Chapter 1: Rules and Ruin

The faculty meeting dragged on like every other Tuesday, rain hammering the gothic windows until the glass rattled in its leaded frames.

I sat three rows back, twisting the tiny gold cross at my throat until the chain bit into my skin. Dean Lorenzo Ashworth laid out his new rules from the podium. Morality clauses. Stricter tenure reviews. No tolerance for what he called disruptive influences.

My pulse kicked harder every time those ice-blue eyes swept the room.

He stood like he owned the stones under our feet, which he did. Dark hair slicked back, shoulders set in that perfect line. Thirty-two and already carved from the same legacy marble as the statues outside.

"Any questions?" His voice stayed low, clipped, demanding the whole hall shut up.

I stood before my brain caught up.

"Yeah. One." My Brooklyn accent sliced through the mahogany quiet. Heads swiveled. Elena's eyes went wide behind her glasses two seats over. "You really think morality clauses will fix what's broken? Or is this just legacy families purging anyone who didn't summer in the Hamptons?"

The silence that followed let me hear every raindrop shift outside.

Lorenzo's gaze locked on mine. Not angry. Calculating. Like he'd been waiting for exactly this.

"Professor Castellano." He tasted my name like it might be flawed. "Your concern is noted. The board has reviewed the numbers. Standards must be restored."

I laughed once, sharp. "Standards. Right. Because firing Dr. Ramirez for his tweets had nothing to do with his family's empty pockets."

Murmurs rippled. Good. Let them feel it.

He didn't raise his voice. He stepped around the podium, hands sliding into his pockets, slow strides eating the distance. "This isn't a debate. My office. Ten minutes. Anyone with actual input can schedule through my assistant."

The word constructive landed like a backhand.

I stayed planted as the meeting broke into shuffling feet and yanked raincoats. Elena caught my wrist on her way past.

"Babe, what the hell," she hissed. "You're going to get us blacklisted."

"Someone has to say it." My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought the whole room heard.

Ten minutes later I stood outside his door, fist raised, when it swung open. He stepped aside without a word.

His office smelled of old books, aged scotch, and him. I hated that I catalogued it instantly.

"Sit." He moved behind the oak desk and straightened a paperweight that didn't need it.

I stayed on my feet. "I'd rather not. This won't take long."

His eyes narrowed. Those ice-blue depths drilled straight through every defense I owned. "Your performance today undermines what this institution needs."

"Needs?" I planted my palms on the desk and leaned in, close enough to see the faint scar along his jaw. "Or wants? Your family wants to keep the strings while the rest of us smile and pretend nothing's rotting."

His fingers moved to the signet ring, tracing the crest once, fast. Then again.

He rose, unfolding to his full height. The desk felt suddenly useless. "You have no idea what it costs to keep this place standing, Castellano."

His voice dropped lower. That timbre slid under my skin and settled low in my belly. Heat crawled up my neck.

"Enlighten me." I didn't retreat. "Or is the great Lorenzo Ashworth scared a Brooklyn nobody might actually get it?"

His hand braced on the desk beside mine. Not touching. Close enough that his heat bled into my knuckles. The air between us thickened until I tasted it.

"Careful." The word brushed my cheek, warm. "There are lines even you shouldn't cross."

My thighs clenched without permission. I wanted to slap the perfect face inches from mine. I wanted to close the last inch and see what broke first. His control or mine.

"Or what?" My voice came out rougher than I meant. "You'll add me to the purge list?"

He leaned in a fraction more. I caught the woody edge of his cologne, the faint scotch on his breath. His eyes dropped to my mouth, then snapped back up like he'd been burned.

Then he straightened and walked to the window. Shoulders rigid, tie still knotted tight at his throat.

"Your contract comes up next year." He stared out at the rain-lashed quad. "It would be a shame to lose such a passionate historian."

The threat should have made me furious. Instead my skin prickled with something darker, hotter.

I turned to leave before I did something career-ending. That's when I saw it on the corner bookshelf, half-hidden behind leather ledgers. An old photograph in a silver frame.

The woman in it looked exactly like my mother. Same auburn hair. Same tilt to the chin. Laughing beside a much younger version of Lorenzo's father in front of the academy gate.

I snatched it up.

"What the hell is this?"

Lorenzo spun. Color drained from his face. "Put that down."

I couldn't. My mother's face stared back from a life she never mentioned.

"This is my mother." My voice cracked on the last word. "Why do you have a picture of my mother with your father?"

He crossed the room in three strides and pried the frame from my fingers. His hand covered mine on the silver edge. The contact burned up my arm and straight into my chest.

For one suspended second we stood locked together, breathing the same charged air, rain pounding the glass like it wanted in.

"It's not what you think." His precision had fractured. He sounded almost afraid.

I jerked away, back hitting the door. "Then what is it, Dean? Because it looks like you and I might share more than hatred."

His jaw tightened until the muscle jumped. Those blue eyes weren't cold anymore. They were stormy, fixed on me like I was the only thing left in the room.

I twisted the knob behind my back and fled into the corridor before my legs gave out.

His voice followed me, low and rough. "This conversation isn't over, Castellano. Not by a long shot."

I didn't look back. But I felt his stare burning between my shoulder blades the entire way.

What the hell had my mother been hiding?

---

I finally let myself breathe once the door slammed behind her.

My hands weren't steady as I set the photograph back on the shelf. Mother's knowing half-smile in the background. Father's arm wrapped too familiar around that woman's waist. Castellano.

I traced the Ashworth crest on my signet ring until the metal dug into my skin. Lies stacked on lies. The family specialty.

The way Nadia's emerald eyes had widened when I crowded her at the desk kept replaying. The tiny hitch in her breath. The way her thighs had pressed together.

Dangerous. Reckless.

Victor's warning from last night echoed anyway. My uncle's polished voice over expensive wine: handle the Castellano girl before she handles us.

I poured two fingers of scotch even though it was barely past four. The burn didn't touch the memory of her scent, rain and defiance and cheap vanilla shampoo.

She couldn't know yet. The documents locked in the safe downstairs proved her mother had been more than Father's mistress. The blood tests. The payoffs. The clause in the family trust that would unravel everything if an illegitimate heir ever surfaced.

I drained the glass in one go.

Nadia Castellano wasn't just a problem anymore.

She was the match that could burn my entire world down.

And some fractured part of me wanted to watch the flames.