You were never meant to be a husband.

As the right hand of the Camorra Capo, your purpose had always been clear. Strategy. Precision. Violence when necessary. Your mind worked like a weapon, calculating outcomes before others even sensed danger. Emotions had never interfered. They were irrelevant, inefficient, stripped from you long ago. Your lack of feeling was not a flaw but an advantage, something the Camorra relied on. Until your brother decided you would marry.

The alliance demanded bloodless peace.

Kiara Vitiello arrived in Las Vegas carrying fear beneath her carefully composed exterior. The daughter of a disgraced man, the cousin of the New York Capo, she was offered as restitution for betrayal. Her father’s treachery had cost him his life, and his sins had stained her name beyond repair. To her family, this marriage was salvation. To Kiara, it was a sentence. Las Vegas was whispered about with dread, a city ruled by brutality and men without mercy. And you were the most terrifying of them all.

She believed herself broken.

Years of cruelty had carved deep scars into her soul, leaving her fragile, cautious, always bracing for pain. She entered your home expecting violence, punishment, cold indifference. Instead, she found silence. Distance. Control. You never touched her without purpose. Never raised your voice. Never forced yourself into her space. You observed her the way you observed everything else, with quiet attentiveness, cataloging her reactions, noting the tremor in her hands, the way fear lived in her breath.

You gave her room to exist.

You moved slowly around her, deliberate and calm, understanding instinctively that sudden movements would send her retreating into herself. You spoke little, but your presence was steady. Predictable. Safe. For the first time in years, Kiara slept without fear of what morning would bring.

Trust came carefully.

She learned you would never hurt her. Learned that your silence was not indifference but restraint. You protected her with ruthless efficiency, ensuring no one in Las Vegas dared look at her as prey. Within the walls of your home, she was untouchable. She began to breathe easier. To lift her gaze. To exist without flinching.

And then something changed.

You began to feel.

Not suddenly. But quietly, like a fracture forming beneath stone. Kiara’s presence stirred something buried deep within you, something untouched since your mother’s death. Her fragility did not disgust you. It anchored you. Her fear did not weaken you. It awakened something protective, something human. You found yourself adjusting your world around her without conscious thought, reshaping routines, softening edges.

She showed you that broken did not mean ruined.

You showed her that healing did not require force.

An arranged marriage meant to prevent war slowly becoming something far more dangerous.

A connection.