Page 18 of Iron Roses
She has Giovanna’s mouth.
Not the softness—no, the shape. The way it rests just before she speaks. But hers is more guarded. Hardened at the edges. The echo of someone who once believed in comfort and had it stripped away.
Giovanna used to talk about her endlessly. Letters filled with Elaria’s stubbornness, her wit, the things she would do if only she were allowed back home to see her again.
I never met her.
Not until now.
But the resemblance cuts sharper than I expect.
Still, this is no reunion. This is business.
She is the last Fontanesi. A fractured name trailing the scent of power and ruin.
And her presence here—on Rivetti ground—is an invitation to war.
She doesn’t know it, but she’s already at the center.
And I? I let her in.
Because I was curious. Because Giovanna would’ve wanted it. Because no one else should hold what’s left of that name.
But mostly because I need to know what kind of woman rises from the wreckage of a house like hers.
I watch her eyes flick upward to me again. Something unsettles in them. My gaze trails briefly over her collarbone. There—just above the scarf, a faint curve of pigment. A crescent birthmark.
Giovanna’s “moon.”
She was right. It does look like a mark the world tried to erase and failed.
Lorenzo stands beside me, posture squared, gaze tracking her like a threat.
She doesn’t recognize me. But something in her—some deeper, buried instinct—registers the silence. I see it in the stiffening of her spine. The catch in her breath.
I wonder, briefly, if she knows her father died feeding us information. That for years he handed over maps, names, safehouses. Until the ledger filled too deep and the scale tipped the wrong way.
I doubt she does. But she will.
Eventually.
And when she does, I want to be the one she looks at.
Even if it burns.
Lorenzo steps forward.
“You’ll be safe here,” he tells the girl. “Come with me. We’ve prepared a room.”
She doesn’t move at first. Her eyes dart briefly to Allegra, searching for something—confirmation, assurance, an anchor.
Allegra answers with a single nod.
The girl shifts. Her lips part but no words come. She simply lowers her chin, exhales through her nose, and follows.
Each of her steps is cautious, her limbs still heavy with grief, but she walks.
Lorenzo leads her toward the west wing, keeping a respectful distance ahead. Her hands brush against the scarf tied at her throat as if to steady herself.
