The second curse Child

> “…Only love’s true death can lift it.

Willingly given. Never stolen.”

Willingly. That word mocked him.

The boy—Giovanni—was beautiful, like his mother. Quiet, of course, but charming in his way. Women adored him.

And every time one looked at him like he was her whole world, Salvatore saw possibility.

Hope.

Freedom.

But none of them ever died for him.

So Salvatore took matters into his own hands.

The first was a girl named Nina. Sweet. Seventeen. Left home one morning and never came back.

The police found her body floating in the East River.

The second was Angela. She almost said “I love you” in front of the family. Her death was made to look like an accident.

A gas leak. A fire. The neighbors never suspected a thing.

And the third… the third screamed Giovanni’s name as she died.

> That’s when Salvatore realized the curse couldn’t be tricked.

Love had to be given—not taken. But by then, he was too far gone.

He’d tasted the idea of freedom. And the curse—like a chained demon—kept pulling him deeper into madness.

Giovanni never knew why the women he loved always vanished.

But in the silence of his heart,

he suspected.

Still, he obeyed.

He smiled.

He kissed.

He mourned.

Because in this family, obedience was thicker than blood—and silence, far louder than truth.

Giovanni De Luca learned to speak without words.

By five, he had mastered the language of glances—how to warn a man across a room that death was coming.

By ten, he could command soldiers with a nod, scold servants with a raised brow, and make girls fall in love with a smile.

By fifteen, he had buried two of them.

But inside, Giovanni screamed.

He screamed when he saw their faces on missing posters.

He screamed when their perfume lingered in his room for weeks after their funerals.

He screamed when his father looked at him with cold hope and whispered, “We’re getting close.”

But his mouth would never let him.

Salvatore had given him everything—a name, a kingdom, power beyond imagination.

And stole everything in return.

Giovanni tried to rebel once.

Just once.

He ran away at nineteen. Fled to Milan with a girl named Emilia who could read his thoughts through his eyes.

They were happy—for a season.

He bought her a ring.

She bought them a dog.

They almost made it.

Until Salvatore sent him a picture.

Not of Emilia.

Of her mother. Bound. Beaten. Bleeding.

The message was clear: Come home, or she dies.

He came back. Alone.

Emilia vanished the next week. Her body was never found.

Giovanni never ran again.

He learned to survive the only way he could: by turning off the parts of him that felt.

He stopped getting close to women. He let his father believe he was numb to love.

He wore suits of stone.

He built walls inside his silence.

He marry Isabella Romano-De Luca. Giovanni chose her not for politics or alliances, but because she never flinched in a room full of killers.

But the curse never stopped whispering. And he knew—deep in the marrow of his bones—that it would pass to the next in line.

And when that child came, Giovanni swore one thing:

> “I will not become my father.”

Even if he couldn’t say it out loud.

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