Chapter 3

Three days before the wedding, Vivian made her move.

She showed up at the Moretti estate uninvited, wearing a dress cut so low her tits were practically spilling out, her lips painted crimson, reeking of expensive perfume.

I watched from the second-floor balcony as she approached the front entrance.

"I need to speak with Don Moretti," she told the guards, her voice breathy and seductive. "It's about my sister — I'm worried for her safety."

The guards didn't move.

"No one enters without the Don's permission."

Vivian pressed closer, trailing a finger down one guard's chest.

"Surely you can make an exception for family?"

The guard grabbed her wrist and removed it like he was handling garbage.

"Ma'am. Step back."

Vivian's face twisted with humiliation. She looked up and saw me on the balcony.

If looks could kill, I'd be dead twice over.

That night, Luca mentioned it casually over dinner.

"Your sister has interesting tactics. Showing up half-naked to seduce my men."

"Did it work?"

"My men prefer breathing." He took a sip of wine. "I have a strict policy. Anyone who betrays me loses their tongue first, then their hands, then everything else — slowly."

He said it like he was discussing the weather.

I should have been scared. In my past life, I would have been.

But I'd spent two years in a trafficking ring. I'd seen real monsters. Luca Moretti, for all his brutality, had a code. The men who'd held me captive had none.

"Luca, can I ask you something?"

"You can ask. I might not answer."

"Did you really kill your first wife?"

The room went cold. His jaw tightened. For a long moment, he said nothing.

"No." His voice was quiet, dangerous. "She was killed. And I slaughtered every man responsible."

The way he said it — not with pride, but with barely contained grief — told me everything.

Luca Moretti wasn't a monster. He was a man the world had broken and rebuilt into a weapon.

"I'm sorry," I said.

He looked at me like no one had ever said that to him before.

"The wedding is in three days," he said, changing the subject. "My tailor will come tomorrow for your dress fitting."

"I don't need anything fancy —"

"You'll have the best, Sera. Every woman in this city will watch you walk down that aisle and know exactly who you belong to."

The dress arrived the next day — hand-stitched Italian silk, ivory white, with a ten-foot train and a diamond-encrusted bodice that probably cost more than most people's homes.

I was admiring it when my phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

A photo of me, two years ago — or rather, two years from now — in the trafficking ring, bruised, branded, barely alive.

Below it, a message:

"Marry him and I'll make sure the whole world sees what you really are."

Only two people could have taken that photo.

Vivian. Or Damien.

My hands shook, but not from fear.

From rage.

They didn't know I'd been reborn. They didn't know I'd already lived through hell. And they sure as fuck didn't know that the photo couldn't exist yet — which meant Vivian had brought it back with her from the past life, somehow.

I deleted the message and called Luca.

"I need to tell you something before the wedding. Something about my past — about what my sister did to me."

A pause.

"Come to the estate. Now."

An hour later, I sat across from Luca in his private study, armed guards outside every door.

I told him everything.

Not the rebirth — he'd think I was insane. But the truth about Vivian and Damien's affair. How they'd planned to use me. How Damien had connections to trafficking rings overseas.

Luca listened without interrupting. His face was stone. But his hand, resting on the desk, slowly curled into a fist so tight his knuckles cracked.

When I finished, the silence stretched.

Then he stood, walked around the desk, and knelt in front of me.

Luca Moretti — the most feared Don in the hemisphere — on his knees.

He took my hands.

"No one will ever touch you again. Not your sister. Not Cross. Not anyone."

His grey eyes burned with something terrifying and beautiful.

"And Sera — after the wedding, I'm going to destroy them. Every single one of them."

He paused.

"Unless you want to do it yourself."

I looked at this man, this so-called monster, kneeling before me with murder in his eyes — all for a woman he barely knew.

And I felt something I hadn't felt in either lifetime.

Safe.

"Together," I said. "We destroy them together."

The corner of his mouth twitched — the closest thing to a smile I'd ever seen from him.

"Together."

The night before the wedding, I couldn't sleep. I wandered the estate and found Luca in the basement gym, shirtless, pounding a heavy bag with bare fists.

His body was a masterpiece of violence — broad shoulders thick with muscle, a tapered waist, abs carved like marble, and scars scattered across his torso like a map of every war he'd survived.

Sweat dripped down his chest, catching the dim light. His tattoos — intricate black ink depicting serpents, skulls, and Latin script — rippled with every powerful strike.

He saw me and stopped.

"Can't sleep?"

"No."

He grabbed a towel, wiped his face. His grey eyes traveled over my thin nightgown, lingering just long enough to make heat pool between my thighs.

"Tomorrow you'll be my wife," he said, voice low. "Last chance to run."

I stepped closer until I could feel the heat radiating off his body.

"I'm done running."

Something snapped behind his eyes. He grabbed my waist and pulled me flush against him, his hard, sweat-slicked body pressing into mine. His mouth hovered over my lips.

"Once I take you, Sera, there's no going back. You're mine. Every inch of you."

"Prove it."

He crushed his lips to mine — rough, demanding, consuming. His tongue invaded my mouth as his hands gripped my ass, lifting me effortlessly. I wrapped my legs around him, grinding against the massive bulge straining his sweatpants.

He carried me to the wall, pinning me there, his thick, rock-hard member grinding between my legs through the thin fabric.

"Not tonight," he growled against my neck, his voice strained with control. "Tomorrow. On our wedding night. I want you in that dress when I rip it off you."

He bit my earlobe, making me gasp.

"And Sera? I won't be gentle."

He set me down, breathing hard, and walked away.

I stood there, trembling, soaked, heart pounding.

Tomorrow couldn't come fast enough.