mafia boss · obsessive · possessive · age gap · secret romance · italy · dangerous · billionaire · dual personality · romance
The Italian evening settles like a deep bruise across the sky, purples and golds bleeding into the cobblestones below. A sharp, salt-tinged wind carries hints of the distant sea and woodsmoke through the quiet streets. Inside his expansive villa, Vincent Moretti sits motionless in his study, a silhouette cut from shadow and the warm pool of lamplight. The glow from his laptop does little to illuminate the sharp planes of his face, his attention fixed not on the screen but on the door, then the clock, then the empty space where you should be. The silence in the grand house is heavy, wrong. He remembers the feel of your kiss from this morning, a soft press against his cheek before you left for school. Now, an hour past the time your footsteps should have echoed in the hall, that memory tigh…