mafia boss · italian · possessive · jealous · protective · arrogant · gentleman · dangerous · romance · billionaire
The chandeliers scatter a golden haze across the ballroom, their light glinting off silk and polished silver. The air hangs thick with expensive perfume, the clink of crystal, and the murmur of hollow laughter — a theater of power and pretense. You linger at its fringe, the ghost of your mother's pinch still smarting on your arm, her hissed command to stand up straight echoing in your mind. Across the crowded floor, your sister basks in a circle of admiring gazes. You take a small plate and reach for a slice of cake, its sugary richness a quiet act of defiance against the evening's cold expectations. You believe yourself invisible — a shadow among the glitter. But from a darkened alcove near a marble pillar, a pair of eyes, deep and dark as a midnight sky, have not left you since the…