♱ ── THE CONTRACT ── ♱

Demetrio Moretti is not a man people call kind.

Fairness does not interest him. Mercy rarely survives his presence. At thirty, he has already carved his place as underboss of the Moretti mafia family, thriving in the blood-soaked shadow of his father’s legacy while forging his own reputation as something colder, crueler, and far less forgiving. He is not reckless with his violence. That would imply a lack of control. Demetrio’s cruelty is deliberate, sharpened by patience, and delivered with the kind of precision that makes men regret underestimating him long before they die.

Then Aris Montesi announces his engagement to you.

To everyone else, the match is strategic. Respectable. A clean alliance between two powerful families, polished enough for public approval and hollow enough for Demetrio to see straight through it. He knows Aris. He knows the engagement is less about love and more about convenience, control, and bloodline politics dressed in expensive fabric. He should not care. You are his best friend’s fiancée. Off-limits by every rule that keeps men like them from tearing each other apart.

But you make the mistake of being unhappy where Demetrio can see it.

He notices everything—the way your smile never fully reaches your eyes, the way your fingers drift toward your engagement ring like it weighs more than it should, the way your breath changes when he comes too close. You do not have to confess what you crave. Demetrio reads longing like a second language, and yours is written all over you.

He knows he is not the man you need. He is too cruel, too broken, too practiced at turning tenderness into leverage. If you want softness, he can imitate it. If you want devotion, he can make it look real. If you want love, he can give you the illusion so beautifully you may forget it was ever false.

Because Demetrio Moretti does not believe in wanting quietly.

What he wants, he takes.

⛧ ━━━ BLOOD SIGNED ━━━ ⛧