Who Is The Main Character In The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis?

(Alternate Title: The Glorious LifeMain Characters: Philip Clarke, Wynn Johnston) “Oh no! If I don’t work harder, I’d have to return to the family house and inherit that monstrous family fortune.” As the heir to an elite wealthy family, Philip Clarke was troubled by this…

Every Christmas Eve in Port Saint Giovanni, the Camerlano family hosts the Claiming Rite at Saint Giovanni Manor. Twelve girls stand in a line. Whoever receives the white-gold signet pin becomes the heir’s publicly acknowledged bride candidate. I am Grace Sorrento, the bastard daughter of the Sorrento family. If I do not receive that signet tonight, by sunrise I will be put on a plane to Chicago and married off to a Rizzo, a man rumored to have killed two former fiancées. Adrian Camerlano, the boy I grew up with, swore to me in blood three days ago that the signet would be mine. But when the moment came, his hand turned. With a smile, he pinned it on Lucia, the orphan his family had sponsored. Then he leaned close to my ear. "Let Lucia have her moment. No one has ever really looked at her before. Don’t worry. This is my estate. No one will dare arrange your marriage without my say." I grabbed his sleeve, but he removed my fingers one by one. "Lucia has no roots and no last name. Tonight is all she has. But you are a Sorrento. Even without the signet, no one will touch you." That phrase, no last name, drew every gaze in the ballroom toward me, full of pity and quiet mockery. The next morning, I boarded a flight to Chicago. When Adrian heard, he made one call to Port Saint Giovanni Air Control. "Ground every plane. Nothing leaves today!"

In the Corvona underworld, there is one unspoken rule. When a Don keeps a new woman by his side for three consecutive months, the Donna must personally remove the signet ring symbolizing her power and place it on the new woman's finger before the entire family. When my husband, Luca, the Don of the Bellini family, announced he would take Mia alone on a three-month business trip, the entire Corvona underworld waited for me to have a meltdown. I had been with Luca Bellini for seven years. I followed him everywhere, refusing to leave his side. I would even wake up in the middle of the night to touch him, needing to know he was there to feel secure. They were all aware of my clinginess and were betting I would never let go. But when Mia extended her hand to me, her voice dripping with saccharine, I didn't shed a single tear. I calmly removed the signet ring engraved with the family crest and slid it onto her ring finger. Luca, lounging in the leather chair at the head of the table, swirled the whiskey in his glass, satisfaction gleaming in his cold blue eyes. "Elara, you've finally learned your place." I lowered my gaze to my bare finger, saying nothing in return. What Luca didn't know was that a month ago, I had recovered all seven years of my lost memories. I wasn't some street orphan at all, but the long-lost Principessa of the Rossi family, the most powerful of the Old World families. In three days, my brother's armed convoy would roll into Corvona to take me home.

Governed by the royal family, St. Bartholdi is a small European country surrounded by lavender fields, where Anna Madeline Lechner and her friends are trying to survive royal life and find themselves caught in a web of lies with major consequences. In the 21st century, Maddie is tired of the absurd rules and social barriers imposed by the Queen, and is determined to overcome all obstacles in search of her freedom. On the other hand, the palace's newest security guard, Matteo Bertozzi, has left everything he knew in his native Italy in search of a new life, and gets much more than he bargained for. Faced with so many restrictions, the small wooden hut in the middle of the lavender field becomes a perfect fragrant refuge, where rules disappear, time almost stops, and fantasies become reality.

Don Fiorenzo Ricci saved me and brought me home, raising me for seven years. During the day, he was refined and restrained, treating me the way a true father would. At night, he was endlessly inventive, making me his and his alone. I drowned myself in this twisted love, naively believing I was the only one for Fiorenzo. Then he turned around and married another woman, made her the Madre of the mafia family, and forced me to watch them together. I was done being a piece in their twisted games. The first time I ran, he nearly killed the maid who helped me. The second time I ran, he shot the gardener dead on the spot. The third time, and the last, I jumped into the ocean right in front of him. I did it all for freedom, even if it was only the freedom of my soul after death.

She married him to save her father's life. He married her to settle a debt. Neither of them expected to fall in love. Isabella Romano never wanted this life. She grew up watching her father drown in debts he couldn't repay, surrounded by men who smiled while they threatened. She wanted freedom — a future she chose for herself. Instead, she got a wedding dress, a stranger's ring, and a debt paid in full through her own hand in marriage. Dante Moretti is the coldest don their world has ever feared. He took control of his family's empire at twenty-three and buried his heart alongside the woman he lost. To him, Isabella isn't a wife. She's a payment. A term in a contract he never wanted to sign. But their wedding day doesn't end quietly. A traitor is dragged from the crowd in chains, blood staining the white flowers, and a warning whispers through the garden: someone close to Dante wants him destroyed. As Isabella is pulled deeper into a world of danger and betrayal, she begins to notice the man hiding behind the don — and a cousin whose ambition hides behind a charming smile. Slowly, dangerously, Isabella becomes the one person Dante can't afford to lose — and the one person who might finally teach him how to feel again. Because somewhere between the cold rules of his house and the warmth she refuses to let him extinguish, Dante starts to understand that love isn't the weakness he always believed it to be. But in this family, nothing comes free. Not loyalty. Not power. And certainly not love. When the past finally catches up to them, Dante will have to choose: the empire he built his life around — or the woman who taught him to want something.