Chapter 1
Viviana Marchetti
The brush in my hand moved in slow, deliberate strokes across the canvas, each pass adding another layer of depth to the Virgin Mary's robes.
The pigment was a rich ultramarine I had mixed myself from lapis lazuli powder, ground fine as dust and bound with walnut oil.
It cost more than my rent, but the fifteenth-century panel painting deserved nothing less.
My client, a private collector from the Upper East Side, had paid me a small fortune to restore this piece, and I was three weeks into a job that should have taken two. The delay wasn't my fault.
The varnish had been stubborn, yellowed with centuries of candle smoke and neglect, and removing it without damaging the original paint layer required patience I usually reserved for my own family.
Which was saying something, because the Marchettis tested my patience like no one else on this earth.
I leaned back on my stool and stretched my arms over my head, feeling the pleasant pull in my shoulders.
My loft was quiet except for the soft hum of the air purifier and the occasional rumble of the subway beneath the building.
Sunlight streamed through the massive factory windows that took up most of the eastern wall, catching the dust motes floating in the air and turning them into tiny golden stars.
I had lived in this space for three years now, ever since I graduated from my master's program and decided I would rather eat ramen for a decade than move back into my father's house.
The loft was technically in Bushwick, though the real estate agent had called it East Williamsburg and charged me accordingly. It had exposed brick, original hardwood floors, and a radiator that clanked like a dying man in winter. I loved every square inch of it.
My tank top was stained with paint in at least six different colors, and my cutoff shorts had seen better days. My hair was piled on top of my head in a messy bun that had given up on looking intentional hours ago.
I was barefoot, my toenails painted a chipped black, and my curves were on full display because I had stopped caring about hiding them around the time I turned eighteen.
I was a size sixteen, sometimes an eighteen depending on the brand, and I had spent my teenage years trying to shrink myself into something acceptable.
It hadn't worked. My mother, rest her soul, had been a wisp of a woman, all sharp angles and delicate bones, and she had never understood why her daughter came out soft and round and taking up space.
She had loved me anyway, in her own way, but she had also spent years trying to put me on diets and sign me up for aerobics classes.
It wasn't until after she died that I finally stopped trying to be someone I wasn't.
The tattoo on my hip was still fresh, the skin around it pink and tender. I had gotten it two days ago at a shop in the East Village, a tiny dagger no bigger than my thumb, angled so the blade pointed down toward my thigh.
The artist had asked me what it meant, and I had told her it was for protection.
She had nodded like that made perfect sense, because in her world, it probably did. I had four other tattoos, each one a story I didn't tell anyone.
The rose vine that wrapped around my left arm from wrist to shoulder, blooming with thorns and petals in equal measure.
The tiny dagger behind my right ear, hidden unless I wore my hair up.
The crescent moon on my inner wrist, small and silver and barely visible.
And the words "she persisted" in my mother's handwriting, traced from an old birthday card, inked along my ribcage where only someone who knew me intimately would ever see it.
I picked up my brush again and leaned toward the painting, losing myself in the rhythm of restoration. This was the only time my mind went quiet.
When I was working, I didn't think about my father or the family business or the fact that I had spent my entire life trying to be something other than what I was born into.
I just thought about color and light and the way a brush felt against a surface that hadn't been touched by human hands in five hundred years.
It was meditative. It was sacred. It was the only thing that made me feel like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
My phone rang, shattering the silence like a brick through a window.
I ignored it. It rang again. I sighed and set down my brush, wiping my hands on a rag that was already stiff with dried paint.
The screen lit up with a name I knew too well: Papà. I let it ring one more time before answering, because I was petty like that and because I knew ignoring him would only make the conversation worse.
"Viviana." His voice was low and rough, the voice of a man who had spent his entire life commanding other people and never once had to ask for anything. "Where are you?"
"I'm at home, Papà. Working." I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder and picked up my palette knife, scraping some dried pigment off the glass. "What do you need?"
"I need you to come to the estate. Tonight."
My hand stilled. The estate was the family compound in the Hamptons, a sprawling property with a main house that had twelve bedrooms and a guest house that was bigger than most people's homes.
I hadn't been there in months. I had been avoiding it, actually, because every time I set foot on that property, my father found a new way to remind me that I was wasting my potential and disappointing him.
"Tonight?" I repeated, stalling. "Papà, I'm in the middle of a restoration. I can't just—"
"You can and you will." His tone left no room for argument. It never did. "This is not a request, Viviana. I have something important to discuss with you, and I want you here. Seven o'clock. Don't be late."
"Papà, please. Just tell me what this is about. I have a deadline, and if I don't finish this piece by Friday—"
"The painting will wait. Your father will not." There was a pause, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer. "It has been too long since you came home, tesoro. Your mother would not have wanted this distance between us."
That was a low blow, and he knew it. My mother had been dead for seven years, and he still used her memory like a weapon whenever I resisted him.
I wanted to be angry. I wanted to tell him that using my dead mother to manipulate me was cruel and unfair and that I was tired of being made to feel guilty for wanting a life of my own.
But the words stuck in my throat, because despite everything, he was still my father, and I still loved him.
"Fine," I said, and I could hear the defeat in my own voice. "Seven o'clock. I'll be there."
"Good girl." The approval in his voice was a balm I hated myself for craving. "Wear something appropriate. We will have a guest."
He hung up before I could ask who the guest was. I stared at my phone for a long moment, then tossed it onto the worktable with more force than necessary. The screen cracked. I didn't care.
I stood up and walked to the large mirror I kept propped against the wall near my bedroom area.
My reflection stared back at me, and I took a moment to really look at myself.
The paint on my hands and arms, smeared across my cheek from when I had scratched my face.
The tank top that was doing very little to contain my chest. The curve of my hips and the thickness of my thighs. The dagger tattoo, fresh and angry against my skin.
I was not the daughter my father wanted.
I was not polished or poised or willing to smile prettily at his business associates. I was messy and loud and covered in ink, and I had no intention of changing for anyone.
But I would go to the estate because I was still, at the end of the day, a Marchetti. And Marchettis showed up when the Don called.
I showered in the clawfoot tub I had installed myself, scrubbing the paint from my skin until it was pink.
I washed my hair, then blow-dried it, then curled the ends because I knew it would annoy my father if I showed up looking like I hadn't tried.
I wore a dress, because he would expect it, a dark green wrap dress that hugged my curves and dipped low enough to show off the rose vine tattoo on my arm.
I added a pair of gold hoops, because my mother had given them to me, and I wanted to feel like I had her with me.
By the time I pulled up to the estate, the sun was setting, casting long golden shadows across the manicured lawn.
The gate swung open automatically, recognizing my car, and I drove up the long gravel driveway to the main house.
My father was standing on the front steps, waiting for me. He looked older than I remembered, his dark hair now shot through with silver, his face lined with the weight of everything he carried.
But his eyes were the same, sharp and assessing, and they swept over me with the familiar mixture of pride and disappointment.
"Viviana," he said, holding out his arms. "You came."
I stepped into his embrace, and for a moment, I let myself feel like a little girl again, safe in her father's arms. Then he pulled back and looked at me, and the moment was gone.
"You look beautiful," he said, and I knew he meant it. "But that dress is a little low. Our guest is a man of importance. I want you to make a good impression."
I bit back the retort that rose to my lips. Instead, I smiled, tight and controlled. "Of course, Papà. Who is the guest?"
He turned and led me into the house, his hand on my back. "You remember Antonio Moretti, don't you? My business partner."
I stopped walking. My heart stuttered in my chest.
I remembered Antonio Moretti. I remembered him in vivid, embarrassing detail. The way he moved, all controlled power and quiet danger.
The way his voice sounded, low and rough, like gravel wrapped in silk.
The way his eyes, a piercing blue that seemed to see right through me, had followed me at my mother's funeral.
I had been nineteen then, grief-stricken and lost, and he had been the only person who hadn't tried to offer me empty platitudes.
He had just stood there, silent and steady, and somehow that had been more comforting than anything anyone else had said.
I remembered him, and I had spent the years since trying very hard to forget.
"What about him?" I asked, and my voice sounded strange to my own ears.
My father smiled, and there was something in his expression that made my blood run cold.
"He's going to be your new boss."
