The message glowed on Luca Moretti's phone, stark and merciless.
She moves tonight.
He stared at the words as though they were a sentence etched in stone. His thumb hovered above the screen, caught between action and hesitation. His instincts told him to follow. His duty demanded it. But somewhere beneath the armor of a Moretti heir, another voice whispered: Don't.
Aria Bellamy.
He pressed the glass harder against his palm until the edge cut faintly into his skin. He told himself he could not afford distraction. Not now. Not when the Morettis' next strike hinged on information so vital it could bring the Bellamys to their knees.
The plan was simple. Aria's movements tonight would lead them closer to what they needed—proof of the Bellamys' hidden dealings, a secret that could dismantle her father's empire piece by piece. Destroying her family was not just strategy; it was survival.
So why did his chest tighten at the thought of her? Why did her name echo louder than the storm outside?
Because weakness, he told himself, was fatal. And love—if that was what this shadow of a feeling was—was the deadliest weakness of all.
He drained the last of his wine, his jaw sharp as he forced the thought away. He was a Moretti. And Morettis didn't hesitate.
Across the city, Aria Bellamy pressed herself deeper into the velvet shadows of her father's study.
The Bellamy estate was grand, yes, but behind its glittering walls secrets thrived like ivy. Secrets that even she had been kept from. She had stolen into her father's study countless times, searching for answers in his locked drawers, in the letters he burned too quickly, in the phone calls that ended when she entered the room.
Tonight, she had found something—a folded file tucked beneath layers of contracts. Papers marked with names she didn't recognize, sealed deals that smelled of desperation. The Bellamys were faltering, their empire more fragile than the world knew. And if she, the daughter, could see it, then the Morettis certainly could too.
Her heart clenched. She was caught in a war she hadn't chosen, a pawn in a centuries-old vendetta. She could no longer tell where her family's lies ended and her own life began.
And then, unbidden, his face rose in her mind. Luca Moretti. The man who had saved her in the street, the man who had sworn to destroy her. She hated herself for it, but she could still feel the imprint of his hand around her arm, the pull of his voice cutting through the night.
She shook her head, forcing the thought away. She could not afford to think of him—not when her family's world was cracking at its edges.
Back in his mansion, Luca's father's words haunted him.
The Bellamys are not to be pitied. They are to be destroyed.
Luca clenched his fist around the phone, the screen still aglow. He had a choice—follow her tonight, find the cracks that would bring her family down, prove his loyalty. Or turn away, surrender to the gnawing pull in his chest that whispered her name like a sin.
But loyalty was iron. It was chain and blood. And he was bound.
"Aria Bellamy," Luca muttered into the dark, her name tasting of both fire and ruin. His expression hardened. "Loving you is impossible."
Outside, thunder rolled again, as though the storm itself bore witness to his vow.
Yet, even as he rose to carry out the plan, a sliver of doubt—small, stubborn, dangerous—lodged itself deeper into his heart.
And he knew, though he would never admit it, that doubt carried her name.