Chapter 4: The Devil's Masquerade

The footsteps above us grew louder. Dante’s hand clamped around my arm, hauling me to my feet before I could process the impossible image still burned into my retinas. My face. My name. My death.

“Not a sound,” he breathed against my ear, his voice a low command that left no room for argument.

He moved with predatory efficiency, guiding me through a labyrinth of stone corridors beneath the mansion. The air tasted of damp earth and old secrets. My heels clicked against the floor, each step a countdown to something I couldn’t name.

“Where are you taking me?” I managed, my voice a broken whisper.

Dante didn’t answer. He pushed open a heavy oak door, and suddenly we were in a bedroom that looked like it belonged in a five-star hotel—all silk sheets and dim, golden lighting. A black garment bag lay across the bed.

“You have ten minutes to get ready.” He finally released my arm, and I stumbled back, putting distance between us.

“Ready for what?”

His dark eyes swept over me with cold assessment. “For dinner. You’re meeting my associates.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to stop the trembling that had taken root in my bones. “I just found out I’m supposed to be dead. I deserve answers, not—”

“You deserve nothing.” Dante closed the distance between us in two strides, his presence a suffocating weight. “You’re alive because I allow it. You’ll play the role I give you because the alternative is a bullet. Am I clear?”

My throat constricted. This was the man who’d kissed me senseless in that carriage, who’d looked at me like I was something precious. Now he looked at me like I was a chess piece.

“Why do you have a photo of me from ten years ago?” I forced the words out. “Why did it say I was dead?”

Something flickered in his gaze—there and gone. “Because someone wanted you erased. And I’m the only thing standing between you and the people who succeeded.”

He turned to the door. “Ten minutes, Alessia. Don’t test me.”

The door clicked shut, leaving me alone with the garment bag and a thousand questions clawing at my mind.

I opened the bag with shaking hands. Inside was a gown the color of midnight—floor-length, backless, with a slit that ran dangerously high. Beside it lay a pair of diamond earrings that probably cost more than my apartment. The message was clear: dress the part.

I had no choice.

When I emerged fifteen minutes later, Dante was waiting in the hallway, his back against the wall. He’d changed into a black suit that fit him like a second skin, no tie, the top buttons of his shirt undone. He looked like sin given human form.

His gaze traveled the length of me, slow and deliberate. Something dark shifted in his expression.

“Acceptable,” he said, though his voice had gone rough.

He offered his arm. I stared at it like it was a snake.

“You want to survive the night?” His jaw tightened. “You’ll take my arm and smile like you’re madly in love with me. These people can smell weakness, Alessia. They’ll tear you apart.”

I thought of the photo. The blood. The date.

I took his arm.

---

The ballroom was a cathedral of excess. Crystal chandeliers dripped from vaulted ceilings. Men in tailored suits and women in designer gowns moved through the crowd like peacocks, their laughter too loud, their smiles too sharp. I recognized some of them—faces from newspapers, from television. Politicians. Business tycoons. All of them bathed in the golden glow of wealth and corruption.

“Smile,” Dante murmured, his lips brushing my temple.

I forced my mouth into something resembling pleasantness as he steered me through the crowd. Eyes followed us—curious, calculating, hungry. I felt like a lamb among wolves.

“Dante.” A man with silver hair and dead eyes approached us, a woman half his age draped on his arm. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come. And who is this lovely creature?”

“My fiancée.” Dante’s hand tightened on my waist. “Alessia.”

The man’s eyebrows rose. “Fiancée? I didn’t know you were the marrying type.”

“Neither did I.” Dante’s smile was all teeth. “But she changed everything.”

The lie rolled off his tongue so smoothly I almost believed it myself.

The man—Vincenzo, I learned—laughed and clapped Dante on the shoulder, but his eyes lingered on me with an interest that made my skin crawl. “Well, congratulations. Though I have to say, she looks familiar. Have we met before, my dear?”

My heart stopped.

“I don’t believe so.” Dante answered before I could, his voice ice. “She’s from Milan. You wouldn’t know her people.”

Vincenzo tilted his head, studying me like a specimen under glass. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

He moved on, but his words hung in the air like poison.

“What did he mean?” I whispered when we were alone.

“Nothing.” Dante’s jaw was granite. “Stay close to me.”

But the night was far from over.

An hour later, a commotion erupted near the entrance. A young man—barely out of his teens, with fear written all over his face—was dragged into the center of the room by two guards built like mountains. He was bleeding from a gash above his eye, his expensive suit torn.

Dante went utterly still beside me.

“What’s going on?” I breathed.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he guided me toward the dais at the front of the room, where a man I hadn’t noticed before sat on a throne-like chair. He was old, gaunt, with eyes that held no humanity. The room fell silent.

“Matteo,” the old man said, his voice like gravel. “You were caught skimming from the family. You know the penalty.”

The young man—Matteo—fell to his knees. “Please. Please, Don Ricci, I have a family. A daughter. I’ll pay it back, I swear—”

“You’ll pay it back,” Don Ricci agreed. “With your life.”

He nodded at Dante.

My blood turned to ice. “No,” I whispered, clutching his arm. “Dante, no—”

He didn’t look at me. He walked forward with the calm of a man who’d done this a hundred times before. He drew a gun from inside his jacket—a sleek black thing that caught the light.

“Dante, please!” Matteo sobbed.

Dante raised the gun.

I wanted to look away. I wanted to close my eyes and pretend this wasn’t happening. But something in me—some twisted, stubborn part—forced me to watch.

The shot was deafening.

Matteo crumpled to the floor. Blood pooled beneath him, spreading across the marble like spilled wine. The room was silent for a beat, then the chatter resumed as if nothing had happened. As if a man hadn’t just been executed in cold blood.

Dante turned and walked back to me, holstering his gun with practiced ease. His face was expressionless. The same man who’d held me like I was precious, who’d kissed me like he needed me to breathe—he’d just killed someone without a flicker of hesitation.

“We’re leaving,” he said, taking my arm.

I couldn’t move. My legs had turned to stone.

“Alessia.” His voice was sharp. “Now.”

I looked up at him, at this beautiful monster, and felt something inside me shatter.

“You killed him,” I whispered. “You just—you killed him in front of me.”

“He stole from the family.” No remorse. No apology. Just cold, brutal fact.

“He had a daughter.”

“And now she’ll grow up without a father. That’s what happens when you cross the Ricci family.” His grip on my arm tightened. “This is who I am, Alessia. This is the world you’ve been thrown into. The sooner you accept it, the longer you’ll survive.”

He pulled me toward the exit, and this time I didn’t resist. I couldn’t. My body moved on autopilot, my mind a hurricane of horror and confusion.

But as we reached the door, a woman stepped into our path. Tall, elegant, with hair the color of blood and eyes that held a thousand secrets. She smiled at Dante like she owned him.

“Hello, darling,” she purred. “I heard you got yourself a fiancée. Imagine my surprise.”

Dante’s face went pale.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your little…” Her gaze slid to me, and her smile sharpened into something cruel. “…replacement?”

Her eyes dropped to my wrist, where a small birthmark—shaped like a crescent moon—was visible beneath the diamond bracelet.

The woman’s smile vanished. Her face went white.

“That mark,” she breathed. “It can’t be.”

Dante stepped between us, his body a shield. “Valentina, don’t—”

But Valentina was staring at me like she’d seen a ghost.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” she whispered.

And then she pulled out a gun.