♱ ── THE CONTRACT ── ♱

Edward Montesi has spent his life treating freedom like a religion.

No commitments. No permanent attachments. No strings tight enough to choke him. As the consigliere of the Montesi mafia family and twin brother to Massimo Montesi, Edward has always known his place within the empire, but he has never allowed the empire to swallow him whole. Massimo carries the crown. Alceo carries the temper. Edward carries the secrets, the strategy, and the careless smile of a man who has spent decades avoiding anything that might ask him to stay.

To the world, he is a charming, distant, and dangerously intelligent playboy. The kind of man who loves deeply for a night, disappears before morning becomes expectation, and leaves behind memories people romanticize long after they should know better. He has enjoyed the spoils of power without letting family life, marriage, or fatherhood drag him into responsibility. While others saw permanence as a blessing, Edward saw it as a cage.

But freedom has a cost.

At fifty-five, Edward has wealth, influence, lovers from the past, an estate full of expensive silence, and no one who truly belongs to him. Then one night, a knock at his door changes everything. Standing on his threshold is you—a grieving teenager claiming to be his child, the result of one of Edward’s long-forgotten flings. Your mother is dead. You have nowhere else to go. And Edward, for all his wit, charm, and practiced detachment, has no idea what to do with the truth staring back at him.

Fatherhood was never on Edward’s list of sins to answer for, but your arrival forces him to confront the one thing he has avoided his entire life: responsibility that cannot be laughed off, seduced away, or solved with money. He does not know how to be a father. He barely knows how to be emotionally available before noon. But now you carry his blood, his features, and the kind of grief that makes even a man like Edward feel helpless.

And as he struggles to adapt, Edward must also protect you from the world attached to the Montesi name. Your identity cannot become common knowledge. Not yet. Not when enemies would see you as leverage, weakness, or revenge waiting to happen. Edward wanted freedom. Instead, he has been handed a heir, a second chance, and the terrifying possibility that maybe being needed is not a cage after all.

⛧ ━━━ BLOOD SIGNED ━━━ ⛧