Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
Sofia
“ G ood morning, Alba.”
The girl lets out a shrill scream, jumping almost a foot in the air from fright. She presses a hand to her chest and shoots me a disgruntled look.
“Mrs. Lucchese, oh my, you gave me quite a scare,” she grumbles. “What are you doing sitting there by this time? It’s a good thing I’d already dropped the tray, or I would have ended up getting scalded.”
“Oh.” Guilt makes my mouth pull down at the corners. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She makes her way across the room and pulls open the heavy, dark curtains. The light that suddenly fills the room makes me wince, and I only just realize that it’s no longer the very early hours of the morning. The sun is already high and bright in the sky.
“Why are you sitting in the dark, ma’am? Have you been awake for long? I didn’t know what time you woke up, and I didn’t want to bother you.”
The truth of the matter is that I barely slept last night. Thoughts of Nero had filled my head—they still fill my head. I should have been thinking about my disastrous wedding night, but instead, dark eyes and plump lips wrapped around a cigarette had haunted me.
Nero is a mystery, and curiosity is the one thing they haven’t managed to take from me. A deadly combination to say the least.
“Not long,” I finally say.
“I brought you coffee because I wasn’t sure what time you preferred to have breakfast. I can bring you tea if that’s what you prefer.”
“That won’t be necessary. I don’t want to trouble you. You don’t have to bring up a cup for me.”
She flashes me a smile. “It’s no trouble at all—” Her words suddenly trail off, and I follow her gaze to the bed, where a glaring red stain mocks me.
Heat rises up on my cheeks, and I jump to my feet, hurrying to pull the sheets off, but Alba beats me to it. “What do you think you’re doing? Give me that.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, ma’am.” Her voice is supposed to be soothing, but it just grates at me.
“I’m not ashamed,” I say, but the words feel hollow. Because I am. The memories of last night flood back, heavy and suffocating, leaving me with that same feeling of being dirty, of something not being quite right. Everything about it had felt mildly uncomfortable, wrong in ways I can’t quite name. And though I wish I’d never have to go through it again, I’m not naive enough to run from my duties.
Until you’re pregnant.
Carlotta must have whispered those words a million times when it was first announced that I’d be marrying Sebastian. The reminder is always hanging over my head like a dark cloud.
“This is my job.”
“It’s-I-I mean?—”
I watch with a churning stomach as she pulls out the sheets and dumps them into a large basket at her feet that I’m only just noticing.
“Have some coffee and rest.”
My voice comes out sharper than I intend. “I don’t need to rest.”
“Okay, ma’am,” she nods. “Breakfast is ready, and the men are seated already. Your husband and Mr. Castello.”
Ears perking, I duck my head to hide the interest that must be written all over my face. “Oh? They are both there? In that case, I think I’ll take my coffee downstairs.”
With that, I walk to the bathroom and press my back against the closed door, heart racing. Excitement or something else? I can’t tell. I don’t want to know anyway.
I take a quick shower and then get dressed. My make-up is understated, and the plain, eggshell-colored dress with kitten heels is casual enough for breakfast.
Taking a deep breath, I make my way downstairs and almost get lost trying to find the breakfast room. I finally throw in the towel and ask one of the maids. I wonder how long it’ll take me to finally be able to navigate these endless hallways.
Then, I wonder where Nero’s room is.
It’s the most inappropriate thought to have, and it makes my stomach churn with guilt as I step into the room and my eyes meet impossibly dark ones. Not that I have anything to be guilty about. Nothing happened last night. It was completely innocent.
“Sofia,” my husband’s voice breaks into my thoughts, and I hurriedly tear my eyes away from Nero. “I was beginning to think you might prefer the comfort of your bed to the company of your new family.”
I clasp my hands in front of me demurely. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t fall asleep until?—”
“Just take a seat,” he interrupts with a sigh.
I can feel the intensity of Nero’s eyes on me, but I ignore him. His eyes have the ability to grab all my attention. Like a chain pulling me in and rooting me in place, and the last thing I want is for my husband to see the effect his guest’s stare has on me.
I offer Sebastian a faint smile. I resolve not to let last night’s events dictate the course of this marriage, and certainly not to let his guest’s presence dictate my actions.
It’s clear he found our time together less than satisfying, and I’d rather he expresses it openly than let it hang in the air like an unspoken critique.
Too late, I realize my seat is directly across Nero’s. His face is empty of expression as he watches me, and I imagine what he must think of me.
Pathetic .
Why do I care? I don’t care. But my hands fist my dress under the table.
I’m so distracted by my errant thoughts that I accidentally knock over a pitcher of water as I reach for my napkin. The jug tumbles to the ground, crashing and shattering into a million pieces, water spilling everywhere.
Mouth dry, I raise my head and find Sebastian giving me an unimpressed look.
“You should watch yourself more closely, Sofia,” he says, his tone light but laced with reprimand. “It wouldn’t do for something to happen to you so soon after our wedding.”
“I’m sorry.” I don’t even know what I’m sorry for, but my husband nods graciously and goes back to arranging his napkin into his collar.
A maid appears and cleans up the mess while my husband serves himself. My stomach is in too much of a knot for me to eat, but I set up a plate for myself and force myself to take a dainty bite.
“If you’re going to nibble at your food, perhaps you’d be better off not sitting at the table,” Sebastian remarks, his voice cool.
My head shoots up at Sebastian’s sharp words and I swallow. “I’m sorry, I don’t have much of an appetite.”
“Fascinating,” he replies, his sarcasm barely veiled. “It seems you have a talent for not enjoying things.”
“Excuse me?”
“You seem to lack enthusiasm for almost everything,” he observes, his tone almost clinical. “Can you tell me what truly excites you?”
I blink at him, wondering what his point is. “I enjoy a lot of things.”
He chews and swallows. “Alright, well, mention a few of them.”
I’m still trying to think of something appropriate and coming up short. He cocks his head at me and then shakes it, looking both smug and pitiful at the same time. I can’t help but feel a pang of irritation.
“Face it, Sofia,” he says, a smirk tugging at his lips. “You’re like a statue, unmoved by anything. I wondered if it was an act, but it seems this is truly who you are.”
Tension stretches taut in the breakfast room, and from the corner of my eye, I catch the maid shooting me pitying looks. Even my father had been careful not to pick me and my mother apart in front of the staff.
Nothing brings down a house faster than gossip among the staff , he used to say. My husband has no such compunction.
“I noticed that Eduardo and his men were missing at the wedding,” Nero’s voice cuts in just as I opened my mouth to stammer my way through a response. “Are they no longer part of our alliance?”
Blue eyes take their time to crawl away from me. “Not anymore. That bastard got too greedy and tried to get his paws on every slice of the pie.”
I tune out the rest of the conversation, keeping my head down and wishing to disappear from the room. This is my duty , I remind myself. I’m not special in any way. Hundreds of women have done it before me, and hundreds more will do it after me.
“Haven’t you finished yet?” Sebastian’s voice snaps me back to attention.
He’s staring at my empty plate like I’ve committed a grievous sin, and my head spins. What does he want from me? I nibble at my food and he has something to say, but when I clear my plate, it’s also a problem. I’m starting to see that my new husband is just an asshole, and I’ll never be able to do anything right in his eyes.
“Does Donatello still run that place near the docks?” Again, Nero’s voice cuts in.
When I glance over at him, I find him staring at me with a strange expression. But before I can decipher it, he has turned away.
Sebastian lets out a laugh. “Delightful place. I haven’t been there in a while, but the men tell me she’s still as fiery as ever.”
I mumble an excuse and hurry away from the room, unable to stand another second near him.
Which of them?, a small voice in my head asks, and I ignore it.
I’m dialing my mother before the bedroom door even shuts behind me.
“Hello.”
“Sofia?” her low voice asks from over the phone. “Is there a problem?”
I crawl into the middle of the bed, feeling like a needy child. “I-I miss you and Papa. And home.”
She makes an unimpressed sound. “Don’t let your father hear you say things like this. Or your husband. You’re not a child.”
I wince. “I know. I just—I didn’t think it would be like this. He’s different from what I thought, and?—”
“You have to grow up, girl,” she spits into the phone. “Didn’t I warn you to get your head out of the clouds? Every man in our world is the same, and if you don’t still know that, then you’re going to have your heart broken.”
Tears leak from my eyes, and I bury my head in between my knees. “He’s nothing like I imagined,” I confess. “And the marriage bed is not even?—”
The words stick in my throat, refusing to come out. After a moment of silence, she finally sighs and continues: “All powerful men are cruel,” she chides. “Suck it up and do your duty. And don’t call me with your silly complaints anymore. I won’t let you get me in trouble with your father.”
The line goes dead before I can say anything else, and I peel the phone away from my ear and stare into nothing. My life stretches out in front of me, but all I can see ahead is humiliation and unhappiness. How long will it take for me to break down into a shell of nothing?
My duty .
I’ve been hearing those words for so long. Too many years of being told what my duty is. It used to be something I looked forward to, but now, the words alone make my stomach churn.
Unfortunately for me, the hours slip away too quickly, and soon I’m lying in bed, staring at the clock on the bedside table, watching each minute tick by. Religion has never been a big part of my life—I go to church every Sunday with my parents, but I usually just tune out the priest. Today, though, I find myself praying.
I’m not surprised when my prayers go unanswered.
The door flies open, and there stands my husband, shirt half-unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up his forearms.
“I apologize if what I said at breakfast offended you. It’s just that this is hard for me too. I didn’t want this.”
Even though he didn’t spell it out, the implication is clear. It’s obvious what the “it” he was referring to means. He didn’t want me. Didn’t want this marriage, but was practically roped into it because it made sense.
Everyone said we made sense, but do we really? Or was it all just a facade, a union that looked good on paper, to the masses, to our families?
They couldn’t care less about how we actually felt.
Of course they didn’t. In my short time on this Earth, I’ve realized they never did. Never cared about my interests, my feelings, or how I would perceive their actions. It never mattered to them how their decisions would affect me.
I learned long ago that what I want has never mattered. It was always about what they could gain from the situations they placed me in and the decisions they made for me. In the end, I am just a pawn on their chessboards, moved around whenever and however they please.
Looking at Sebastian now, I can tell he’s in a similar situation. But he’s a man, a made man, so it’s different for him. He can still bend the rules to his advantage. Typical.
“Are you okay?” His voice snaps me out of my thoughts, and I nod, forcing a smile.
“You know you can always talk to me.” I can’t, but it’s nice that he pretends to care by asking.
“Yes, I know.” I tilt my head up to catch his expression in the dim light. He’s inches from me. He’s in my room. We’re alone. That can only mean one thing.
My duty .
The next moment, he’s on the bed, and I’m in his arms.
It makes sense. This makes sense , I keep telling myself.
It’s my duty. It’s my duty.
We do this so I can get pregnant, nothing more. We could never be more. The sooner I accept that and keep a certain someone out of my thoughts, the easier this will become for me.
I rise to my knees as he meets me halfway on the bed, and I kiss him.
This kiss says everything I need him to know.
This is nothing more than my duty. And he responds in kind.
His tongue traces over my bottom lip, and I feel him return the kiss—without hesitation. In fact, he pushes the kiss further, biting my lip and growling as if he’s savoring the moment.
But we both know he’s faking it, because he barely touches me.
Soon, I’m lying on my back, eyes closed, as I hear the clank of his belt. The bed dips under his weight as he spreads my legs. I give him a small, forced smile, bracing myself for what’s to come.
His mouth presses against mine and I open for him easily, allowing his tongue to slip into my mouth. I let out a moan I don’t feel, and his hand slides up to squeeze my breast.
“Hmm.” He makes a sound deep in his throat as he begins to suck on my neck. A faint tingle of arousal shoots down my body and the gasp I let out is real.
He tears his mouth off my skin just as it starts feeling good and he begins to undo his shirt, one button at a time till he finally whips it off him. My husband’s body is beautiful like the rest of him—well-muscled and tan, with tattoos running down his arms.
Sebastian begins to undo the buttons on the front of my dress till it gapes open, and I help him shrug it off my body.
He stares down at my half-naked form, clad only in a matching black lingerie set, and I see the desire in his half-lidded eyes. He drags down the cups of my bra till my breasts are revealed, and then he pinches one nipple, causing it to harden to a stiff point.
I moan as pleasure shoots down my body.
Sebastian bends his head to suck my breast into his mouth, tongue flicking over the peaks and drawing circles around my areola. My back bows and a sigh slips from my mouth.
I don’t realize he’s sliding my panties off till I feel cold air against my pussy. I shiver, spreading my legs for him. That’s when I hear the sound of a zipper sliding down. The sound fills the room, loud and inescapable, and I can’t help but wonder if there’s anywhere else I could be—anywhere but here.
I shut my eyes tightly when his mouth crashes against mine, rough and demanding, the force of it sending a jolt through me. Then I feel him at my entrance, poised to push into me.
When he finally does, the stretch is sharp, almost foreign, like my body is resisting something it should have welcomed by now. It’s supposed to feel good, I know that much. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t make myself enjoy this—not when every part of me feels detached and distant.
Meanwhile, it’s clear he’s feeling the exact opposite.
“Damn it,” he groans, fully buried inside me, his hands possessive as they cup my breast, fingers digging into my skin. “You feel so good, Sofia.”
His voice drips with satisfaction, but his words only drive the wedge deeper between us. Because while he’s lost in the pleasure, I’m sinking further into a place where I can’t reach him. Where he doesn’t exist.
His hips begin to pump into me, and my fingers curl into the sheets at my side, holding on, all the pleasure from earlier fizzling away as I sink deeper and deeper into my head.
I want him to keep touching me, to kiss me more, to whisper dirty things into my ear. Yet, something feels fundamentally wrong about it.
It’s as if I’m betraying the one person I shouldn’t even be thinking about while lying here with my husband. The desire clashes with a deep sense of guilt, making everything feel disturbingly misplaced.
“Do you like what I’m doing, baby?”
“Yes,” I whisper, trying to put some feeling into my voice, “it feels so good.”
I just want him to be done already.
“Open your eyes, Sofia, look at me,” Sebastian whispers, his voice strained with a mix of longing and frustration.
I want to. I want to enjoy this, to feel what I’m supposed to feel when I’m in bed with my husband. I know I should be able to, because Sebastian isn’t doing anything wrong, at least not as far as I can tell. So why doesn’t this feel right? Why am I wishing he were someone else, wishing I were somewhere else?
“Sofia,” he demands, his voice cracking just slightly, a thin layer of frustration seeping in. “Look at me. I need to see you. I need to know you’re here with me, not stuck in your own head.”
My chest tightens, and still, I stubbornly keep my eyes closed. I can’t give him that connection. I just can’t. Not now.
“I don’t want to,” I murmur, my voice barely above a whisper, the truth slipping out before I can stop it.
Silence. The kind that’s heavy and thick, hanging between us like a storm waiting to break. I can almost feel the disappointment radiating off him, sharp and suffocating.
“Of course, you don’t,” he mutters bitterly, his voice lowering to a harsh whisper. “God forbid you give me anything. Can’t even look me in the eye, can you? What is it, Sofia? Am I that unbearable to you?”
I flinch at his words, but I don’t respond. I can’t.
“Fine,” he spits, his tone now sharper, his patience wearing thin. “I wouldn’t want to spoil this moment for myself anyway. I’m used to it by now, being with someone who’s only halfway here. But at least do me a favor, would you? Just open your damn eyes, even if you feel nothing. Pretend , Sofia. Pretend you care, even if it’s a lie.”
His words cut deep, and the weight of his frustration presses harder on my chest, making it harder to breathe. Still, I don’t move. I don’t speak. Because he’s right—I can’t pretend.
Another silence follows, and then he sighs against my neck, the warmth of his breath making me shiver. “Okay,” he finally says, his voice a mix of sadness and acceptance.
“Okay.”
Sebastian grunts and increases the speed of his thrusts. Finally, he stills, lets out a groan, and then I feel his hot release inside of me. I don’t move till I hear him use the bathroom and leave.
I take a quick but thorough shower and then slip out of the room, heart racing. Anticipation and excitement war inside of me as I hurry to the greenhouse.
I step past the glass doors and my gaze flies around the room, searching for a large, familiar figure. The smile on my face immediately withers and dies.
He’s not here.
What did I expect? He must have better things to do with his time than wait around for me. Or maybe he’s asleep, or tangled up in bed with a woman who doesn’t just close her eyes and lay motionless.
I need to be in my own bed too.
I turn around to leave and then freeze in my tracks.
“Nero,” I whisper.