"A dethroned princess. A reluctant heir. A marriage neither had chosen and a love neither could escape."
He was all sharp edges and shadows. She was all secrets wrapped in silk. And somehow, they fit.
Alessandro De Rossi was never meant to feel. Born into a legacy of blood and bound by duty, he learned to rule with precision, not passion. Yet when he's married off to Riva Singh Deora, a dethroned princess with eyes like stormlight and a spine of steel, he finds himself unraveling against his wish.
Riva grew up watching thrones crumble and loyalties break. Her life has always been about strategy, survival, sacrifice. Marrying Alessandro was just another move in a long, quiet game of vengeance but she didn't expect the boy beneath the crown, the one who listens more than he speaks, who touches her like she's something sacred.
In a house full of secrets and a world ruled by power, love wasn't supposed to bloom. Not between enemies, not behind closed doors and not when the past is still waiting to strike.
But sometimes, the softest things leave the deepest scars.
And sometimes, the wrong person becomes the only thing that feels right.
Where power seduces and secrets shatter kingdoms.
He was born in the underworld, she in the echoes of a fallen crown.
Alessandro De Rossi was a child of chaos, raised in marble halls that reeked of blood and smoke. The second son to a king without a country, a don with dominion stretching from Sicily to South America, Alessandro was never coddled by fate. Where other boys played with wooden swords, he trained with steel. Where others learned lullabies, he memorized the anatomy of a kill.
But buried beneath the violence that shaped him was a longing so quietly stitched into his soul, even he hadn't noticed it growing was an ache for something untouched. A life where he wasn't merely an heir to a kingdom of ash and ruin. He didn't want the throne forged in fear. He wanted air. Freedom. The kind of silence that didn't come after a gunshot.
Yet escape from a dynasty like De Rossi's was a fantasy wrapped in barbed wire.
And then came Riva.
Riva Singh Deora was a symphony written in silk and spine. An Indian princess, but not the kind carved into fairy tales. She was not fragile, not gilded. She was a woman made of marble and moonlight, elegant in her rebellion, timeless in her beauty. Born into the regal remnants of a royal lineage that once ruled like gods and now survived on influence and history, she wore her crown like a burden rather than a birthright.
She smiled for the cameras. She delivered eloquent speeches at diplomatic galas. She chaired charities and cut ribbons for schools she helped fund but in the mirror, she was always searching for freedom and vengeance. The chains that bound her weren't made of gold or pearls. They were expectations, heavy with centuries of control. She had spent her life bowing to duty, to appearances, to a family legacy rooted in quiet obedience. Until she decided she would no longer bleed for a history that refused to evolve.
They met at a party neither really wanted to attend. He stood in the shadows, suit impeccable, eyes like storms barely leashed. She moved like dusk, graceful and unreadable, her smile non-existent but the mere glimpse intoxicating. Their worlds should have repelled each other like oil and water.
Alas, fate is always a little drunk on irony and other plans.
What began as a spark between two exiles soon became a blaze neither could extinguish.
He was a danger disguised as devotion.
She was a secret draped in silk.
He saw a woman in need of saving and warmth he'd secretly and hesitantly yearned for. She saw a weapon she could wield. Somewhere between the false smiles and the late-night confessions, between bedroom whispers and unfurling emotions, something real grew.
Something terrifying.
Love.
Unfortunately, love, in their world, was never gentle. It was not poetry but power.
She married him not with dreams of forever, but with ghosts to avenge while he, too young and too consumed to see the fractures in her fairy tale, gave her everything. His name. His world. His heart, bleeding and bare.
And then she was gone.
No letters. No footprints. No trace.
Just a husband left with a bed still smelling of his beloved and betrayal.
Now, Alessandro De Rossi searches not as a man mourning a love lost but as a storm and force, obsessed and unyielding.
Although he doesn't know the why or the how, though he hasn't yet uncovered the vengeance burning beneath her skin, he knows one thing for sure that he will find her.
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