The Stolen Flower

Daliah Curador is completing her last year of high school, navigating the difficulties of having moved to a completely different continent in her senior years.

She now lives in a small town known as the 'Città del Paradiso', or the town of Paradise, a hidden heaven, with its sublime surrounds of endless mountains, glittering emerald lakes, and endless views of the Riviera del Sole Nascente, the beautiful coast at the border of the town.

And here, Daliah discovers a significant dissimilarity from the big cities she's used to. A community that is something out of a fairytale, where the people are superstitious, live by 'per scaramanzia' rituals and endless medieval festivities.

It is a place that is believed to hold much magic by the locals, but by the contrasting Uber rich who use the town for their own rapacious agendas, they are seen purely as uneducated, simple minded people who fall for such beliefs due to their naivety.

Sweet, loving Daliah, with her pure and virtuous principles, and firm belief in good winning over evil, is deeply bothered by the shocking disparity between the rich and poor that exists within the town she is growing to love.

And this deep-rooted nature of hers causes her to find herself exposed to the darker sides of the town, menacing people and rather sinister happenings that are hidden behind the illusion of Paradiso.

But little do they know, Daliah has a secret of her own to protect. A secret that puts her in more danger than she's prepared for, but may also be the thing that saves her.

"Please Cain" I whimper, searching for mercy in those angelite eyes, and they look right back into mine, as cold as the arctic and as harsh as the knife he's holding to my neck. "You know how I adore when you beg, il mio fiore" he breathes onto my lips, and my chest heaves, my eyes widening as he steps even closer. "Let go of me" I try to speak, but before I can argue, his lips are attached to mine.