Page 57 of Vows Made in Silence
That’s the worst part. I’ve never opened it.
I clutch it tighter, voice cracking. “All I know is that your father said it would bring down the wrong people. People inside your family. People close to him. And if it got into the wrong hands—”
“They’d bury you, me and our son."
I nod. Tears burn my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. Not now.
“I left that compound to get it because I couldn’t let Daniel grow up in this world without the truth. Without some kind of leverage if something happened to us.”
Luca’s jaw clenches, muscle ticking as he stares at me like he’s holding back a storm. His hand presses firmly to my knee—not gentle, but grounding. Possessive.
"You did the right thing,” he says, voice low and sharp, “but you should’ve told me, Giuliana. You don’t get to disappear on me again—not after everything.”
His touch scorches through my skin. His words wrap around the shattered places inside me, binding them tight, like stitches across a wound I’ve been bleeding from for the last ten years.
But my mind won’t stop racing.
Who betrayed us?
Who inside the Moretti family is willing to kill for this box?
I whisper, my voice shaking, “I hid it in a false wall at the gallery—someplace only I knew. I thought it was safe there, that I could keep an eye on it without drawing attention. But someone was watching me, Luca. Waiting.
The night of the break-in, while Daniel and I were asleep… someone came looking for it. They were careful, methodical—but I knew.
I felt it the moment I woke up and walked to the kitchen. Someone had been in the apartment.
At first, I thought it was you—because you had the photo when I showed up at the gallery to get the file.
But now… now I know it wasn’t random. They were watching. Waiting. And I think they realized they were too late.
Luca’s gaze sharpens to a blade. “Then we find out who. Starting with the inner circle. If this ties back to Vescari’s play, he's a dead man.
I nod again, the panic rising in my throat like bile. “It’s not just Vescari. This box… it’s connected to the death of your father. Maybe even your brother. There are names in it. I saw them once. Just enough to know if I kept reading—I’d be dead.”
Silence falls between us, thick as smoke.
Luca’s voice is steel when it breaks through. “Then it’s time we find out who wants to kill us... and who already tried.”
Because this box isn’t just about secrets.
It’s about legacy. Blood. Revenge. And now that we've opened it, nothing will ever be the same again.
The moment Giuliana said the box might hold names tied to my father’s death—and maybe even my brother’s—I felt the axis of my world shift.
And if that box holds proof someone inside our bloodline was involved in Tommaso’s death?
They’re already dead. They just don’t know it yet.
I rise slowly, pacing the edge of the room like a beast barely chained. My knuckles are white from clenching too hard, too long.
Every heartbeat is a warning drum in my ears, pounding out one word: betrayal.
She still has the box tucked against her, like it’s part of her body. I can see the way her fingers tighten around it, white-knuckled and unyielding. It’s not just protection—it’s defiance. And beneath it, I can feel my own fury threading with something sharper. Protective. Possessive. Whatever's in that box, it won’t touch her. Not while I’m breathing.. I don’t blame her. That thing could ignite a war of empires.
“You said you saw a name?” I ask quietly, too quietly.
She hesitates.
