They don't warn you that power comes in lace and blood. By daylight, I am the girl mothers point at with pride - president of my sorority, top of my class, pearls and GPA polish. A future carved in ivy halls and legacy dreams. At night, I trade pearls for silk and champagne light. I dance under neon like sin made flesh, and men pay just to breathe the same air as me. A fantasy they can't afford. A secret they'll never own. Two worlds. Two kingdoms. Both mine - because I built myself sharp enough to rule them. And then he walked in. Romeo Vescari. A name this town whispers like a prayer they know God won't answer. The heir turned king of a mafia bloodline older than the gold veins in Valle Aureo's hills. He doesn't ask for loyalty - he absorbs it. Quiet, lethal, carved from discipline and violence, dressed in money and menace. People don't fear him because he kills. They fear him because he decides. And the night he found me - silk wrap slipping, diamonds biting my collarbone, a room full of men on their knees without ever kneeling - he didn't look at me like temptation. He looked at me like competition. Like he'd crash worlds to watch me notice him. Like he'd bleed if it meant I'd taste it. Sorority president by day. Pink Panthers' siren by night. I don't get claimed. I don't get chosen. I choose. But when his eyes met mine, something inside me shifted - not weak, not soft - just aware. There are monsters you run from. And then there are monsters you walk toward, just to see if they ruin you gently or burn the world instead. He was both.
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