VERONICA'S POV :
People like to believe they are born with choices.
That if they try hard enough, love deeply enough, or fight bravely enough, they can change the direction of their lives.
But some people are born already owned—by blood, by name, by power that existed long before their first breath.
I was one of them.
I just didn't know it yet.
Growing up a Romano meant living inside a world wrapped in gold and safety.
High gates, wide gardens, warm laughter echoing through marble halls.
My parents loved me loudly, fiercely, as if I were something precious that could shatter if they weren't careful enough.
"Smile, Veronica," my mother would say.
"A Romano woman always carries grace."
And I did. I smiled. I learned how to walk softly through rooms filled with powerful men.
I learned when to speak and when silence was safer.
I learned how to be kind without being foolish, gentle without being weak.
Everyone told me I was lucky.
I believed them.
Until the night everything changed.
It happened during dinner—quiet, elegant, ordinary.
Crystal glasses clinked against porcelain plates.
The chandelier above us glowed softly, casting warm light across the table.
My father cleared his throat once. My mother's fingers tightened around her napkin.
They didn't look at me.
That was the first warning.
"Veronica," my father said carefully, as if the weight of my name was heavier than usual. "There is something we need to discuss."
I smiled, because that's what I had been taught to do when adults spoke in serious voices. "Of course, Papa."
My mother finally met my eyes. There was fear there. Guilt. Love tangled with something darker.
"You are to be married," she said.
The words didn't make sense at first. Married? It sounded distant. Someday. Far away. Not now.
"I—" My voice faltered, then steadied. "To whom?"
My father exhaled slowly.
"A Deluca."
The air left my lungs.
Everyone knew the Delucas.
You didn't grow up in our world without knowing their name. They were power without warmth, authority without mercy.
Where the Romanos were respected, the Delucas were feared.
I nodded before I even realized I was doing it.
Because saying no was never part of the lesson.
"If this is for the family," I said softly, "then I understand."
That night, I cried alone in my room, hands pressed against my mouth so no one would hear.
I wondered what kind of man I was being handed to.
I wondered if he would be cruel. I wondered if I would disappear inside a life I didn't choose.
What I didn't know was that he had never chosen this either.
AUTHORS / VERONICA'S POV :
Alexander Jace Deluca was raised to command, not to question.
The Deluca estate was silent even when it was full. Men moved with purpose. Voices were low.
Fear lived in the walls, in the polished floors, in the way everyone stood straighter when his father entered the room.
Alexander learned early that hesitation was dangerous.
By the time he was a teenager, he knew how to fight, how to shoot, how to make men twice his size look away first.
His father taught him that love weakened men.
That attachments were chains enemies could pull.
So when his father told him he was to be married, Alexander didn't ask why.
He already knew.
"A Romano," his father said. "She will be your wife."
Marriage meant exposure. It meant responsibility. It meant having something to lose.
Alexander's jaw tightened. "I don't need a wife."
His father's gaze was cold. "You need an alliance."
And that was the end of it.
Alexander accepted the order like he accepted everything else—with silence and control.
But inside, something sharp twisted in his chest. A stranger would live in his house. Sleep in his bed. Wear his name.
A weakness wrapped in silk.
He told himself it wouldn't matter. That she would be nothing more than a role to fulfill. That he would not soften.
He was wrong.
The first time our names were spoken together, it felt unreal.
Veronica Laure Romano.
Alexander Jace Deluca.
Two people forced into a future written by others.
I imagined a monster.
He imagined a liability.
Neither of us imagined the truth.
That this marriage would tear us apart before it bound us together.
That my light would challenge everything he believed.
That his darkness would test everything I was.
And that once our worlds collided, there would be no escaping the consequences.
Because some stories don't begin with love...
They begin with a contract.
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