Sienna
The pen scratched against the paper like a rat scurrying in a wall.
I watched my father's hand tremble as he signed me away. He didn't look up. Didn't meet my eyes. Just scratched his name on the line and pushed the document across the massive desk like it was a receipt for a delivered package.
Two point three million dollars. That's what I cost.
"Lorenzo, my friend, it is done." Duke Costa's voice was a wet, pathetic thing. "The debt… consider it cleared."
Cleared. As if I were a balance sheet. A transaction complete.
From behind the desk, the man who now owned me finally moved.
Lorenzo Moretti rose from his leather throne, and the room seemed to shrink. He was taller than I'd expected. Broader. His suit was charcoal, expensive, tailored to hide the lethal muscle beneath. But his eyes
His eyes were the color of a winter sky. Cold. Empty. The kind of cold that doesn't shout. It simply freezes everything in its path.
They call him The Wolf. Now I understood why.
"Your father may leave," he said. His voice was low, smooth, utterly devoid of emotion. "You will stay."
Duke scrambled from his chair, grabbing my arm with clammy fingers. "Sienna, cara, you understand… it was this or they would have"
"Killed you?" I finished for him. My voice came out calm. Too calm. The calm of absolute, soul-deep shock. "And selling your daughter is the noble alternative?"
"He's a powerful man! You'll want for nothing!"
I peeled his fingers off my arm, one by one. "Get out."
When the heavy door clicked shut behind him, the silence was absolute. It pressed against my eardrums like drowning.
I was alone with The Wolf.
Lorenzo Moretti didn't move. He simply stood behind his desk, watching me with those winter eyes. Assessing. Weighing. He picked up the contract my father had signed, glanced at it, and set it aside.
"Your file says you are twenty-six," he said. "A junior accountant. No current entanglements."
A file. Of course he had a file. I was an acquisition. Due diligence.
"It's not a job interview," I heard myself say. The words came out flat. Sharp. A reflex.
Something flickered in those cold eyes. Not anger. Interest. Like a scientist observing an unexpected reaction.
"No. It is a transfer of ownership." He moved around the desk, each step deliberate. "For the next twelve months, your presence, your obedience, your discretion belong to me. In return, your father's heart continues to beat."
A year. Three hundred sixty-five days in a gilded cage.
"And after the year?" I asked.
He stopped a few feet away. Close enough that I could smell him….sandalwood and something darker. Smoke. Danger.
"That depends entirely on you."
He turned to a sideboard, pouring amber liquid into a crystal glass. He didn't offer me one.
"The rules are simple." He took a slow sip. "You will live here. You will not leave without my permission and an escort. You will surrender your personal devices. You will be provided a secure line. All communications monitored."
Each word was a brick, mortaring me into a wall.
He set the glass down. The click was a judge's gavel.
"You will obey my direct instructions without question." He paused. The silence stretched. "And you will share my bed."
***********
No.
The word was a scream trapped in my chest.
For one terrible second, I was somewhere else. A different room. Different hands. The smell of cheap whiskey and the weight of a man who promised love and delivered pain.
I locked my knees. Clenched my jaw. Breathed through the wave of nausea.
Survive first. Feel later.
I lifted my chin and met his gaze. Let him see the frost behind my eyes. "That wasn't in the terms my father signed."
A beat of silence.
Then Lorenzo Moretti smiled.
It was a cold, sharp thing….a knife blade in a handsome face. "The terms I dictate are the only ones that matter."
He pressed a button on his desk. A panel on the wall slid open, revealing a shadowed hallway.
"Your room is prepared. Dennis will show you. Dinner is at eight. Do not be late."
Dismissed. Like a servant. Like property.
A massive man with a shaved head and a scar through his eyebrow appeared in the doorway. He didn't speak. Just waited.
I turned and walked toward him. Every cell in my body screamed to run, to fight, to grab the crystal decanter and wield the jagged stem.
But survival isn't about grand gestures. It's about living to fight another day.
I crossed the threshold.
"Oh, and Sienna?"
Lorenzo's voice stopped me cold. I didn't turn.
"Wear the black dress laid out for you."
The panel slid shut behind me, sealing me in the belly of the beast.
***********
Lorenzo
The door hissed closed, and the silence returned.
I stood motionless, staring at the space where she had been. The scent of her lingered—not perfume, but something clean and stubborn. Rain on concrete. Winter air.
Defiance.
I had expected tears. Pleading. The usual performance of the sacrificed. Instead, she had looked at me with the eyes of a soldier surveying a new battlefield. There had been fear—a quick, animal flash when I mentioned my bed. But she had smothered it instantly behind a wall of ice.
A wall I recognized.
I walked to my desk and opened the bottom drawer. Beneath the ledgers lay a single photograph. A woman with dark curls and a laughing smile, her arm linked with a younger, softer version of myself.
Sofia.
The last woman who looked at me with fire in her eyes. The last woman I trusted.
She had been a viper in silk. Her betrayal cost me my sister's life.
This new one this Sienna she was different. Her fire wasn't calculated. It was forged. She was a survivor.
And survivors were the most dangerous game of all. They learned. They adapted. They waited for a moment of weakness.
A chime sounded from my computer. Encrypted message.
I opened it.
Victor knows you have her. He's not happy. Expect a welcome gift.
Victor Rossi. Sofia's brother. The man who had been hunting for years to finish what his sister started.
My gaze flicked to the security monitor showing the hallway. Dennis was leading Sienna toward the east wing. Her spine was straight. Her head high.
A slow smile touched my lips—the cold, sharp kind she had seen downstairs.
Let Victor send his gift. Let him try.
She was mine now.
And I would burn this city to ashes before anyone took her from me.