The bass from the club pulses through the floor like a second heartbeat, lights slicing through the darkness while expensive laughter echoes around me. I shouldn’t even be here. Students from Institut Le Rosey are supposed to be flawless, untouchable… not sneaking out of a mansion in Switzerland just to feel something real.

My family lives in Italy, ruling an empire no one at school even suspects exists. Since my mother passed, it’s just been my father, Lorenzo Moretti, and my older brother, Matteo Moretti. They built me a life wrapped in luxury and distance, keeping me far from the truth about what our name actually means. I live alone in a massive mansion they bought for me, surrounded by security and silence, always told it was to protect me… never told what from.

Then I met Nikolai Volkov.

He was easy to fall for. Charming without trying, guarded but soft in ways he didn’t even realise. Neither of us knew our families were enemies carved from the same dangerous world. His family — the Volkov Bratva — Russia’s most powerful criminal empire, led by his father, Viktor Volkov, and his mother, Irina Volkova.

Tonight, everything fell apart.

Nikolai and I were at the club when Viktor Volkov arrived unexpectedly. The music kept playing, people kept dancing, but the air turned ice cold when he approached me. His warning was quiet, controlled, and terrifying. Before panic could settle in, Matteo appeared beside me, calm but deadly, his presence alone enough to shift the entire atmosphere. He asked if I was okay… but his eyes already knew the answer.

Within hours, Nikolai and I were taken home separately and told the truth our families spent years hiding. Empires. Rivalries. Bloodlines built on loyalty and power.

Nikolai is their only heir — trained his whole life to take over, shaped into the future of the Volkov legacy.

I’m the youngest in my family — kept in the dark, hidden away to stay safe from a world I was born into but never prepared for.

Our families see us as betrayal waiting to happen. A mistake that could destroy everything they’ve built.

But even after learning the truth… even with the weight of two empires pressing against us…

We still love each other.

And now we’re stuck between loyalty and love, knowing one wrong step could start a war neither of us wants… but neither of us is ready to walk away from.