Page 3 of Fire and Silk

“Because I’ve already died,” I whispered. “They buried our child inside me.”

His eyes shone wet under the cheap fluorescent light.

Still, he didn’t speak.

“I don’t care about vengeance,” I continued. “I care about survival. So, if you’re going to disappear, if you’re going to leave me in this bed with nothing—then give me something to live for.”

His voice broke. “What do you want?”

“Half.”

He flinched like I’d hit him.

“I want half of everything you will ever own. Everything you will ever build. I don’t care if it’s blood-stained or gold-plated. If I’m to be erased from your life, I will not be erased from your legacy.”

He nodded. Then something cracked inside him. And for the first time since the attack, he cried.

“I swear it,” he said. “Chiara, I swear—half of everything I ever build will belong to you.”

It wasn’t enough.

I reached for the side table. My hand closed around the steel fork resting on the plastic tray, untouched since the nurse dropped off the last meal.

I jab it into the soft meat of my palm, between thumb and forefinger, where the pain is sharpest. It sinks in, not deep—but. Blood spills instantly, vivid and hot against my wrist.

His eyes go wide. “Chiara—”

“Swear it in blood.”

He stares. Just for a breath. Then his jaw tightens. He takes the fork, rolls up his sleeve, and without hesitation, jabs it into the base of his palm. Same place.

Blood meets blood.

He reaches for me, grips my hand, the mingling streaks already pooling onto the edge of the sheet between us. We shake—firm, trembling.

No ceremony. No priest. No paper. Just skin and oath and blood.

A pact made from ruin.

I left Melbourne a month later. Packed what was left of my dignity and boarded a plane to Catania. I married the man my parents had always wanted. A banker with clean hands and dead eyes. We built something cold and safe. But I never burned that oath. Never forgot.

He shifts beside me in the pew. The air still smells faintly of beeswax and damp stone.

I glance sideways, voice low but steady. “Give me what you owe me.”

He turns to face me fully. The candlelight hits the silver in his hair. His hands—those same hands—are bare now, no gloves. Just the faint scar across his palm where I marked him.

He sighs. The sound is quiet, but it pulls the breath from the chapel.

Then, without a word, he reaches into the inner lining of his coat—a smooth, practiced motion—and withdraws a folded document bound in ribboned twine. He doesn’t hand it to me right away. He holds it in his palm, staring down at it like it’s heavier than it looks.

When he finally offers it, I hesitate. My hand closes around it slowly, my glove whispering against the parchment. I pull the ribbon free, unfold the pages with care.

My eyes skim the lines. And then I stop breathing.

His signature. His seal. Every asset under the Dantès name—transferred.

Land. Properties. Offshore holdings. The estate. The vineyards. The safehouses.