"Safe. For now." His expression doesn't change. Clinical. Detached. "Your sister too. Sofia, isn't it? Nineteen. Art history major at Columbia. Pretty girl. Very talented. It would be a shame if something happened to her."
The threat is delivered so casually it takes me a moment to process it.
Then rage floods through me, hot and cleansing. "Don't you dare —"
"I haven't dared anything yet." He cuts me off. "But I will. If you give me reason to."
The rage dies as quickly as it came, leaving only cold terror.
"Please." My voice comes out smaller than I want. "They don't have anything to do with this. Whatever my father did we can fix it."
"Your father worked for me." Salvatore leans forward, fingers still steepled. "Did you know that?"
The room tilts. "What?"
"Marco Marino. Literature professor by day. But several evenings a week, he worked for the Vitale family. Managing books. Handling accounts." His tone is conversational like we’re just two people talking.
"I don't understand."
"Well, my brother Matteo needed your father's help with a project and he owes us so he... took care of it." His dark eyes never leave my face, tracking every reaction. "Until a financial arrangement required access to certain institutional accounts. Your father refused."
"He refused you?" My father spent his whole life avoiding conflict, staying invisible, keeping his head down. I can'timagine him saying no to this man. I can't imagine him being in the same room as this man.
"He said he wouldn't risk involving his daughter in our business. Very noble. Very protective." Salvatore stills, something cold settling behind his eyes.
Something sour coils in my stomach. His daughter. He was protecting me from a world I never knew he was part of, and now I'm sitting inside it anyway.
"Where is he?" I manage.
"If I knew that, maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation." Salvatore stands, and even that simple movement feels predatory. He moves to the windows, hands clasped behind his back. "Your father ran. Disappeared completely. Very thorough this time."
He turns back to me, silhouetted against the city behind him.
"This time?" I echo.
Something dark crosses his face. "Your father has made running away an art form, Miss Marino. This isn't his first betrayal of the Vitale family. But it will be his last."
"No, please don't hurt my father. Just tell me what you want from me."
He crosses back to the desk. Closer now. Close enough that I can smell his cologne, the same one from the library.
"Marriage."
I must have heard him wrong. The fear is making me hear things. "What?"
"Marriage," he repeats, opening a drawer and pulling out a thick folder. He sets it on the desk between us. "A contract, legally binding. You'll take my name, live in my home, and fulfill the duties of a wife."
This can't be real.
I'm going to wake up in my apartment, heart racing from a nightmare. This is too absurd. Too medieval. This doesn't happen in real life.
"You can't be serious."
"I'm always serious, Miss Marino." He watches me with those dark, hungry eyes. "Your family’s debts die with this arrangement. Your mother and sister remain untouched. They keep their home, their lives, their safety."
He pauses, and the weight of his gaze is suffocating.
"All I require is you."
