Six Times A Fool, This Time, I’m Gone Chapter 07

Six Times A Fool, This Time, I’m Gone Chapter 07

The day the project ended, endless polar sunlight flooded the entire station.

At the team briefing, Professor Sterling officially announced that the first phase of the Iceland Polar Observation Project had been completed successfully. All data collection was finished. Every sample had been sealed and archived. In three days, the team would leave Iceland and return home for the analysis phase.

That night, the station threw a small celebration party.

Hannes somehow got his hands on several bottles of Icelandic Brennivin.

Anna baked a cake and clumsily piped “PROJECT COMPLETE” across the top in white frosting. Erik brought out the smoked salmon he’d been hoarding for six months and sliced it thin beside rye bread and sour cream.

We crowded around the long dining table, laughter and clinking glasses filling the wooden cabin.

Near the end of the party, Hannes’s phone rang.

“Seraphina,” he said in accented English after hanging up, “someone’s here to see you.”

I froze. “Who? Out here?”

Hannes didn’t answer.

He just stepped aside and cleared the path to the door.

I set down my glass, grabbed my down jacket from the wall hook, and pushed open the station’s front door.

A black SUV sat parked on the gravel road outside.

The passenger door opened.

The first man to step out wore a dark charcoal suit. He was tall—ridiculously tall—and despite the freezing wind, he wasn’t wearing a coat. Just a fitted black turtleneck beneath the suit jacket.

He stood still for a moment before slowly lifting his head to look at me.

His features were sharp and deeply cut.

But the one thing impossible to look away from… was his eyes.

Gray-green.

He walked toward me.

“Seraphina Valenti.”

My fist tightened instinctively inside my pocket.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He tilted his head slightly. There was nothing flirtatious about the gesture. Only effortless elegance.

“Kael Moretti.”

I didn’t show surprise.

Or maybe I just wasn’t sure whether I’d successfully hidden the instinctive warning that crawled up my spine the second I heard that name.

I’d heard my parents mention him during our video calls.

The new owner of the underground ring.

The man who’d turned the Bellandi family into background noise overnight.

The reason Luca no longer even dared go near the hospital district.

I’d thought there was an entire ocean between me and that name.

Apparently, the Atlantic was smaller than I imagined.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“The next phase of this project,” he said calmly, “will be fully funded by my organization. Professor Sterling already signed the letter of intent.”

My heart slammed hard against my ribs.

“You don’t actually care about funding the project,” I said.

Kael smiled faintly.

Then he looked back at me.

“What I want,” he said, “is the data in your hands.”

His voice stayed calm.

“Miss Valenti, the deep ice core samples and geothermal activity maps you collected over the past few months are the most valuable research materials recovered anywhere in the Arctic Circle in the last decade. Their value has nothing to do with academic journals.”

His eyes darkened slightly.

“To the people who need to know what’s buried beneath that frozen ground, your data is worth more than diamonds by weight.”

“So you came here to buy my research,” I said.

“No,” Kael corrected smoothly.

“I came to buy you.”

The air froze solid.

“I know why you left that city,” he continued. “I know Luca Marino. I know Celeste Ashford. I know exactly what you sacrificed for them. And I know you came here because you thought you’d escaped that world for good.”

He took one slow step closer.

“But you never really escaped it, Seraphina. You think underground fights, debts, dirty deals—none of that has anything to do with you?”

His gaze locked onto mine.

“Your ex-boyfriend owed the Bellandi family money. The Bellandi family owed me money. One debt connected to another until eventually… it landed on you.”

He reached into his pocket and handed me a document.

A marriage contract.

I would become his wife in name.

In exchange, he would fully fund my research project, guarantee my placement at a national research institute after returning home, erase all of Luca Marino’s debts, and ensure Luca’s safety permanently.

“You want me to pay Luca’s debt?” I asked through clenched teeth.

Kael nodded once.

“This is how I solve problems. A tangled mess of debt isn’t fixed by collecting piece by piece. You gather every thread into one place… and settle it all at once.”

His eyes stayed on me.

“And you, Seraphina, are that place.”

“What if I say no?”

Kael was silent for two seconds.

“You won’t,” he said quietly. “Because afterward, you’ll finally be free.”

Then his voice dropped lower.

“And Seraphina… men in the Moretti family aren’t like Luca Marino. In my family, we only choose one person in our lifetime.”

The wind picked up again, tossing his dark hair across his forehead.

“I’ll protect you,” he said. “And I’ll respect your work.”

Then he held out his hand.

I looked up one last time at the sky I once believed would belong to me forever.

Free.

Then I placed my hand in Kael Moretti’s palm.

His hand was warmer than I expected.

“You won’t regret this,” he said.

I picked up the pen, flipped to the last page of the contract, and signed my name at the bottom.

Seraphina Valenti.

I had no idea what waited for me in the future.