Lena Marchetti did not sleep that night. By dawn, Dante Varlli's file lay surrounded by color-coded sticky notes, three potential candidate profiles, and a creeping sense of professional dread. Finding a wife for a man like Dante was not matchmaking; it was assembling a diplomatic hostage.

"You are out of your mind," Lena hissed, trying to yank her hand back. Dante’s grip tightened, an immovable iron band.

"Am I?" Dante leaned forward, the scent of cedarwood enveloping her entirely. "You studied every file I handed you. You cataloged my vulnerabilities, my mother’s medical records, the trust fund stipulations, and every threat hanging over my head. You built three fake brides because you were too cowardly to look at the paperwork with your own name on it."

"I am a matchmaker, Mr. Varlli. Not your employee, not your social experiment, and certainly not your bride!"

"Your mother left this agency to you with one rule," Dante said, his voice dropping to a gravelly purr that sent a shiver straight down Lena's spine. "‘Match the soul, not the bank account.’ Isn't that what's framed on your office wall?"

Lena froze. That plaque was inscribed by her mother thirty years ago. Only a handful of people outside the family knew it existed.

"How do you know that?" she breathed.

"Because my father bought this building for your mother in nineteen-eighty-five," Dante said quietly. "Our families have been tied together in the dark corners of this city longer than you've been alive, Lena. Do you really think I walked into your office by coincidence on a Thursday night?"

The world seemed to tilt on its axis. Every client meeting, every dossier, every piercing look Dante had given her across the desk—it wasn't an accident. It was a siege.

"You planned this," she whispered, anger and a terrifying rush of adrenaline warring in her chest.

"I gave you sixty days to figure it out yourself," Dante corrected, sliding his hand from her wrist up her arm, his fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of her neck. "You're terrible at matchmaking, Lena. But you're brilliant at everything else."

Before she could form a coherent protest, Dante’s mouth descended on hers. The kiss was not gentle; it tasted like decades of repressed danger, midnight phone calls, and desperate, deferred inevitability. Lena’s hands gripped the lapels of his coat, not to push him away, but to steady herself as the solid ground beneath her completely dissolved.

When he finally pulled back, his breathing was as ragged as her own.

"Seventy days," Dante murmured against her lips. "My mother’s birthday party. Be there as my wife, or I'll buy this entire building, tear it down, and build a nursery on top of it."