But my identity was never revealed. It couldn't be. To announce that the daughter of the Valducci Dynasty had been taken would have painted a target on my back that no amount of bodyguards could erase.
In the end, it was the young Don of the Jade Quarter, Xavier Salvatore, who found me. He and his men had raided the compound where I was being held alongside a dozen other captives, and he had carried me out into the daylight like something precious he'd pulled from the wreckage of the world.
My mother, Donna Elena, had wanted to repay him with a fortune. Enough money to elevate the Salvatore Family from a mid-tier syndicate to a genuine power. But I had stopped her. I told her I liked this man. That I wanted to be bound to him through the old blood-oath tradition.