Sold Back To My Mafia Husband Chapter 05
The Resurrection of a Rossi
The first time Julian Rossi touched me, he did not grab.
He asked.
“Can I?” he said, kneeling in the rain beside me.
I could barely move.
My head throbbed from hitting the pavement. My cheek was still bleeding from Bianca’s ring. My dress clung to my skin.
The men who had attacked me were on their knees now, guns aimed at the backs of their heads.
The knife that had almost opened my throat lay in the gutter.
Julian’s hand hovered near my neck.
I did not know him.
I did not trust men with soft hands or gentle voices.
I had learned that the worst ones often sounded calm before they hurt you.
But his eyes were different.
I gave one small nod.
His fingers brushed behind my ear, then lower, near the back of my neck. He found the mark hidden under the hair stuck to my skin.
The butterfly-shaped birthmark.
The one I had since birth.
His hand started shaking.
One of his men stepped closer. “Don Julian?”
Julian did not look away from me.
“It’s her,” he said. “It’s really her.”
My throat closed.
“What are you talking about?”
He pulled off his coat and wrapped it around my shoulders. The coat was warm. Heavy. Clean.
I almost broke from that alone.
“My family has searched for you for twenty years,” he said. “You were taken as a child. Sold through fake papers. Raised under another name. We thought you were dead.”
Dead.
Everyone always thought I was dead.
I almost laughed, but no sound came out.
“I’m Elena Moretti,” I whispered.
His jaw tightened.
“No,” he said. “You were forced to be Elena Moretti. Before that, you were Elena Rossi.”
Rossi.
The men around us heard the name and went still.
I knew that name.
Everyone in the underworld knew that name.
The Rossi family controlled the West Coast through ports, casinos, paid judges, paid senators, and men with guns.
Men like Lorenzo Valli did not speak their name unless they had protection.
My hands went numb inside Julian’s coat.
“No,” I said. “I’m nobody.”
Julian leaned closer. His voice dropped.
“You are Rossi blood. Don Rossi’s lost daughter. The girl my family never stopped looking for.”
My vision blurred.
A family.
I had a family.
Not cages. Not men selling me. Not a husband who called me ruined goods.
A family that had been searching.
One of the killers spat blood onto the pavement. “She’s Valli property.”
Julian stood.
He did not raise his voice.
“Say that again.”
The man went pale.
Julian took a gun from one of his guards, walked over, and pressed it under the man’s chin.
“Who sent you?”
The man’s eyes darted toward me. “Valli gave the order.”
“And?”
Silence.
Julian cocked the gun.
“And Bianca Moretti paid extra,” the man rushed out. “She wanted the body gone. She said no one could know the whore looked like her.”
My stomach turned.
Bianca.
Not just Lorenzo.
Her too.
The woman wearing my face had wanted my real face erased for good.
Julian fired once.
The man dropped.
I flinched.
Julian turned back to me. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
His eyes darkened.
For a moment, he looked ready to start a war in the middle of that alley.
He came back to me and held out his hand.
“You don’t have to come with me,” he said. “But if you do, I swear on the Rossi name, no one will ever own you again.”
Behind him, The Velvet Underground glowed at the end of the alley.
Dante was still inside.
Still alive.
Still powerful.
Still believing I was trash someone had dragged out of a basement.
I looked at the blood on my hands.
For ten years, I waited to be saved by the man who left me behind.
Now a stranger offered me a name strong enough to destroy Dante.
I took Julian’s hand.
He lifted me into his arms, careful with every bruise, and carried me toward the waiting SUV.
As the door opened, he bent his head near mine.
“Rest now, Principessa,” he said. “Tomorrow, we start making them pay.”
I looked past his shoulder at the club one last time.
I looked back at the club one last time.
I did not know if Dante saw me leave, but I knew the next time he saw me, I would not be crawling.
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