Chapter 1
UNDYING LOVE
Love Never Dies. Neither Do the Romanos.
Copyright © 2026 by Summer Shaylie
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations used in reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
First Edition
Cover Design by Summer Shaylie
Published independently.
The Romanos built their empire on blood, loyalty, and secrets.
But love was always the most dangerous thing about them.
Chapter One — The Name at the Bottom of the Page
Until two weeks ago, my life was exactly how I wanted it.
Structured.
Controlled.
Predictable.
I liked it that way.
I didn’t do chaos.
I didn’t do recklessness.
And I definitely didn’t do relationships.
Not because I couldn’t.
I just never had time for them.
While everyone else my age was partying their way through freshman year at Columbia, I was buried in textbooks, internship applications, and color-coded schedules.
My future had been planned down to the smallest detail for as long as I could remember.
Harvard Law.
Corporate attorney.
Success.
Everything I do is for one person—
My mother.
Selene Winthrop.
She’s not just my mom. She’s everything.
A self-made fashion designer who built an empire from nothing. Strong. Brilliant. Beautiful in a way that makes people stop and stare without even realizing it.
But more than that—
She’s kind.
Even with everything she’s built, she never changed. Never became cold or unreachable like most people with her level of success.
She always made time for me.
Always made me feel like I was her greatest achievement.
It’s always been just the two of us.
No father.
Only fragmented stories and old grief that never fully left my mother’s eyes...
Every decision I made had a purpose.
Because failure was never an option in my house.
Not with my mother.
Selene Winthrop.
To the rest of the world, she was a fashion icon. The self-made founder of S & G Designs. Elegant. Brilliant. Untouchable.
To me—
She was home.
My mother had built an empire from nothing, yet somehow never became cold the way powerful people usually did. She still left handwritten notes on the kitchen counter. She always remembered every exam date, every appointment, and never missed a school event. Still called me “Bella mia” whenever I was stressed.
It had always been us against the world.
No father. No siblings. No giant family holidays.
Just me and her.
When I was younger, I used to ask questions about my father.
Who was he? What happened to him? Did he know about me?
But my mother always got the same distant look in her eyes whenever his name came up.
Like she was remembering another life.
“He was the love of my life,” she would say softly. “And a good man.”
That was all I ever got.
No pictures. No stories. No explanation.
Just sadness hidden behind a smile that never lasted very long...
Eventually, I stopped asking.
Because whatever happened between them had clearly destroyed her.
And despite that—
She never stopped loving him.
I used to wonder what kind of love could survive that long.
Now I know.
The last normal conversation I had with my mother happened on a Tuesday morning.
I was rushing around our penthouse kitchen trying to find my AirPods while simultaneously attempting to finish a paper due by midnight.
“Slow down before you give yourself a stroke,” my mother laughed from behind her espresso machine.
“You say that like you aren’t running three companies and surviving entirely on caffeine.”
“Four companies,” she corrected.
I groaned dramatically. “See? That’s exactly my point.”
She walked over smiling, smoothing her hand over my hair the way she had since I was a little girl.
“You’ll conquer the world one day, Isabella.”
“Only because you taught me how.”
Something flickered in her expression then.
Pride.
Sadness.
Love.
If I had known that would be the last time, I’d ever see her alive, I would have memorized every second of it.
The sound of her laugh. The smell of vanilla perfume on her sweater. The warmth of her hug.
Instead, I grabbed my coffee and rushed out the door like I had all the time in the world.
I didn’t.
The call came during my Political Science lecture.
At first, I ignored it.
Unknown number.
Then it rang again.
And again.
Until finally my professor paused mid-sentence and looked directly at me.
“Miss Winthrop,” he said carefully, “perhaps you should answer that.”
An uncomfortable feeling twisted in my stomach as I stepped outside the lecture hall.
“Hello?”
“Miss Winthrop?” a male voice asked.
“Yes?”
“This is Officer Daniels with NYPD.”
Everything inside me went cold.
“There’s been an accident involving your mother.”
The hallway tilted.
My fingers tightened around the phone so hard they hurt.
“What kind of accident?”
Silence.
The kind of silence that changes your life forever.
“I’m very sorry,” he said quietly. “Your mother didn’t survive.”
No.
No no no.
“That’s not possible.”
My voice barely sounded human.
“You have the wrong person.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Winthrop.”
I don’t remember hanging up.
I don’t remember getting home.
I only remember standing in the middle of our penthouse staring at the city skyline while people moved around me speaking in hushed voices I couldn’t understand.
My mother was gone.
Just like that.
One moment she existed.
The next she didn’t.
A hit-and-run accident on her way to the office.
It should have been routine. Safe
Except apparently nothing in my life was safe at all.
Five days later, my grandfather arrived.
Richard Winthrop looked exactly the way wealthy old money should look. Perfect gray suit. Gold watch. Empty eyes.
I’d met him less than five times in my entire life.
That should have told me everything.
“You’ll need to be practical now, Isabella,” he said from across the dining room table.
Practical.
My mother had just been buried, and he wanted practical.
“You are sole heir to S & G Designs,” he continued. “Until matters are settled, I’ll oversee operations temporarily.”
Not: I’m sorry for your loss.
Not: How are you holding up?
Business.
Everything with him felt like business.
I stared at him across the table, suddenly understanding why my mother had kept him at a distance for most of my life.
“You mean until I’m grieving correctly?” I asked coldly.
His jaw tightened slightly.
“I mean until you’re ready.”
Something ugly flickered in my chest then.
Anger.
Because for the first time since my mother died—
I felt something other than emptiness.
Later that night, unable to sleep, I wandered into my mother’s closet searching for... I didn’t even know what.
Her perfume still lingered in the air.
The sight of her dresses nearly brought me to my knees.
That’s when I found it.
A leather journal hidden inside one of the drawers.
My name written across the front in my mother’s handwriting.
For Isabella.
My hands shook as I opened it.
Inside were photographs I’d never seen before.
Italy.
Ancient streets. Cathedrals. Coastlines.
And him.
A man with dark hair and intense eyes holding my mother like she was the center of his universe.
The same man in every photograph.
Laughing with her. Kissing her. Looking at her with devastating love.
My father.
Tucked between the pages was a note.
If you’re reading this, Bella mia, then something has happened to me.
And there are truths about your life you deserve to know.
The room stopped spinning.
At the bottom of the page was a single name.
Gabriel Romano.
Chapter Two — He Loved Us
I didn’t sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my mother.
Laughing softly in the kitchen. Fixing the collar of my coat before class. Dancing barefoot around the penthouse while old Italian music played in the background.
The silence without her felt wrong.
Like the entire world had shifted off its axis and nobody else noticed.
By three in the morning, I gave up trying to sleep altogether.
Rain tapped softly against the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan while the city glowed below me. The penthouse felt cold now.
Empty.
Like the life had been ripped out of it the moment my mother died.
I sat curled beneath one of my mother’s cashmere blankets with the leather journal resting in my lap.
I stared at it for a long moment before finally opening it again.
Because somehow this felt sacred.
Like I was stepping into pieces of my mother no one else had ever known.
Taking a shaky breath, I turned the page.
Florence, Italy.
Age twenty-two.
I met him today.
My chest tightened instantly.
The next page held a photograph carefully tucked between the paper.
My mother stood beneath glowing streetlights near a fountain somewhere in Italy.
And beside her—
him.
Gabriel Romano.
Tall. Dark hair. Sharp jaw. Dark eyes intense enough to feel dangerous even through a photograph.
But it wasn’t his appearance that caught me.
It was the way he looked at her.
Like she was everything.
I swallowed hard and kept reading.
Everyone warns me about Gabriel Romano.
They whisper his name like it should frighten me.
Maybe it should.
But when he touches me, I forget every reason I should stay away from him.
My throat tightened painfully.
I had never seen my mother in love before.
