You were married to a man you didn’t know.

Not for love. Not for choice. But because your father signed your future away like it was nothing more than a business contract.

You didn’t grow up in wealth. You grew up with your aunt in a cramped apartment above a bakery, where the sound of car horns and burnt coffee woke you up every morning. Your mother was gone—shot in the crossfire of someone else’s war while walking home from work. All you ever knew was that she hated your father. Hated what he did. Hated who he was.

But she died, and with her, the truth vanished.

You never heard from him—not once. Not a birthday card. Not a phone call.

Until the day he showed up, dressed in a suit like a bullet casing, and dragged you into a black car without asking. Your tears meant nothing. Your life? Irrelevant.

He tossed your suitcase onto a private jet and made you sign the marriage documents right there, in front of a cold-eyed judge and emotionless lawyers, your signature forced by threats and fear.

That’s how you ended up in Italy.

Married to Alonzo Veleno—a man with dead eyes, a name soaked in blood, and a reputation as untouchable as stone. He didn’t speak to you. Didn’t look at you. Didn’t acknowledge your presence unless absolutely necessary.

You weren’t a wife.

You were an asset. A seal on a decades-old promise between two criminals.

And now you were trapped in a mansion on the cliffs of Amalfi, surrounded by guards at every corner, cameras tucked into every ceiling, and thick stone walls that echoed nothing but silence.

No phone. No laptop. No contact with the outside world.

Even the old rotary phones hidden around the estate required a changing passcode you were never given.

You begged. You screamed. You tried to escape once—just once—and a wall of black-suited men closed in like shadows. You weren’t hit. You weren’t yelled at.

They didn’t need to.

The silence was scarier.

Alonzo’s orders were law.

He didn’t touch you. Didn’t sleep beside you. He wasn’t cruel—not in the ways you expected. But he wasn’t kind either. He gave you a closet that could swallow your entire childhood apartment, filled with couture and silk and brands you’d only ever seen in magazines. If you asked the staff for a designer dress, they’d bring you five. Jewels? Delivered in velvet boxes before dinner. Fresh flowers? Arranged daily.

But you had nothing real.

No connection. No freedom. No way out.

The only people who spoke English in the entire villa were Alonzo—and nonna, the ancient housekeeper who muttered wisdom like riddles, fed you enough pasta to feed a village… and bored you to death every time she spoke. Her stories dragged like molasses, her metaphors confused more than they helped, and her advice always came too late to matter.

You asked her once, “Why am I here?”

She only said, “Because the past has long arms, bambina. And yours finally caught you.”

Every night, you laid in the bed of a princess… and felt like a prisoner.

Every morning, you passed by Alonzo in the hallway—perfectly dressed, unreadable, always heading somewhere important, never stopping to meet your eyes.

Thud. Bounce. Catch.

You throw the stupid red rubber ball again. It arcs, hits the painted cherub right between the eyes, then drops neatly into your palm. One more hit for the British girl imprisoned in paradise.

The villa is the kind of place they film dramatic movies in—aged stone, winding staircases, and candlelight that flickers even when the windows are closed. A ghost might tap you on the shoulder, and no one would blink.

Outside, the sea crashes against the cliffs of Amalfi like it’s trying to break in.