Beyond Their Expectations: From Street Rat To Supreme Ruler

2: Morning After Reckoning

Giulia's eyes snapped open.

White ceiling. Unfamiliar room. Soft sheets that smelled like expensive detergent.

She sat up slowly, her head pounding. Her gaze swept the space—minimalist furniture, drawn curtains, and scattered across the hardwood floor... clothes. Her dress. A man's shirt. Underwear.

Her stomach dropped.

She looked down at herself, still wrapped in the blanket. Slowly, she pulled it back.

Naked, completely naked.

Her skin was marked with bruises—love bites trailing down her neck, across her collarbone, along her thighs. Her body ached in places that made her breath catch. Particularly there, where a dull, throbbing pain confirmed her worst fear.

Giulia Santoro, eldest daughter of the Santoro family, one of the most powerful bloodlines in Italy, had been violated.

Her hands clenched the sheets, her expression cold as ice even as rage built behind her eyes.

The door opened.

Dante walked in, fully dressed, carrying a glass of water.

Giulia's hand shot out. She grabbed the glass from the nightstand beside the bed and hurled it at him with all her strength.

"You bastardo!"

The glass shattered against the doorframe, inches from his head. Dante didn't even flinch.

"You perverted piece of shit!" she screamed, her voice sharp and venomous. "You think you can rape me and just walk in here like nothing happened? I'll have you thrown in prison! I'll make sure you rot in a cell for the rest of your miserable life!"

Dante's expression remained neutral. He set the water glass down on the dresser and crossed his arms.

"Think carefully about what happened last night," he said evenly. "If it weren't for me, you'd be dead right now."

"Bullshit!" Giulia snapped. Her mind raced, trying to remember. Kidnappers. The drug. Fighting. Then... nothing. Just blank darkness and fragmented images of heat and hands and—

She shook her head violently. "You're making excuses! You're just another disgusting criminal!"

She lunged for her phone on the nightstand, her fingers wrapping around it.

"I'm calling the police right now—"

"Cazzo."

Dante moved faster than she could react. He crossed the room in two strides and pinned her wrist to the bed, sending the phone skittering across the floor.

"Get off me!" Giulia snarled, struggling beneath him. But his grip was iron, his body weight holding her in place.

"Listen to me," Dante growled, his face inches from hers. "My teacher warned me to keep a low profile. I just got to this city. I don't need legal trouble before I've even started."

"Then you shouldn't have raped me!"

"I saved your goddamn life!" His voice rose for the first time, frustration bleeding through.

"Those three men drugged you with a lethal aphrodisiac. The scarred one, about one-ninety centimeters tall, had a knife wound on his left cheek. The second one wore a gold chain and smelled like cheap cologne. The third had a tattoo of a snake on his forearm. Ring any bells?"

Giulia's struggling stopped.

Those details. He knew exactly what the men looked like. Every detail matched her fragmented memories before the drug took full effect.

"The drug would have killed you within two hours," Dante continued, his voice lower now.

"Your organs would have shut down from the strain. There was only one way to purge it from your system. So yes, we had sex. But it was either that or let you die."

Giulia's face flushed scarlet—not from anger now, but from humiliation. She turned her head away, refusing to meet his eyes.

"Let me go," she said flatly.

Dante released her and stood, running a hand through his hair. He walked to the dresser and pulled out a business card from his wallet.

"Since I took your innocence, I'll take responsibility," he said, holding it out to her. "I just arrived in this city and I have things to handle first. But if you run into any trouble, contact the man on this card. He's my deputy. He'll help you."

Giulia snatched the card from his hand, her movements sharp with irritation. She glanced down at it.

LORENZO MARCHETTI

 ARMANI ALLIED ENTERPRISES

 CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

Her eyes widened slightly before narrowing with suspicion.

SM1 Enterprises. The SM1 Enterprises—the most powerful conglomerate in the region. Lorenzo Marchetti was practically a legend, someone even her father, Vittorio Santoro, couldn't easily access.

She looked up at Dante. His clothes were plain, clearly cheap. His watch was a basic model that cost maybe fifty euros. Everything about him screamed poverty.

And he expected her to believe he personally knew Lorenzo Marchetti?

"Are you serious right now?" Giulia's lip curled with contempt. She stood, wrapping the sheet around herself. "You think I'm stupid enough to fall for this?"

"Excuse me?"

"You're a nobody. A poor, nobody ragazzo who probably can't even afford rent in this city." She walked past him and tossed the business card into the trash bin by the desk. "Don't insult my intelligence by pretending you have connections you clearly don't have."

Dante stared at the trash bin, then at her, his expression somewhere between disbelief and irritation.

"I'm offering you—"

"Nothing," Giulia cut him off coldly. "You're offering me nothing but lies and false promises. Men like you are all the same—all talk, no substance."

She grabbed her dress from the floor and headed toward the bathroom.

"Thanks for the heroic rescue," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I'll be leaving now."

Dante stood frozen in place, unable to process what had just happened. He'd offered her protection. Access to resources most people would kill for. And she'd thrown it in the trash.

Who the hell rejects Lorenzo Marchetti's contact information?

He was still trying to wrap his head around it when the bathroom door flew open.

Giulia stormed back out, fully dressed now, her hair pulled back, her cold mask firmly in place. She walked straight up to him and jabbed a finger into his chest.

"Listen very carefully, you arrogant prick," she hissed, her eyes like chips of ice. "If you breathe a single word about what happened between us—to anyone, ever—I will destroy you. I will use every resource my family has to make your life a living hell. Do you understand me?"

Dante's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"You'll... destroy me?" he repeated slowly, as if testing the words.

"Don't test me." Her voice was flat, final. "One word. That's all it will take. And you'll regret the day you were born."