The Vassallos were a name that turned heads — old Italian money polished by British prestige. Their father, Matteo Vassallo, had built an empire of luxury hotels and art investments, but it was his late wife, Clara, who had given the family its heart. Fourteen years ago, a fire tore through their villa on the Amalfi coast. Anastasia was seven, half-asleep when the smoke filled her room. She remembered the heat, the orange glow, and her mother’s voice shouting her name. Clara had carried her out through the flames — and never came back. The fire became legend in their world, but to Anastasia, it never ended. It still visited her at night — the smell of burning wood, the sound of her mother’s voice fading into nothing. Now twenty-one, Anastasia Vassallo moved through London’s social world with the same poise her mother once had. Chestnut hair, olive skin, and cool green eyes — she was elegance personified, though most people mistook her quiet for calm. Her twin brother, Alexander, was her opposite: charming, confident, the heir everyone adored. He carried their father’s ambition easily, never showing cracks. Anastasia carried the ones he didn’t see. And then there was Dominic Romano — Alexander’s best friend, the boy who’d grown into something untouchable. Half-Italian, half-English, with dark hair and sharp green eyes, Dominic belonged to their world but never seemed ruled by it. His father, Giancarlo, was Matteo’s business partner, tying their families together in both legacy and expectation. Dominic had always been around — dinners, summers abroad, quiet moments that lingered too long. To everyone else, he was practically family. To Anastasia, he was the one person she was never supposed to want. Every summer brought him back — and with him came something unspoken. A tension that flickered like the memory of fire: dangerous, familiar, and impossible to ignore.