⚜️VELVET RUIN:
CHAPTER 1 - Whispers in Florence
Florence pulsed beneath her feet, warm and unapologetic, as if the city itself had a heartbeat. The sun was sinking low, dripping molten gold over terracotta rooftops and ancient stone walls. A breeze curled through the narrow streets, carrying with it the mingled scent of lilacs, old books, and danger.
Alessia Romano walked as if she owned the night.
Her red silk dress clung to her curves like it had secrets to keep. Her heels clicked a rhythm against the cobblestones, sharp and deliberate, echoing off walls like gunshots. Her lips were painted a shade between seduction and warning — not cherry, not wine, but blood right before it dried.
She was late. Intentionally.
The Galleria de' Medici was a sanctuary for Florence's elite — all wine breath and art snobbery — but tonight, it belonged to her.
Her series, La Rabbia Silenziosa — The Silent Rage — stretched across velvet-draped walls. Raw portraits. Women with tearstained eyes. Men with their mouths sewn shut. A mother clutching her child in the ruins of a burning estate. No one knew that Alessia had painted them after the fire that killed her parents two years ago.
No one dared ask.
She felt him before she saw him.
Heat. A stillness in the air, like a storm holding its breath. Then—eyes. Piercing, silver-dark. Watching her from across the room like he already knew how her story ended.
He stood alone near her most violent painting: a woman screaming into a cracked mirror, her face twisted in silence.
He wasn't sipping champagne or networking. He was studying pain like it owed him something.
Tall. Tailored black suit. Shoulders like stone. Hands loose in his pockets, but nothing about him said relaxed. He didn't belong here. He didn't belong anywhere soft.
Alessia approached like a woman walking into her own death.
"Your hands," he said before she could speak, voice low, rough like it had scraped against something sharp. "They paint like they've survived war."
She tilted her head, unapologetic. "And your eyes look like they started one."
That made him smirk.
It was dangerous — the way his mouth curved. Not like a lover. Like a sinner about to confess something filthy.
"Dante Moretti," he said, offering a hand.
She didn't take it. "And what war did you lose to end up here, Dante Moretti?"
His smirk widened. "You tell me. You're the artist."
Their conversation unfurled slowly, like silk pulled over a wound. He said little. But when he did, it clung to her. When she asked what he did, he replied, "I bury things. And people."
He made her laugh — softly, sharply — like she hadn't in years.
He watched her mouth when she smiled. He watched it like he wanted to ruin it.
Later that night, she found him on the rooftop.
She'd slipped out from the gallery, barefoot, holding her heels in one hand and a stolen bottle of Barolo in the other.
He was leaning against the rail, the city lights casting shadows over his face.
"Looking for ghosts?" she asked.
He turned. "Looking for you."
Their kiss wasn't gentle.
It didn't ask. It burned.
Her back hit the stone wall behind her. His hand slid into her hair. Her mouth opened under his like surrender. Her fingers gripped his collar, pulled him closer, as if she needed him inside her lungs to breathe.
His lips moved to her neck, down her collarbone. She whispered his name like it hurt. And when he looked into her eyes again, it wasn't a kiss anymore — it was a promise.
He was going to destroy her. And she was going to let him.
—
That night was the beginning of something that couldn't be named.
For weeks, they were shadows in each other's lives — slipping between sheets and secrets, sharing espresso in bed, tangling limbs under moonlight. He never asked about her past. She never asked about his.
But she noticed the bruises on his knuckles. The scar under his jaw. The locked drawer in his apartment. The burner phone he never answered in front of her.
She was falling.
Hard.
Then the world burned again.
—
It happened on a Wednesday.
She was video calling her sister Sofia from her apartment in Florence. They were laughing about something stupid — a memory, a wine-drunk mistake in Venice — when the screen flickered.
Then: a roar.
A flash.
Sofia screamed.
And the call went black.
She thought it was a glitch.
Until the news hit twenty minutes later.
Explosion. Romano Estate. Five dead. Arson suspected.
Her entire family — gone.
She didn't scream. She didn't cry.
She went silent.
Her door buzzed. It was Dante.
He was breathless. Pale. Eyes red. "My parents… my brother… my villa…" he choked. "They're all dead, Alessia."
They held each other like two survivors clinging to the last raft.
But that night, he left.
No warning.
No note.
Just gone.
So she ran too.
—
Two years later, she painted again.
Under a fake name, in a Milan gallery no one visited. Her heart? A locked cage. Her body? Untouched. Her rage? Muted beneath silk and espresso and silence.
Until he walked in.
Dante Moretti. Wearing a black coat, darker eyes, a crimson tie that looked like it choked him.
"I'd like to commission a piece," he said.
Her world cracked.
She whispered, "What are you doing here?"
He stepped closer.
"Finishing what we started."
And the sky inside her fell.
— End of Chapter 1 —