus on my own work. I opened my laptop, pulled one of my casebooks closer, and tried to ignore the bright pink headband currently offending my sense of order from across the table.

A while later, I got up to retrieve another book from the reference shelves. I found the title I needed halfway along the history section, wedged between two larger volumes. Irritation flickered when I realized someone had put the older edition back in the wrong place.

Of course.

I shifted the books in my arm and reached for the spine.

“The revised edition’s on the lower shelf.”

I looked to my left.

She was still seated at the table, not even facing me fully, as if she had offered the information without thinking much of it.

My brows lifted.

She finally glanced over. “That one was withdrawn last semester. If you want the updated maps, it’s the blue one underneath.”

I looked down at the lower shelf and grimaced.

Bending was always a calculation. Angle. Balance. Weight. Usually I managed it cleanly enough that nobody noticed.

Usually.

I shifted my cane, reached down, and my footing slipped just enough to send heat up the back of my neck.

Before I could correct it, a hand reached past me and closed around the spine of the book.

Shame hit first. Hot, immediate, and sickeningly familiar.

Then anger, because anger was easier.

“I didn’t ask for help. Keep your pity for someone else.”

She held the book out but did not step closer. Did not soften. Did not look at me the way people looked at something cracked.

“I don’t do pity,” she said.

I stared at her.

She nodded toward the top shelf behind me. “But I do believe in fair trade.”

“What?”

“You’re tall,” she said, as if her aim was obvious. “What are you, six foot something?”

“Six-two,” I said, more confused than I wanted to be.

“Great.” She pointed to the shelf above. “Then you can get that one for me, because I’m five-one and gravity has been trying to murder me since birth.”

My eyes flicked to the book she meant.

“I’ve wanted it for the past hour,” she added. “You get the high shelf. I get the low shelf. Everybody wins.”

There was no pity in her voice. No soft carefulness either. Just blunt practicality.

Which unsettled me more than it should have.

Or maybe less. I couldn’t tell.

I took the book from her hand.

I should have left it at that.

Instead, I heard myself say, “Do you barter with strangers in the library often, or am I getting special treatment…?”

I let the question trail just enough to invite a name.

“Emily,” she said with a small shrug. “And only with the tall, grumpy ones.” Her gaze settled pointedly to the shelf above me. “Can I have my book now?”

“I’m Pietro.”

I reached up, pulled the book free, and handed it to her.

“Efficient,” she said, taking it from my hand.

“I do my best.”

I glanced at the title. Late Medieval Succession Disputes.

I nearly smiled.

She returned to the table, and I was halfway back to my own seat when I remembered I was not alone.

Olivero sat two tables away, loyal as ever and no doubt already compiling a report in his head for my father. I shot him a look. He only raised an eyebrow before returning his attention to his phone.

How much did I want to bet Emily’s name was already being fed into a system somewhere?

When I sat back down, she was chewing lightly on the end of her pen, frowning at something she’d written.

“You’re studying history,” I said.

She looked up. “Doing my PhD in it.”

That explained the stacks.

“I haven’t seen you here before.”

One corner of her mouth lifted. “I’m not that remarkable.”

“Yes you are,” I said. “Trust me.”

The color that rose in her cheeks pleased me.

I wasn’t known for charm. Not like my father. Not like some of the other men in the famiglia who could flirt as easily as they breathed. I’d never cared enough to learn. Most of the attention I got back home had far less to do with me than with my name, my bloodline, and what both represented.

Emily, on the other hand, had no idea who I was.

And I had still managed to fluster her.

I found that gratifying.

“I’m from the West Coast,” she said, tucking a curl behind her ear. “I wanted a change.”

A half-truth.

I knew it the moment she said it.

In my world, reading people was survival. Hesitation mattered. Tension mattered. The slight flick of her eyes, the stiffness in her shoulders, the too-careful casualness in her tone—none of it escaped me.

There was more to that story.

Not your problem, Pietro.

And yet.

“What are you working on?” I asked.

“Power dressed up as legitimacy,” she said absently, then seemed to hear herself and smiled. “Sorry. That was the pretentious version.”

The corner of my mouth lifted.

She noticed.

“The less pretentious version,” she said, pushing her glasses back up, “is political marriages and succession crises in late medieval Italy.”

I set my book down. “That sounds worse, actually.”

That time she laughed.

A real laugh. Warm, surprised, unguarded.

And for the first time in a very long time, I forgot everything else.

All I could hear was that sound.

And all I knew was that I wanted to hear it again.

I should have left it there.