Giulia

A sapphic Gothic novel of gambling, blackmail, desire, and female power.

In 1950s Turin, Giulia, Countess Pinotti, belongs to a world already in ruins: emptied noble titles, mortgaged estates, gambling debts, elegant parties, and marriages held together by money, shame, and appearances. Between Turin’s salons and a castle perched in the hills of the Canavese, her elegant life conceals a slow descent into blackmail, dependence, and the loss of herself.

At the gaming table, Giulia loses far more than money. When she signs promissory notes she cannot pay, Giovanna Baresi, Baroness of Rivalba—wealthy, ruthless, and already her husband’s lover—finds the perfect way to possess her.

Debt becomes blackmail. Protection becomes domination. Desire becomes discipline.

Giovanna does not want Giulia’s money. She wants her obedience.
Forced to serve the woman who can destroy her reputation, Giulia is drawn into a circle of aristocrats who turn fascination, jealousy, portraiture, confession, and humiliation into instruments of power. And yet Giulia is never merely a victim. Every woman who tries to dominate her ends up disturbed by her. Her apparent submission awakens rivalry, obsession, dependence, and fear.

Between Monte Carlo, fashionable Turin, and a castle transformed into a chamber of shame and consciousness, Giulia is a dark psychological novel about sapphic desire, social class, psychological domination, and the unstable masks of identity.

In Giulia’s world, mistress and servant, wife and rival, victim and dominator are never stable roles. They are masks to be worn, exchanged, and destroyed.