Chapter 2 - THE DEBT REPAIDI could barely catch my breath, but I placed my trembling hand in his.
Giovanni pulled me effortlessly onto the center of the dance floor as a classical string quartet resumed playing. Hundreds of high-society eyes burned into my back. Celeste stood frozen by the buffet table, staring as if I had stolen something that legally belonged to her birthright.
Then, Giovanni leaned close to my ear and whispered words that completely rewrote my entire universe.
"Your father once saved my life, Willow," he murmured smoothly. "Tonight, I’m here to collect the honor of repaying that debt."
My father, Arthur Vale, had been dead for two years. Ever since his sudden passing, Patricia had relentlessly convinced me that he had left me nothing, that he died broke, and that I was entirely dependent on their charity. Yet Giovanni spoke my father’s name with more raw respect than anyone in my own house had shown me in a decade.
After the dance ended, Patricia rushed over, her face mottled with panic, trying to explain me away to the city’s most dangerous criminal. She told Giovanni that I was shy, fragile, and easily confused. She even tried to spin his dance with me as a charitable act of holiday kindness.
Giovanni looked directly past her, his gaze chillingly flat. "Not kind," he replied coldly. "Intentional."
He grabbed my arm, guided me away from the stunned crowd, and pulled me into a private VIP lounge, demanding to know what had happened to me since my father’s death.
I told him the brutal truth: Patricia had stripped me of my bedroom, locked away my mother’s old jewelry, frozen my college accounts, and forced me to drop out of graduate school while telling everyone I was unstable.
Giovanni listened without interrupting. Then, reaching inside his tailored charcoal jacket, he pulled out a worn, cream-colored envelope.
May you like
My full name was written across the front in my father’s distinct, heavy handwriting.
Giovanni admitted he had carried that letter in his pocket for two years. Whenever he asked about me, Patricia had repeatedly lied, telling him I was traveling, abroad, or too mentally fragile to receive visitors. In reality, most of those months I had been locked away upstairs in the servant’s wing of the very house I inherited.
