Katarina De Luca POV
The annual De Luca Charity Gala was less a ballroom and more a shark tank disguised in silk and diamonds.
Deep blue velvet clung to my frame like a second skin, a shade so profound it swallowed the dim light of the chandeliers rather than reflecting it.
Around my neck rested the Midnight Sapphire.
It wasn’t a trinket bought at a desperate auction. It was a heavy, cold burden—a relic from Donato’s late wife, a piece of history that had never graced the throat of anyone other than the Don’s chosen woman.
When I walked in, the room didn’t just quiet down. It arrested.
Antoine Dubois, a French aristocrat whose fingerprints were on half the illicit weapon shipments in Europe, bowed low over my hand.
"The Queen returns," he murmured, his voice carrying just enough for the nearby Capos to catch. "Finally, that necklace has found a neck worthy of its lineage."
Across the room, I locked eyes with Alessandro.
He was gripping a champagne flute, his knuckles bleached white against the fragile crystal.
Beside him stood Aria.
She was draped in the diamond necklace he had bought her at the auction. It was expensive. It was flashy.
But against the centuries of blood and history hanging around my throat, it looked like costume jewelry bought at a mall kiosk.
Aria saw the way the room shifted its axis toward me. She saw the reverence Antoine offered.
And she hated it.
She whispered something against Alessandro’s jaw, her eyes never leaving mine, then peeled herself away from his arm. She glided toward me, a pretender wrapped in white silk.
"You think a rock makes you special?" she hissed when she breached my personal space. "You are still the woman he doesn't touch."
I looked at her over the rim of my glass, my expression bored. "And you are the woman he pays for."
Aria’s eyes narrowed into razor-thin slits. She stepped closer, invading the air I breathed. The smell of her perfume was cloying—sugar masking the scent of rot.
"Careful, Katarina," she whispered, a sound like dry leaves skittering on pavement. "I have things on my phone that would make even these hardened criminals blush."
She pulled her phone from her clutch. She angled the screen so only I could see.
The floor seemed to tilt beneath my heels.
It was a video. Grainy, shot in low light. It was me and Alessandro—from two years ago. A private, feverish moment. A moment of vulnerability I had thought was sacred, hidden from the world.
"I have hours of this," Aria smiled, and it was a jagged, ugly thing. "He filmed it. He sent it to me. We laugh about how pathetic you look when you beg."
Bile, hot and acidic, rose in my throat.
"If you don't leave him," she said, her voice a soft caress of pure malice, "if you don't disappear tonight, I will send this to every news outlet in New York. The Ice Queen, melting and desperate for a man who hates her."
She tapped a manicured nail against the screen.
"Tick tock, Katarina."
