Chapter 1 - The Will and the WardrobeThe rain over Rome did not fall; it hammered against the reinforced glass of the De Santis family boardroom, transforming the eternal city into a blurred watercolor of slate and silver. Inside, the air tasted of cold espresso, aged cedar, and the metallic tang of impending ruin.
Massimo De Santis stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his custom-tailored Brioni trousers. At twenty-nine, he possessed the kind of face that kept tabloids in business and local heiresses awake at night—high, arrogant cheekbones, a sharp, aristocratic jawline shadowed by designer stubble, and eyes the color of a stormy Tyrrhenian Sea. He was Rome’s golden delinquent, a man wrapped in the unearned invincibility of a billionaire dynasty, protected from every bullet and scandal by his formidable uncle, Carlo De Santis.
Massimo expected the board meeting to be a coronation. Two billion euros in real estate, shipping lanes, and private Swiss accounts were supposed to transfer over before lunch, leaving him free to catch his private jet to Ibiza.
Instead, old Carlo was dead in his crypt, and the family attorney, a wizened shark named Signor Moretti, was clearing his throat with a sound like dry parchment.
Across the long mahogany table, his cousin Enzo sat with his fingers steepened, wearing the oily, patient smile of a vulture who had spent a lifetime waiting for a dying lion to slip. Enzo knew something Massimo didn't. Massimo could feel it in the prickle of his skin.
“Carlo leaves his controlling shares, international shipping holdings, and private trusts to Massimo De Santis,” Moretti announced, reading from the heavy vellum document.
Massimo didn't turn around. He offered a lazy, victorious smirk toward the window. “There. Finished. Let’s sign the papers and get on with our lives.”
“No,” Moretti said.
The silence that rushed into the boardroom was absolute. Even the hum of the climate control seemed to die.
Massimo turned slowly from the glass, his dark eyebrows drawing together. “No? What do you mean, no?”
“The inheritance is conditional,” Moretti replied, adjusting his spectacles.
“Conditional on what?” Massimo snapped, stepping away from the window.
“A marriage.”
Massimo laughed. It was a sharp, bitter sound that bounced off the mahogany walls. “A marriage? With whom? Some opera singer in Milan? A political pawn from the Senate?”
Before Moretti could answer, a soft, deliberate voice cut through the shadows near the far wall, drifting from the dark corner where the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves swallowed the light.
“To me.”
Massimo froze. His head snapped toward the sound.
Sitting in an oversized, velvet wingback chair that Carlo had always favored was Livia Rossi.
Massimo stared at her, his mind briefly failing to connect the pieces. He had seen her hundreds of times over the past decade. She was just part of the estate’s background scenery—an orphaned stray Carlo had brought home after her father died taking a bullet meant for the patriarch. She was the quiet, invisible girl who sat at the very edge of family dinners, eating in silence, wearing shapeless gray wool skirts, thick, tortoiseshell glasses that swallowed half her face, and hair twisted into a severe, lifeless knot.
To Massimo, she was a ghost. A charity case. The definition of plain.
“What are you doing here?” Massimo demanded, his voice laced with pure, unadulterated disgust. “This is a family business meeting. Housekeepers and dependents don't sit in on corporate restructuring.”
Livia did not flinch. She didn't drop her gaze, nor did she twitch a muscle in her face. She sat with her hands folded neatly over her lap, looking like a dusty librarian who had accidentally wandered into a war room.
“The attorney asked me to attend,” she said quietly. Her voice was smooth, devoid of any tremor.
Massimo turned his fury back to Moretti, planting his palms flat on the mahogany table and leaning over it. “Explain this. Right now.”
Moretti removed his glasses, cleaning them slowly with a silk handkerchief. “Signor Carlo amended his will precisely forty-eight hours before his fatal stroke. To receive full authority over the two billion euros, you must legally wed Livia Rossi within thirty days. The marriage must remain intact for a minimum of three years.”
Massimo’s chair shrieked against the marble floor as he shoved it back, standing at his full height. Rage hot enough to melt lead surged through his veins.
“You expect me to marry her?!” Massimo roared, pointing a trembling finger across the room at Livia as if she were a diseased stray animal. “I am the sole heir of the De Santis bloodline! I am being asked to tie my life, my name, and my empire to an orphan who looks like she raided a church basement charity bin!”
Livia slowly lifted her head. Behind the thick lenses of her glasses, her amber-brown eyes flashed with an intelligence so sharp, so predatory, that Massimo momentarily forgot what he was shouting about.
“No,” Livia said calmly, her voice chillingly steady. “Your uncle did.”
Across the table, Enzo burst into a loud, mocking laugh, leaning back in his leather chair. “Oh, this is a masterclass from the grave! Uncle Carlo knew you were a reckless, spoiled idiot, Massimo. He knew you’d burn the empire down in six months. So he tied the anchor around your neck.”
Moretti cleared his throat again, cutting through Enzo’s amusement. “If Massimo refuses the marriage condition within thirty days, or if he fails to consummate and maintain the union under legal scrutiny, the entire estate—every euro, every port, every trust—passes directly to Enzo De Santis.”
The room went dead silent.
Enzo stopped laughing. His eyes widened slightly as the gravity of the backup clause hit him. But then his smirk returned, sharper and greedier than before.
Massimo felt the floor drop out from under him. He looked at Enzo—a man he despised, a man who would sell the family to the highest bidder by sundown—and then he looked across the room at Livia.
Livia stood up slowly from the wingback chair. She smoothed down her gray wool skirt, adjusted her thick glasses, and walked toward the door with unhurried, agonizing grace. As she passed Massimo, she paused for a fraction of a second.
May you like
“I’ll be in the east wing if you decide you want your inheritance, Massimo,” she whispered, her voice low enough that only he could hear. “Though I wouldn't take too long. Enzo is already calling his bankers.”
She slipped out of the room, leaving Massimo standing in the wreckage of his shattered morning, trapped by a dead man’s joke and a girl he had spent ten years ignoring.
