The decree came down when I had nearly ceased to feel anything at all.
In those final days before the alliance ceremony, the Family Council determined I should occupy Giorgio's chambers each night—a mandate dressed in silk and called "strengthening the bond between houses." I did not need to wonder whose lips had first shaped the suggestion. Silvia's reasoning had been delivered with practiced innocence, each word calibrated to sound like sisterly concern. As long as I complied, her private fittings for the ceremonial gown would appear entirely proper, and she could continue wearing the mask of the devoted blood-sister.
I offered no resistance.
Not from submission. From indifference. Jeris's arrangements were already in motion—new identity, smuggling route, precise timing—all confirmed through whispered channels. Only a handful of days remained before I would vanish like morning fog over the harbor. I had no intention of wasting what little remained of myself on performances that no longer mattered.
That night, I lay upon the four-poster bed with my back to the heavy oak door, the room swallowed in darkness. The brass lock turned with a soft, deliberate click. Footsteps crossed the imported marble—light, measured, yet carrying that familiar weight of intrusion I had learned to recognize in my bones.
"This place needs attending to."
Giorgio's voice cut through the silence.
I did not respond. The scent of him—sandalwood and old money, the cologne his mother had chosen for him since boyhood—once brought me comfort. Now it triggered something primal, a rejection that lived beneath conscious thought. I closed my eyes and feigned the stillness of sleep.
That arrangement between our families remained intact, like a blood oath stamped again and again without my hand ever touching the pen. I had once believed in it with the fervor of the devout. Because of that faith, I had crafted a thousand excuses for every absence, every distant look, every conversation that ended when I entered a room. Until betrayal no longer required evidence. Until it simply was.
"Elena."
He spoke my name low, as though the walls themselves might carry tales to the Commission.
"You've been strange lately."
I turned onto my back and opened my eyes, fixing them on the coffered ceiling where shadows gathered like conspirators. "You're only noticing now?"
Silence stretched between us. Then his footsteps moved toward the fireplace, and I heard the soft thud of his jacket being cast across the leather chair. "Are you still dwelling on what happened the other day? Silvia explained everything."
A sound escaped me—not quite laughter, too hollow for that.
"The ceremony preparations are in their final stage," he continued, his voice taking on the formal cadence he used in sit-downs. "The Dons take this alliance seriously. As do I."
Seriously.
The word hung in the air like gunsmoke after a shot.
Like a transaction awaiting its final signature. Like territory being divided on a map.
"Can you look at me when I'm speaking to you?" Impatience sharpened his tone now, the veneer cracking.
"There's no need," I replied.
That struck something in him. He moved closer, and his shadow fell across the bed like a sentence being pronounced. "What exactly are you trying to say, Elena?"
I let the question hang.
His gaze traveled down my arm, stopping on the pale lattice of old scars that marked the skin above my wrist. Something shifted in his expression—recognition, perhaps, or the ghost of a memory he had chosen to bury. "How did these happen?"
"You're asking now." My voice came out flat as a blade laid on velvet. "Don't you think it's too late?"
His brow furrowed. "The Family had much to contend with back then. You know this. The war with the Valentino syndicate, the federal investigations—"
"I know," I said. "You were with her."
That single sentence emptied the room of air.
I remembered a night not long past. I had slipped away from the gathering, avoiding the soldiers and the wives with their sharp eyes, and made my way alone to the courtyard behind the main house. Beyond the reach of the wrought-iron lanterns, in the shadow of the old fig tree my adoptive father had planted the year I arrived, I saw them.
Standing too close. Their distance the kind that exists only between lovers or conspirators.
She laughed—that practiced, musical sound she deployed like a weapon—and the way Giorgio looked down at her carried a focus, an attention, that I had never once received. Not when I brought him coffee during his late-night meetings with the Capos. Not when I sat beside him at Family dinners, performing the role of the loyal betrothed. Not once in all those years.
She noticed me watching.
No panic touched her features. No scramble for explanation. Only the serene composure of someone who had already claimed victory and was merely waiting for the rest of us to acknowledge it.
From that night forward, I never asked him another question.
"She's fragile," Giorgio said finally, as though that single word could justify everything. "The Family doesn't want her... affected."
"I understand." I kept my voice carefully neutral. "You care about her."
The words fell between us like a body into deep water. No splash. But the weight of them sank all the same.
He attempted to redirect, reaching for something on the nightstand. "This is for you."
A small bundle of white flowers—calla lilies, their stems wrapped in black ribbon, trimmed with the precision of someone who had been taught that presentation mattered more than sincerity.
I glanced at them without moving. "Where did you get them?"
"Does it matter?"
"It does." I pushed myself up against the carved headboard, the silk of my nightgown whispering against the sheets. "If they're for me, then she doesn't need them."
His denial came swift and practiced. "You're my promised bride. She's merely family—blood of the same house."
"Then keep them for her." I turned my face toward the window, where moonlight bled through the heavy drapes. "She'll appreciate them more than I ever could."
His expression hardened, the mask of the patient suitor finally slipping to reveal something colder beneath. "You're too paranoid, Elena. That's exactly why everyone finds it easier to accept her. Why the Capos' wives invite her to their lunches while you sit alone. Why my mother speaks of her warmth while questioning your devotion."
That sentence.
I remember it with perfect clarity—each word branded into memory like a mark of ownership.
That's exactly why everyone finds it easier to accept her.
As though my vigilance were a character flaw. As though seeing clearly in a house full of shadows made me the one who could not be trusted.
I said nothing.
There was nothing left to say.
