All Chapters of The Ricci Heir: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The O’Connell estate was never quiet, though silence was all I seemed to carry. Laughter echoed down the marble halls, sharp and bright, but it never reached me. It belonged to Isolde. It always did.She was the jewel of the family, the daughter my father paraded before the world. Every smile rehearsed, every gesture polished until it gleamed. My brothers adored her, my stepmother worshipped her, and my father… my father looked at her without flinching.He could not look at me the same way.When his eyes did find me, they slipped away almost instantly, as though the sight of me burned. I reminded him too much of her — my mother. The woman he had loved once, the woman he had lost. My face carried her shadow, and for that, I was a wound he refused to touch.Isolde knew it. She wielded it like a blade. Her words were never shouted, never crude. They were soft, sweetly spoken, but sharpened to cut.“You should be grateful,” she would say, brushing past me in silks I would never wear. “Fat

The house was alive with noise, the kind that rattled through the walls and made silence impossible. Servants rushed down the hallways with trays and linens, voices rose and fell in sharp commands, and somewhere downstairs Isolde’s laughter carried like a bell. It was her night, after all. The engagement party, the spectacle, the performance.I sat upstairs in my room, the only place that still belonged to me. My desk was cluttered with pages, ink stains marking the hours I’d poured into words no one here would ever read. To them, I was invisible. To the world beyond these walls, I was C.M. O’Malley. My mother’s name, her legacy hidden in mine. No one knew, and I preferred it that way. The scratching of my pen was steady, a rhythm that drowned out the chaos below. I was building a world where silence meant strength, where shadows carried weight. A world where I mattered. The knock startled me. My father never knocked. He barely spoke to me unless necessity forced him.“Come in,” I sai

The air in my father’s office was thick, heavy with the weight of unspoken fury. Matteo’s words still echoed his declaration that I, not Isolde, would be his bride. The silence that followed had been deafening, broken only by Isolde’s sobs as she collapsed into our stepmother’s arms.“Look at her,” my stepmother hissed, stroking Isolde’s hair as if she were the only victim in the room. “You’ve humiliated her, Ciara. You’ve brought shame to this family.” Her words cut, but I refused to flinch.My brothers surged forward, voices overlapping, each one desperate to convince Matteo and the Riccis that I was unworthy. “She’s weak,” one spat. “She doesn’t belong in your world,” another added. Their accusations piled high, each one meant to bury me beneath their scorn.Behind his desk, my father stood rigid, his hands gripping the polished wood as though it might steady him. His voice trembled with authority he no longer possessed. “Matteo, this is a mistake. Isolde agreed to the marriage. Yo

The hum of laughter and clinking glasses wrapped around me like a familiar melody. I sat with Kat, GreenLee — Matteo’s mama — and Jace, while Nonno and Nonna watched Koda bounce in his chair, his little legs too short to reach the floor. He was nearly four, full of questions and mischief, his eyes wide as he leaned toward me.“Ciara,” he asked, his voice bubbling with curiosity, “can you say magic words? Like biz Nono and Nona?”Kat chuckled, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “When he first met them, they spoke Italian to him. He thought it was magic.”I smiled, leaning closer to Koda. “Ah, so you like magic words, do you?” Switching into the soft lilt of Irish, I teased gently, “An bhfuil fonn ort milseog, a stórín?” — Would you like some dessert, little treasure?His eyes lit up, and I pointed toward the dessert table, gleaming with cakes and pastries. “Come on then,” I said, rising and taking his hand. “Let’s see what sweet magic we can find.”We wove through the crowd, Koda

The music swirled around me, but my thoughts were far from the laughter and chatter at the tables. Mama GreenLee’s words echoed in my chest, stirring memories I had buried deep. Maeve. My mother. Strong, kind, radiant — and gone far too soon.I thought of the whispers I’d overheard as a child, the fragments of conversations that never quite added up. Sometimes I wondered if there was more to her death than sickness, if something darker had stolen her from me. But this was not the time. Not here, surrounded by family and celebration. Perhaps in Italy, away from the O’Connell walls, I could finally ask the questions that haunted me.A hand touched mine, pulling me from the spiral. Matteo. His eyes were steady, his smile soft but insistent. “Dance with me,” he said, and before I could protest, he was leading me to the floor.The music wrapped around us, his arm firm at my waist, his presence grounding me. I let myself breathe, let myself move with him, even as my mind still tugged at sha