I shook my head, finished tying the gauze bandage around his knuckles with a precision that came from too much practice, and turned toward the bedroom without another word.
By the time I'd dried my hair—the low hum of the dryer filling the silence the way conversation never did—he had stepped out of the shower as well. Steam curled from the en suite like smoke from a recently discharged barrel.
He came up behind me without warning. His arms circled my waist, and he leaned down, his mouth seeking mine with the kind of hunger that had nothing to do with tenderness and everything to do with habit—or perhaps something darker. Possession without devotion. A Don claiming what the blood-bound union said was his.
I turned my head. His lips grazed my jaw instead, and I felt the heat of his breath stall against my skin.
My voice came out flat as a blade laid on a table.
"I'm on my period. I want to turn in early."
He didn't push it. He never did—not with me. There were wars he would wage across five boroughs without blinking, but this particular silence between us was a territory he refused to enter.
He tucked the blanket around me with hands that had signed death warrants and switched off the lamp. Darkness swallowed the room whole.
The next day broke beautiful—one of those rare mornings where sunlight poured through the tall windows of the Moretti estate like molten gold, making even the fortress feel almost gentle.
I was in the middle of brushing my teeth when I heard a commotion downstairs. Not the sharp, clipped tension that preceded bad news—no, this was something else entirely. Laughter. Voices layered over one another. The sound of the front doors being thrown open as if the threshold belonged to someone other than the Don.
I finished getting ready, smoothed the collar of my blouse, and stepped out onto the landing.
Lavinia Valente stood in the grand foyer with a whole entourage in tow.
She was dressed as though the estate were a stage and she its returning star—silk blouse unbuttoned one notch past propriety, heels clicking against the obsidian marble like a metronome counting down to something inevitable. Behind her, a cluster of Domenico's inner circle jostled and grinned, the kind of men who carried loaded weapons under tailored jackets and still turned into schoolboys in the presence of a beautiful woman.
Domenico was leaning against the doorframe of his study, arms crossed, brow furrowed. His voice had already slipped back into its usual register—low, clipped, threaded with an impatience that could curdle the air.
"What are you doing here?"
Before Lavinia could answer, a few of his crew crowded forward, their grins wide and conspiratorial.
"Lavinia told us you played the hero yesterday—pulled her out of that mess at the waterfront! She was so grateful she insisted on coming to thank you herself, boss. You know how she is."
The words were barely out before Lavinia produced an enormous bouquet of flowers from behind her back like a conjurer at a card table, along with an elegantly wrapped gift—black ribbon, matte paper, the kind of presentation that whispered money and intention in equal measure.
"Domenico," she said, her voice dipping into that particular register—warm, intimate, as if they were the only two people in the room. "Thank you so much for helping me yesterday. Just a little token of appreciation."
He didn't reach for any of it.
But his expression softened. Noticeably. The hard line of his jaw eased by a fraction, and something behind his eyes shifted—a door cracking open that should have stayed bolted. I watched it happen from the top of the staircase the way one watches a crack spread through a dam. Slowly. Inevitably.
When Lavinia registered the shift, she turned—and placed the flowers directly into my hands. Her tone landed somewhere just south of polite, the kind of careful condescension that could be denied if challenged.
"These are Juliet roses—Domenico's absolute favorite. Would you mind putting them in a vase for me?"
At that, his brow creased. A thread of ice wove through his voice, sharp enough to cut.
"They're your favorite. Don't put my name on it." He paused. The silence carried weight—the weight of a man who understood, even if only dimly, that something in this room had gone crooked. "And Ilaria is my wife. Don't order her around like she's the help."
The temperature in the foyer dropped as if someone had opened a window onto a January night. The soldiers flanking Lavinia exchanged glances. One of them coughed into his fist.
I was the only one whose expression didn't change.
I looked down at the lavish roses cradled in my arms. Petals the color of old blood and new promises, their fragrance thick and sweet—almost cloying. It was the first time I'd learned their name.
Juliet roses.
Lavinia's favorite. No wonder he'd spent a fortune cultivating them in his private greenhouse at the far end of the estate grounds—the one he'd told me was for "relaxation," as though a man like Domenico Moretti relaxed by tending flowers.
But I said nothing. I handed the bouquet to Salvatore, who had materialized at my elbow the way he always did—silent, watchful, his old soldier's instincts reading the room before anyone else.
"Bring down the crystal vases from the display case on the second floor," I told him quietly.
He took the roses without a word, but his eyes lingered on my face for a beat too long. I knew what he saw there. I also knew he would never speak of it.
Lavinia's gaze shifted to me then—slow, deliberate, a predator taking the measure of something she had already decided was beneath her. Something loaded and knowing settled into her eyes, a look that said: I see you. And you are nothing.
I pretended not to notice. I carried my breakfast out to the balcony that overlooked the estate's eastern garden—the one I had planted with my own hands during the first year of our blood-bound union, back when I still believed that tending something with enough care might make it take root.
Separated by a single pane of glass, I could hear every word of the conversation in the living room as clearly as if I were sitting among them.
"Domenico, aren't these the paper cranes I used to fold for fun back in middle school? You kept them in a crystal case this whole time?" Lavinia's voice was bright, almost giddy—the sound of a woman who knew exactly what she was excavating and enjoyed every second of the dig. "You liked them that much—want me to make you another box?"
A pause. Then: "Wait—why do you have this Barbie doll set? I remember throwing it in the trash at the old neighborhood house. Don't tell me you actually fished it out?"
And then, softer, with a theatrical gasp that carried through the glass like a knife through silk: "Oh my God, is this the maple leaf we picked up at Cloudmist Mountain? You actually pressed it into a bookmark and kept it all these years..."
I set my coffee cup down. The porcelain didn't make a sound against the saucer. I had trained myself in that—in making no sound at all.
Listening to Lavinia's delighted exclamations—like a treasure hunter striking vein after vein of gold in a mine she believed was hers by birthright—I thought back to the first time I had set foot in this house. Three years ago. A bride in a borrowed alliance, stepping across the threshold of the Moretti estate with nothing but a suitcase and the quiet, foolish hope that proximity might someday become love.
I had asked him about those things too. The paper cranes behind crystal. The doll set on the high shelf. The pressed leaf tucked between the pages of a leather-bound volume.
His answer had come easily, the way lies do when they've been rehearsed into reflex.
"Little gifts from a cousin back when I was a kid. I just held onto them."
I had believed him. Truly believed him. So completely, so willingly, that I had missed the tangled emotions swimming beneath the surface of his dark eyes—emotions that had nothing to do with cousins or childhood nostalgia.
That look. Full of love and resentment, longing and a stubborn refusal to let go. The look of a man standing at the edge of a wound he would not allow to heal.
Every bit of it had been for her.
I lifted my coffee again and drank. It had gone cold.
After a whole morning of chaos—of Lavinia's laughter ringing through rooms that had known only silence during my tenure, of Domenico's crew treating the estate like a social club on a Saturday afternoon—Lavinia volunteered to treat everyone to dinner at one of the Family-owned restaurants downtown.
Domenico shut it down in a single sentence, his voice carrying the finality of a gavel.
"No need. You've had your fun. Time to go."
Lavinia acted as if she hadn't heard a word. She hooked her arm through his and hauled him toward the front doors with the ease of someone who had been doing it since they were children—before the blood oaths, before the alliances, before any of it had mattered.
His crew, terrified he might actually refuse and ruin the afternoon's fragile good humor, seized me by the arm for good measure—gently, respectfully, but with the unmistakable insistence of men accustomed to moving people where they needed to go—and swept us all outside together, into the hard bright light of a day that belonged to everyone but me.
