"Elena Moretti, have you been wronged?"
The question landed with the weight of a loaded weapon being placed on a table between us. Dante paused on the other end of the line, and in that pause I heard everything he was not saying: the roll of the heavy ring on his right hand, the slow exhale of a man deciding whether to step between his sister and trouble right now, across an ocean, in the middle of the night. His voice, when it returned, was filled with deep concern, the kind of concern that in our world came with consequences for whoever had caused it.
I forced a lighthearted smile, despite the bitterness rising in my throat. The burns throbbed beneath my sleeves. The image of the photograph pulsed behind my eyes like a wound that would not close.
"No, I've just figured it out. I'm going to get married anyway, so does it matter to whom?"
The words tasted like iron, but I kept my voice light, almost careless, the way the wives of powerful men learned to speak when they needed to conceal damage.
"Besides, I trust Mom and Dad's judgment. Even if it's an alliance marriage, I'm sure the candidate has been thoroughly vetted by all of you."
A marriage in our world was never just a marriage. It was a blood-bound union, a merging of territory and tribute, a public declaration that two Families had decided their futures were safer intertwined. The Moretti name carried weight on both coasts, and whoever my parents had chosen for me would be someone whose power could resolve the crisis threatening our operations. I understood the calculus. I had always understood it. I had simply believed, for seven stupid years, that love might offer me a door that duty could not.
Only then did my brother let out a relieved sigh, and I heard the faint sound of him settling back into a chair, leather creaking, the distant murmur of voices in whatever room he occupied in the Moretti estate abroad. His tone softened.
"I'm glad you've come around, Elena. When are you coming back to New York? Do you want to meet him before making the final decision?"
"No need." I kept my voice brisk, efficient, the voice of a woman conducting a transaction rather than surrendering a life. "The sooner we agree, the sooner the Family's problems can be resolved. You can start preparing for the ceremony. Let's set the date for a month from now."
"Got it." A beat of silence, then Dante's tone shifted, lighter, almost casual in the way that always preceded something he considered harmless. "By the way, do you still have contact with Damien Valenti? I heard his old flame, the Bellomo girl, is finally back in the city. You should reach out to him. Maybe he'll have time to come celebrate with you, bring some good fortune to the occasion."
The room tilted.
I was surprised that my brother knew about Alessia. No wonder Damien had always insisted I keep our relationship a secret from him. It was not about protecting me, as he had claimed. It was about protecting himself. If Dante Moretti, capo of the Moretti Family, had learned that his best friend had been keeping his sister hidden like an unacknowledged mistress for seven years while carrying a torch for the Bellomo daughter, the fallout would not have been a conversation. It would have been a war.
I lowered my gaze to hide the pang in my heart. My thumb found the inside of my wrist again, pressing against the pulse point, and this time I could feel how fast it was beating, a traitor rhythm that refused to match the calm I was projecting.
"Brother, don't bother him. I'm not close to him."
The lie came so easily. Seven years of practice.
"All right. I'll start making arrangements on this end. Get some rest, Elena."
Just then, I heard the sound of the front door's electronic lock disengaging, the heavy click that meant the code had been entered correctly, followed by the familiar cadence of Damien's footsteps across the marble foyer. I said my goodbyes and hung up the phone, setting it facedown on the cushion beside me.
I looked up to meet Damien's smiling eyes.
He stood in the doorway of the living room, jacket slung over one arm, his shirt collar loosened by a single button. He looked relaxed, almost pleased with himself, the way he always looked when he returned from managing a situation he believed he had handled well. His gaze found me on the sofa and warmed, that practiced warmth I had once mistaken for devotion.
"Not close to whom?" he asked, his voice carrying the low, teasing register he reserved for the hours we spent alone in this penthouse, the hours that did not exist outside these walls.
"Not close to you."
I said it honestly, and the honesty tasted like relief, like the first breath after being held underwater. But Damien only raised an eyebrow, his mouth curving into something between amusement and challenge, and he crossed the room in two strides and pulled me into his embrace.
"Really?" His arms closed around me, one hand settling at the base of my spine, the other tilting my chin upward so I had nowhere to look but at him. "Then tell me how you're not close to me. Are we not close enough, or have we not shared enough nights together, hmm?"
His breath was warm against my ear, carrying the faint scent of expensive whiskey and the ghost of Alessia's floral perfume still clinging to his collar.
Our once intimate behavior that made my heart race now only made me feel uncomfortable and repelled. His arms felt like a perimeter, not a refuge. His closeness felt like surveillance. Every nerve in my body recoiled from the contact and simultaneously screamed with the memory of how desperately I had once craved it, and the dissonance was so sharp I thought it might split me in two.
As I struggled against his chest, my hand pressed flat against his shirt to push him away, and my fingers brushed the edge of his collar where it met his neck.
I noticed the lipstick stain on his shirt collar.
A dark, deliberate rose, the exact shade Alessia had been wearing at the banquet. Not smudged by accident. Pressed there, at the junction of collar and throat, where a woman's mouth would rest if she leaned into an embrace and let herself be held the way I had never been held in public.
The burns on my body ached and I didn't know where the pain came from, but it was so sharp it brought tears to my eyes. The scalded skin beneath my sleeves, the photograph in the study, the lipstick on his collar, the word stand-in echoing through the oak door of Luca's private room. All of it converged into a single point of agony that I could not separate into its parts, and my vision blurred.
"Elena, what's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?"
Damien panicked as soon as he saw my tears. His hands moved to my shoulders, steadying me, his expression shifting from playful to alarmed with a swiftness that might have been convincing if I had not spent seven years learning the difference between his genuine fear and his performance of concern.
He rolled up my sleeve and saw the large red marks on my wrist, angry and blistered where the soup had seared through fabric to skin, and his voice trembled with concern.
"How did this happen? When did you get burned? Why didn't you tell me?"
It seemed like he had completely forgotten what had happened at the banquet. The soup. My standing alone in a room full of Families while he chased another woman through a corridor. The way his hand had dropped from my back as though I were a coat he no longer needed. All of it, erased from his memory the moment he walked through the door and found me waiting where he had left me, the way I always waited, the way a stand-in was supposed to wait.
I remained silent, unsure whether I should remind him and shatter his mask of feigned affection.
His fingers hovered over my burns, careful, almost reverent, and his eyes searched my face with an intensity that seven years ago would have made me believe I was the only woman in his world. His other hand moved, a subtle, automatic motion: he straightened the strap of his watch, adjusting it with the precise, deliberate care of a man realigning the story he told himself about who he was.
I watched him do it and felt the last ember go dark.
