PROLOGUE

Darkness was all she knew.

For as long as she could remember, the cold stone walls of the basement were her only reality. The dim lightbulb that flickered above her head, the damp air that clung to her fragile skin, the chains that had once bound her wrists—these were the only constants in her world. She had long stopped crying for help. No one had ever come. No one ever would.

She was nothing. A shadow of a girl. A nameless existence.

The men who took her had called her many things—useless, worthless, a mistake. They never spoke her real name. They never let her remember who she was. Pain was her only companion, fear her only friend. The bruises had long faded only to be replaced by new ones, but the wounds inside... those never healed.

But fate had a cruel way of working.

One night, they never came back. Hours stretched into days, and silence swallowed the house. She didn't know why, but something was different. And then, the door creaked open. Not the monsters she had known, but strangers in uniform. Men with flashing lights, horrified eyes, and voices that spoke words she couldn't understand.

She flinched when they reached for her. They told her she was safe now. That they would take care of her. That she wasn't alone.

But she didn't believe them.

She didn't know how to believe them.

And then, they said her name.

Valentina Romano.

A name she didn't recognize. A name that belonged to a little girl who had been stolen ten years ago. A name that carried the weight of a family that had never stopped searching for her. A family she had forgotten.

A family that would move heaven and earth to remind her that she was never truly lost.

That she was their innocent principessa......