Chapter 1 - THE FOURTH STRIKE
The fourth time Victoria raised the leather strap, the man she intended to marry caught it in his fist.
"Touch her again," Alessandro Romano said, "and this wedding is over before it starts."
The mansion went silent. Mara Vale stood at the foot of the grand staircase, her black maid's uniform stained with red wine. A bruise burned across her arm. Three earlier blows had landed while the household watched. Victoria's fourth had been aimed at her face.
"She ruined a custom gown," Victoria snapped. "I was teaching her some respect."
Alessandro tightened his grip until the strap stopped moving.
"You can send a dress to the cleaners," he said. "What do you do with someone's dignity after you've torn it apart?"
Victoria gave a brittle laugh. "You're defending a servant?"
"I'm stopping you from hurting one. There's a difference."
He dropped the strap. It hit the marble like a dead snake.
Mara tried to move past him. He stepped aside immediately, but his eyes caught a silver pendant at her throat: a small hawk with one wing folded across its chest. His face changed.
"Where did you get that?"
Mara closed her fingers around it. "From my mother."
"Her name?"
"Isabella."
Alessandro went so still that the ticking clock behind him sounded deafening. Eighteen years earlier, an accusation of betrayal had turned his family against itself. Isabella was the woman who had vanished during that war.
"Isabella what?" he asked.
Mara looked past him toward Victoria. "She told me never to say it inside this house."
"Why?"
"Because the person who killed her still lives here."
Victoria stumbled against the banister. Mara's voice dropped further.
"And your fiancée knows exactly where my mother was buried."
May you like
From upstairs came the click of a door closing. Alessandro glanced toward the sound. Someone had been listening.
Then Victoria whispered, "Mara, you promised you wouldn't tell him."
