Page 49 of Shattered Engagement

She shakes her head. “Speculation won’t help you now. Trust your instincts. They’ve kept you alive this long.”

Before I can press further, she reaches beneath her pillow, retrieving a small velvet pouch. “I’ve been waiting for the right moment. With everything moving faster now, I can’t risk waiting any longer.”

I accept the pouch, opening it to find a delicate gold ring with a small, perfect diamond mounted in an antique setting. Recognition hits me like a physical blow.

“My mother’s wedding ring,” I whisper, memories flooding back of a slender hand stroking my hair, this same ring catching the light.

“The only thing I managed to get of hers,” Maria confirms, tears gathering in her eyes. “I paid the man at the funeral home to take it off before they closed the casket.”

I close my fingers around the ring, the metal warming in my palm. A piece of my mother—of the woman who loved me before I became a ghost, before vengeance consumed me.

“I thought you might want to have it,” Maria continues, her voice softening. “For after.”

“After.” The word catches in my throat.

“Yes, after.” Her hand squeezes mine with surprising strength. “There will be an after, Stefano. I’ve watched you build this revenge for twenty years, becoming harder, colder, more like the man you’re trying to destroy.” Pain flashes across her face. “But then you met her. Isadora. And for the first time, I see you thinking about what comes after vengeance.”

Heat rises in my face. Even dying, Maria sees everything.

“I love her,” I admit, the first time I’ve spoken the words aloud. They hang in the air between us, terrifying in their vulnerability, liberating in their truth.

Maria smiles, a genuine smile that transforms her pain-lined face. “I know. I saw it the moment you brought her here.” She glances at the ring still clutched in my palm. “Perhaps that ring will find its way to another finger someday. A new beginning built on your mother’s love, not just her death.”

The thought steals my breath—Isadora wearing my mother’s ring, a symbol of something built rather than destroyed. A future I’ve never allowed myself to imagine in detail.

“I don’t know if that’s possible,” I confess. “What I’m about to do will upend her world, too. Her father’s alliance with Giancarlo, her family’s business interests...”

“Love survives worse,” Maria says with the certainty of someone who’s seen a lifetime of tragedy and triumph. “But only if you let it matter more than vengeance.”

I pocket the ring, the weight of it nothing compared to the weight of her words. “I don’t know if I can let it go—this revenge I’ve built my life around.”

“That’s the choice before you, my son.” Maria’s eyes begin to drift closed, fatigue claiming her. “Vengeance or love. You cannot serve both masters forever.”

I stay until she falls asleep, watching over her as she’s watched over me for thirty years. When I finally leave, night has fallen, rain still pattering against the windows like nature’s lullaby.

Back in my temporary quarters at the De Angelis estate, I pace the confines of my room like a caged predator. Sleep eludes me. The mysterious call, Maria’s warning, the accelerated timeline, the weight of my mother’s ring in my pocket—all circle my thoughts in an endless loop.

But dominating everything is Isadora.

Two doors down, she sleeps—or more likely lies awake with the same turbulent thoughts that plague me. I can almost feel her presence through the walls that separate us, a magnetic pull I’ve been fighting since that first night in the club.

I remove the ring from my pocket, studying it in the dim light. A symbol of my past, perhaps a hope for my future. For twenty years, I’ve lived for one purpose: destroying the family Giancarlo built on my mother’s blood. I’ve sacrificed everything—identity, relationships, any chance at normalcy—on the altar of vengeance.

Now, with that vengeance finally within reach, I find myself torn. The path I’ve chosen will bring Giancarlo to his knees, but the collateral damage could include Isadora’s world too. Her father. Her family legacy. Everything she’s known.

Will she still want me when the smoke clears? Or will she look at me and see only the destruction I’ve wrought?

The soft buzz of my phone interrupts my spiral of doubt. A text from Isadora: Can’t sleep. Thinking of you.

Three simple words that set my blood on fire. Before I can overthink, I respond: Same. My bed is empty without you.

I want to tell her to come, but I can’t. It’s too dangerous with Luca in the house, with security heightened, with unknown enemies aware of my true identity. But the need to see her, to touch her, to reassure myself that what exists between us is real and not just another tactical move in my vengeance plan. I fight against every fiber of my being for the caution to win.

I slip the ring back into my pocket. Two days until everything changes. Two days until I reveal myself as the son returned from the dead to reclaim his birthright and destroy his father.

Two days to decide which matters more: the vengeance I’ve lived for, or the woman I can’t live without.

As I toss and turn on the bed, I know the decision before me is impossible. Complete my revenge and risk losing Isadora, or abandon twenty years of planning to protect her from the fallout.

---