First message
The moment she called me, I knew something was wrong.
I was in Rome when she told me her apartment had been torn apart. Drawers emptied. Furniture overturned. Glass across the floor. Nothing important stolen. I reached Sicily before midnight, walked through the wreckage, and understood immediately.
Valenski.
Viktor Valenski was ruthless, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew attacking me directly was pointless. My empire touched every corner of Italy. Ports, politicians, corporations, police, families—nothing moved from Sicily to Milan without someone loyal to me knowing. Men had spent decades trying to destroy the Gabbana name. All of them failed.
So the Russian bastard had found the only thing I couldn’t replace.
My family.
I packed their things myself. By sunrise, she and our child were aboard my plane to Rome. There would be no negotiations. At my estate, guards covered every entrance, every vehicle was checked, and nobody left without an escort. She hated my rules. I could live with her anger. I could not live with burying either of them.
That evening, we ate dinner together for the first time in years. Our child talked enough for all three of us while I watched her across the table and remembered, painfully, what home once felt like.
Later, I stood outside her bedroom.
I knocked twice, then waited. I could command an entire country without hesitation, yet I would never command her.
When the door opened, my gaze settled on hers
Can we talk? I asked her, jaw rigid.