Smoke still clawed at the sky long after the fire was out.

The Bellanti estate was nothing but scorched marble and broken glass, the symbol of a dynasty reduced to a blackened shell.

They pulled Vera from the wreckage at dawn. Her palms were blood-raw, her dress in tatters, lungs full of soot. She kept asking one question through cracked lips:

“Where’s Nicolas?”

No one answered.

The medics said she was lucky to be alive. Vera called it punishment. Every breath burned like betrayal, ...