The room smelled of old leather and dusted-off legacies.
Bella stood at the tall windows of her father's study, watching rain streak the glass like tears this house had long forgotten how to cry. Her fingers curled tightly around the back of an antique chair—not to steady herself, but to stop her hands from doing what her fury begged for: to overturn everything, to scream, to fight.
He had done it.
Signed away her life with the same cold pen he once used to sign off her mother's death.
A marriage proposal.
Accepted.
Final.
Without her consent. Without her presence.
To Lewis De Salvo.
The man who wore silence like a second skin. Who moved like a shadow dressed in silk and steel. Cold. Commanding. Distant. The kind of man you didn't get close to—you obeyed, or you burned.
Her father hadn't hesitated. Hadn't even looked at her when he spoke.
> "It's a gift, Bella. Power. Protection. You'll carry on the Evan name with dignity."
Gift.
She wasn't a daughter. She was a debt being paid off.
In the corner, Alina stood, wrapped in designer elegance and that same frostbitten smile she always wore when her victory didn't require effort. Just behind her, Arina leaned against the wall, arms crossed, eyes scanning Bella like she was an object under appraisal. There was no sympathy in her gaze—only curiosity. Amusement. Perhaps even jealousy.
Bella said nothing.
Not in that room.
Not to them.
She nodded, silent and still. Perfectly composed. The well-trained porcelain daughter—obedient, refined, and breakable. Just the way they preferred her.
But Alina's eyes faltered.
Only for a second.
Something flickered in them—a crack in the certainty, a ripple of unease. She had expected submission. What she saw was control. A kind of silence that didn't surrender—it calculated.
Even Arina tilted her head slightly, brows twitching. As if sensing something in Bella she hadn't seen before. As if questioning whether the girl they'd grown used to ignoring was now suddenly… dangerous.
Inside, Bella was already a wildfire.
They just hadn't smelled the smoke yet.
She didn't care about Lewis De Salvo. Or his power. Or the legacy her father worshipped like scripture.
She cared about one thing.
The truth.
The truth buried twenty years ago when her mother, Marissa Morgan Evan, was found dead.
The police had whispered suicide. The press had mourned a tragedy. And a week later, Alina had swept into the house like it had always been hers—sliding into the role of wife, replacing Marissa's presence with perfume and lies.
But Bella remembered.
She always had.
So when her father pushed that gold-embossed folder across the desk, stamped with the De Salvo seal, Bella didn't see a proposal.
She saw access.
To the museum.
To the secrets hidden in the shadows of the De Salvo estate.
To the silence that had swallowed her mother's voice.
Lewis De Salvo might be a fortress, but Bella had studied architecture made of silence and secrets. She knew where to press to hear the cracks.
If marrying him opened doors…
If it gave her even a sliver of truth…
Then so be it.
She would wear the gown.
She would smile for the cameras.
She would let Arina preen and Alina gloat and her father pretend he'd done something noble.
Let them think she was the pawn.
Let Lewis believe he was marrying a symbol.
Because Bella Morgan Evan wasn't stepping into marriage.
She was stepping into war.
And she had every intention of winning.