Reborn, I Cut Ties With The Vittori Clan

Introduction Nico Vittori thought that once the blood pact was revoked, I would still wait for him the way I always had. So he came to the chapel holding Bianca Marino's hand and told me, "I only see you as family." He said Bianca's old enemies were hunting her and that she needed his protection. Bianca dropped to her knees in front of me, crying as she begged me not to send her back to the docks. In my last life, I believed him. I believed he would come back once he saw the truth, believed ten years at his side could outweigh one lie, believed there was at least a little sincerity in our engagement. But later he told me he had agreed to marry me only to secure the Moretti family's port whitelist. The heirs to the Vittori treasury I had looked after for him were already loyal to Bianca. Even my parents' imprisonment began with a forged ledger he submitted himself. Living it a second time, I finally stopped asking, "Why don't you love me?" I called in the Council registrar and had the revocation drawn up in front of everyone. Blood pact revoked. Safe house reclaimed. Convoy recalled. Communications access rescinded. If he wanted to keep calling me family, I would give him the boundaries that came with it. In ninety days I would leave New York for the Free Port of Marseille to study auditing. What he did not know was that I would be taking more than myself with me. I would also take the ledger he and Bianca most feared would come to light. Because this time, I would not wait for anyone else to clear my name. The Sicilian sea breeze swept through the old harbor, setting the white canvas rustling. The clinic bell had not yet rung, but Elena Moretti had already heard someone crash into the iron gate outside. "Let me in." Nico's voice was so hoarse it barely sounded like him. "Elena, you can't marry him." The Beacon Project guards did not move. Every guest's name glowed on the entrance screen, but Nico's old crest triggered a red denial light. Elena saw him beyond the flower arch: his once-impeccable suit was hopelessly wrinkled, his collar sat crooked, and sleepless nights had left his eyes bloodshot. Gabriel took her hand without asking whether she wanted to go to Nico. He simply left his palm open to her and waited for her to decide. In that moment, Elena remembered standing outside a door just like this ten years earlier. Only back then, the person beyond it had been the last one she still trusted. In her last life, Nico had asked to dissolve the blood pact in the chapel, saying the Russo family's old enemies had marked Bianca and she could not survive without him. A month later, Bianca died in a ferry explosion, and not even her body was recovered. After that, Nico stopped speaking, stopped eating, and locked himself in a room at an old Alpine outpost. Elena thought love could save a person. She balanced the missing entry in the Vittori port books, lent Nico the Moretti whitelist, and sat with him below the snow line for seven days and seven nights. At last, he lifted his head and thanked her. She took it as proof that the boy she had known was back. But ten years later, in a hospital, Nico brought a living Bianca to her bedside. Elena had just lost all feeling in her legs after a car crash and was still holding birthday cards from the two young heirs to the Vittori treasury whom she had raised. He told her the engagement had never been about love. He had wanted the Moretti family's two Council votes and its port whitelist. Those same children had already sworn loyalty to Bianca. "You watched the door for us for ten years." Bianca leaned down and tucked the blanket around her, smiling gently. "Now it should go back to its real owner." Nico did not deny it. Later, forged ledgers sent both sets of parents into federal custody while a sedative seeped through Elena's IV and into her blood. The last thing she saw was Nico taking the bronze beacon from her bedside. Before the bell rang, Elena surfaced from that memory. The sea wind was still blowing, and Nico was still shouting her name outside the gate. She lifted her head and gave Gabriel a small smile. "Let's go in." The next second, the world turned over. The damp scent of incense filled her nose. Elena opened her eyes and found herself in the front row of the Vittori chapel, with winter rain falling beyond the windows. Nico stood beneath the candelabrum, holding the hand of a Bianca who had not yet "died." He held Elena's gaze and spoke with deliberate precision. "Elena, our blood pact has to be revoked."The chapel was quiet enough to hear the rain running down the stained glass. Nico did not let go of Bianca's hand, as if afraid Elena might lunge over and tear her away. "People from the old Russo family are hunting Bianca," he said. "I can't hand her over." Bianca chose that moment to pull off her glove, revealing a ring of faint red scars around her wrist. She took half a step forward and sank to her knees. "Miss Moretti, I know I shouldn't be here." She looked up, her voice shaking. "But I don't want to be sent back to the docks. If you want me gone, I'll go." Nico pulled her to her feet at once, his expression darkening. "Nobody is sending you back." The words went through Elena like a needle of ice. He had said something similar in her last life too, just never to her. She had mistaken it for kindness. Only now did she understand that Nico's kindness always required someone he had chosen to save. He did not care who else had to be trampled into the mud. "There was no need to kneel," Elena said, her voice steadier than she expected. "I agree to the revocation." Nico froze. He had clearly come prepared for her tears, for pressure from her parents, even with a line about how he would still take care of her. Instead, she merely lifted a hand toward the chapel steward, Marco Bellini. "Send for the Council registrar. The blood pact, the convoy permits, the safe house access, the private communication authorizations. Put all of it in the schedule of revocation." Something finally flickered in Bianca's eyes. Nico frowned too. "Elena, there's no need to make a scene out of this. Blood pact or not, we're still family." "Family doesn't use my radio channels to protect someone else, and it doesn't assume I'll leave a door open while breaking off an engagement." She looked at him. "If we're only family, then those are the boundaries we'll keep." Evan arrived quickly. He wore silver-rimmed glasses, opened a heavy register, confirmed that both of them were of age, then asked Elena whether she was acting of her own will. "Of my own will," she said. Nico stared at her as though hearing those words from her for the first time. He started to reach for her face, but Elena turned her head aside. The movement was small, yet it left his hand suspended in midair. "You're upset today," he said, lowering his voice. "In a few days I'll take you back to the Moretti house and we can talk again." Elena watched Evan put pen to paper. "No need. When the ninety-day cooling period ends, I'll come and seal it myself." As she stood, her skirt brushed the pew. Bianca remained behind Nico, still looking shaken, but her wrist slipped into view. A small black mark there resembled the corner of a cargo-container seal. Elena did not stare. Memories from a past life could warn her, but they could not prove anything. Only records created in this lifetime could bring Bianca before a tribunal. She pushed open the chapel door. The sound of the rain rushed in. Nico called after her. "Elena, I'm not going to abandon you." She did not turn around. "Then start by not making decisions for me."The archive room in the old Moretti house always smelled of sea salt and paper. Elena sat before the shipping-route journals her mother, Sofia Moretti, had left for her, one fingertip resting on a page worn pale from handling. It was an old map of the Free Port of Marseille. Sofia had written a line in the margin: the real accounts are never kept in the noisiest place. When Elena's phone rang, her older sister, Livia Moretti, had just come out of a video conference. The gray-blue sky over Marseille harbor filled the screen behind her. "The academy still has a place held for you," Livia said. "A three-month preparatory program. Container insurance, port accounts, anti-money-laundering audits. Didn't you love reading Mom's notebooks when you were little?" Elena looked at that line, and something in her chest eased open a fraction. In her last life, she should have studied all of this. Instead, because Nico was taking over the Vittori casino, she had switched to banquet etiquette, charity publicity, and the art of standing beside him without ever putting a foot wrong. "I'll go," she said. Livia was quiet for two seconds, then softened her voice. "What about Nico?" "He has someone he needs to protect." Elena closed the notebook. "I should have a route of my own." That afternoon at the family training grounds, Nico handed Bianca a pair of anti-eavesdropping earpieces. They had been his birthday gift to Elena the year before, and they contained the Moretti drivers' emergency channel. "Press here and someone will come." Nico demonstrated patiently. Bianca nodded, her eyes still wet at the corners. "Won't this be trouble for Elena?" "She won't mind," Nico said, certain of it. Elena stood a short distance away and suddenly found the whole thing absurd. Nico had not even asked before answering on her behalf. The old Elena would probably have walked over and claimed the earpieces as hers. Now, she merely took out her phone and recorded the serial number and the time the channel was activated. After the training ended she sent the screenshot to her father. He did not press her for details. He only wrote back that the Moretti authorizations would be withdrawn as she had asked. At dinner, Sofia pushed a small wooden box across to Elena. The bronze beacon lay inside, its edges worn smooth with age. "This is yours," Sofia said. "It isn't something a fiancee should hold in trust for someone else." Elena closed her hand around the beacon. The cold metal against her skin felt like a boundary that had finally been seen. Ninety days remained before the revocation received its final seal. Elena told no one that in her last life, the port election had begun to spiral out of control exactly ninety days later. She opened the academy application and completed each field: name, emergency contact, prior qualifications. At "family affiliation," she paused, deleted Vittori, and kept only Moretti. It was not spite. For the first time, she had written down an identity that did not have to sit beneath any man's surname. This time she did not intend to wait until the storm made landfall to learn how to run.A training day for the Vittori family was never just about training. A negotiation table stood beside the shooting range, surrounded by Marco, the lawyers, and several young men preparing to enter the Council. Who stood on which side, and who received which shipping route, usually mattered more than the bullseye. Elena arrived early. She only wanted to finish the last etiquette assessment and then cross this place off her calendar for good. Nico arrived late. Bianca walked beside him with a black-and-silver pass hanging at her throat. It was Elena's personal secondary access pass, which had disappeared the year before. It opened several Moretti safe houses and could summon the emergency convoy. "Someone followed her last night," Nico said before anyone could ask. "I told her to hold on to it for now." Elena looked at the card and did not ask why he had not told her first. She already knew the answer. In Nico's mind, her resources, like her, were his to assign by default. "Good timing," she said. Nico seemed to relax. He took a compiled casino ledger from his assistant and handed her a temporary access card for the Vittori vault. "You've been buried in that dull port material lately. Take this. Once the revocation is behind us, you can still take part in the family finances." Bianca's eyes settled on the access card, then dropped again. Elena took the card and held it out to Bianca. "Since you're the one most in need of protection, you're also the one who most needs to learn the books. Take it." Bianca did not take it, but the tears came first. "You think I'm not good enough for it, don't you?" Nico's face went cold at once. "Elena, don't take it out on her." "I'm not taking anything out on anyone." Elena turned to Marco. "Deactivate every secondary access pass issued in my name. Effective immediately. No one from the Vittori family may call the Moretti convoy or use its emergency channel until the revocation is complete." The shooting range went quiet. Marco glanced at Nico, then took out his terminal anyway. "Do you have to go this far?" Nico asked, keeping his voice low. "You're the one who said we're only family." Elena looked at him. "Even family asks before borrowing something." The terminal gave a soft chime and the card status went from green to gray. Bianca's fingers twitched, and she hid her hand in her sleeve. Elena noticed the movement. The container-seal imprint on Bianca's wrist had faded a little, but an ordinary scar would not have left that shape. Nico took the vault card back, as if he finally understood that she would not accept anything he arranged for her. But he was only puzzled. He was not afraid. He did not understand that the card was not the only thing Elena had revoked. A score was called at the far end of the range, and Nico turned without thinking. Elena had already walked away without waiting for him to catch up as she once had. Those few steps felt strange to him for the first time, and they made Bianca close her fist around the now-useless pass. She was locking, one by one, every door that could have dragged her back into her last life.