Page 50 of Power
The touches started small. At first, it was just a hand on my back. Fingers brushing my arm. A grip on my knee that lingered too long. Small things, easy to dismiss—until the night he slid a hand over my shoulder and told me I was too handsome for my own good. That was when I understood exactly what he wanted.
I told Enzo. I fucking told him. And he looked me in the eye and swore he believed me. He said his father was a bastard, that he’d help me get out. I thought, for the first time, I had someone in my corner.
Then the Juilliard audition came. And I got it. With a scholarship from an organization who helped kids like me.
I had a real shot. A fucking dream I bled for. But the morning of my admission, I woke up to a scandal. A goddamn media circus. Pictures of me, twisted, manipulated, staged—his father’s hands on me, but the story painted differently. They made me look willing. Made me look like a cheap whore who used a powerful man for favors. I was sixteen, and Enzo stood beside his father, watching me drown.
Juilliard cut me loose before I could step through the door. No school wanted me. No one would even hire me. And Enzo? He just smirked. Called it a lesson. Said if I hadn’t opened my mouth, I would’ve had everything.
I close my eyes, breathing through the storm of it. My chest feels like it’s caving in, rage and disgust twisting under my ribs. Vittoria doesn’t understand. She can’t.
Enzo didn’t just fuck with my life. He took it. Stole my goddamn future, left me with nothing but the ruins, and when I clawed my way out—when I built something from the ashes—he had the fucking nerve to try and take that too.
But he didn’t realize something.
The boy he destroyed didn’t survive. I buried him alongside every dream I once had. What crawled out of that wreckage was something else entirely. Someone who doesn’t break. Someone who learned that power isn’t given—it’s taken.
I grip the edge of my desk, knuckles white.
If she thinks I’m letting that slide, she’s out of her goddamn mind. Because I don’t just settle scores.
I make sure there’s nothing left to settle.
But this—her—it doesn’t feel the same. Enzo and his father turned me into something ruthless. Stripped me of anything soft or human, then left me with nothing but sharp fucking edges and a hunger that only power could satisfy.
And yet, when I look at her, when I think about what she’s done, that primal, sick need to keep her and to take her, own her, ruin her for anyone else is still there.
And it fucking hurts.
Because for the first time since I lost everything, I let someone in. I let myself want. And now? Now I don’t even know how to revert back to who I was when I came back here. Back to the man who felt nothing, who needed no one.
She’s changed me. And I hate her for it.
I thought Enzo’s betrayal was the worst pain I’d ever feel.
I was wrong.
Chapter 14
Vittoria
I see it clearly now.
Enzo never loved me. Not in any way that matters. Not in a way that isn’t about power and control. And now that he knows I’ve been in Dario’s bed, he’s going to kill me for it.
He could’ve saved me that night. He didn’t.
He let that man corner me—let me feel that sick, breathless terror—and probably watched from somewhere, swirling a drink in his hand. Of course he did. Because that’s exactly the kind of man Enzo is.
Sick. Twisted. Depraved. He doesn’t just crave control—he thrives on it, drinks it in like a fine liquor, savoring every second of someone realizing they’re utterly at his mercy.
He is my husband, and I love him. At least, that’s what I used to tell myself. But now, with Dario in the mix, I see it for what it really was. It was never love. Not the kind that lasts, the kind that matters. It was something else entirely—forced and manipulated into me until I stopped questioning it. And when it’s all you’ve ever known, when it’s the only version of affection you’ve been given, you don’t fight it. You hold onto it. Because the alternative is worse. The alternative is admitting you were never loved at all.
God, Dario.
His voice is still in my head, scraping against the inside of my skull and dragging up wounds I didn’t know I had.
What Enzo’s father did to him. What Enzo did. The way he looked at me after, waiting to see if I’d still try to defend the man who made his life hell. I couldn’t. Not after that. I couldbarely breathe through the weight of it or barely think past the realization of what I’d aligned myself with.
