Chapter Ten – Severo
The Observatory, Dantès Estate
The screen flickers in pale blue. Motionless at first—then grainy movement as the camera re-adjusts.
There they are again. Tucked into each other like some tragic little sketch of devotion.
Salvatri’s arms wrapped around her as if muscle alone could erase trauma.
Her head resting against his chest. The golden girl and the tarnished knight.
How poetic.
“Are you really letting him take her away tomorrow?” Matteo asks behind me.
I don’t answer immediately. The cigarette burns slowly between my fingers, lazy and elegant.
I exhale a ribbon of smoke toward the ceiling and let the silk of my bathrobe fall loose around my chest. The room is warm.
Cedarwood and bergamot wafting from the incense I lit an hour ago. My skin is still damp from the bath.
“Yes,” I say eventually, voice low. “That’s if she wants to go.”
I tilt my head toward the screen. Lira is nestled into Salvatri’s arms, still pale.
Her legs are curled up like a girl half her age.
But her eyes—they’re not closed. They’re moving.
Restless. Observing. Even in her exhaustion, her gaze is alive, darting over the room like she’s memorizing the way out.
Matteo crosses his arms, leans against the wall with a frown etched deep into his jawline. “They look cozy together. You sure you can convince her not to leave with him?”
I turn to look at him, slow and deliberate.
The thought unsettles something in me, but I refuse to name it. Jealousy is too small a word for the pulse that tightens in my throat. Possession? No. I don’t possess things. I curate them.
“She’s barely even looked at him,” I reply, smirking around the filter of the cigarette. “Her body’s leaning in, but her eyes—her eyes are elsewhere.”
I point with two fingers at the feed. “You see that? That’s not contentment. That’s hunger. A woman who has what she wants doesn’t scan her surroundings like that. She doesn’t flinch when he exhales loud. She doesn’t track the door like she’s counting exits.”
Matteo lifts an eyebrow. “So, you think you can feed that hunger?”
I drag the cigarette again, inhale deep.
“I can offer her a deal that’ll make her stay.”
He looks unimpressed. “You want to marry her now? I thought that was a joke.”
I grin and glance sideways at him. “So, you eavesdrop, Matteo?”
He shrugs, expression dry. “I was curious. About your little chat with the navy seal.”
He moves to the drinks tray, pours himself something brown and unimpressive. I watch his reflection in the glass panel beside the monitors.
Matteo turns back to me, glass in hand. “I thought the plan was to make her waive the inheritance. Nice and simple. Quick. Clean.”
I stub the cigarette out on the brass ashtray. The sound is final.
“It was,” I say, rolling my neck lazily. “But then she had to go and hang herself in my best guest suite. That changes things, no?”
Matteo doesn’t laugh. He rarely does when I’m being serious.
I rise from the chaise, slow and barefoot, the silk of the robe trailing behind me as I walk to the window. Outside, the courtyard is lit with garden lamps and low fog creeping in from the orchard. The roses are asleep. Shame. They’d have enjoyed tonight.
“You want to know why I changed the plan?” I ask.
Matteo watches me cautiously. “Enlighten me.”
I place a hand against the glass, palm open. “Because I want her.”
The smoke from my cigarette has thinned to a whisper against the ceiling.
Onscreen, Lira shifts in Salvatri’s arms. His lips move. She listens, her mouth still. But her eyes... her eyes are somewhere else.
I clear my throat and lean back into the chaise, fingers still loose around the rim of my wine glass.
“If I take the inheritance directly,” I say, voice trailing lazily through the quiet, “my siblings will lose what little composure they pretend to have. They’ll spend eternity attacking me—left, right, center.
And they’ll win. Eventually. It’s two of them against one of me. Even my games have limits.”
I swirl the wine, watching the deep garnet roll along the crystal.
“But if I put a random mousy woman on the throne instead,” I continue, lifting the glass in a loose gesture toward the screen, “they’ll be too humiliated to think straight.
Their pride will rot them from the inside out.
They’ll fight harder, yes, but they’ll fight sloppier. That’s when it becomes fair.”
I lean forward now; forearms balanced on my knees.
“She and I, against them.”
Matteo exhales behind me. Not disagreement. Weariness.
“She knows nothing of this world,” he mutters.
I smile, and point again— with two fingers, like I’m picking her out of a portrait.
“Her eyes, Matteo. Her eyes speak of pain.” I take a slow breath. “And pain makes room. The more hollow someone becomes, the more space you have to fill them. I need her emptiness. I can shape it.”
I stand and stretch—arms overhead, spine popping softly beneath the silk of my robe.
“She’ll hunger,” I murmur, letting the thought rest on my tongue like a flavor. “And once she tastes power… real power… she’ll crush anything that stands between her and the next bite.”
Matteo opens his mouth as if to respond. Then closes it. Smart man.
A quiet beat passes. Then he asks the only question that matters.
“So, what’s your plan?”
I yawn, long and unhurried, before reaching for the velvet belt of my robe and retying it at the waist.
“I need a good night’s rest,” I say. “By the break of dawn, I’ll have my pitch ready for her.”
Matteo bows at the waist—mock-formal, but sincere enough to pass.
“In that case,” he says, “have a good night.”
I nod and turn toward the spiral stairwell that leads down from the observatory. My bare feet make no sound against the warm marble.
****
Dantès Estate, Front Courtyard
The knock pulls me from a dream I’ve already forgotten. Sunlight bleeds in from behind the curtains, pale and smug. I sit up, not in any hurry.
Matteo enters without waiting for me to speak. His expression is tight.
“They’re leaving,” he says. “The navy and the girl. Bags packed. They’re heading for the gate.”
I blink .
Then I rise.
Just a black shirt. Black joggers. I pull the shirt over my head, twist my hair into a low tie, and step into my shoes without a word.
Matteo trails me through the halls, down past the stone columns and out onto the veranda. The gravel’s still wet from last night’s mist. Crows scatter from the gate as we approach.
And there they are.
Salvatri stands like a soldier at the front steps—broad, braced, ready. Lira is beside him. Her hands clutch the hem of a cardigan. Her gaze darts toward me, then away. She doesn’t speak.
Mico does.
“She wants nothing to do with the inheritance,” he says, voice level but edged. “We’re leaving. The documents in the bank will be forwarded to you—signed. She’s waiving her claim.”
Matteo glances at me.
I don’t look at him.
My hands slip into my pockets. I keep my eyes on her.
Her hair’s pulled back now. Not neatly. There’s a twist of it falling loose by her ear. She keeps shifting her weight, one foot to the other, like she hasn’t decided yet whether to flee or stay.
I tilt my head.
“Is this your choice?” I ask her.
Not him.
Her.
The question hangs there. Not a threat. Not even a challenge. Just a hook in the water.
I wait for her to bite.
“It is her choice!” Mico snaps. His voice grates across the courtyard like steel on stone. His hand tightens on Lira’s arm.
I don’t look at him.
My eyes stay on her.
She’s trying to stay upright. I see the tremble in her knees, the tension in her jaw. Her fingers twist the fabric of her cardigan like she’s hoping it might anchor her to the gravel beneath her feet. Her eyes are wide. She hasn’t breathed properly since stepping out here.
I step forward, not quickly, not cautiously—just enough to make her lift her head.
“Your mother and my father were lovers,” I say.
The words still the morning.
Lira blinks , like a thread has snapped somewhere behind her eyes. She looks at me, her breath stuck somewhere between ribs and throat.
“They fled Italy together. Came here. Started a new life or tried to.” I tilt my chin, just slightly. “She miscarried their child. That ended things between them—but not before she built half of what my father owns. He owed her more than a goodbye.”
Mico moves, half a step forward. “This is irrelevant—”
“No,” I say, cutting across him like a blade through silk. “This is her inheritance. And she deserves to know what it is before she signs it away.”
Lira hasn’t looked at him since I started speaking. Her eyes are on me now, and I don’t break contact.
“This is your birthright,” I say. “You can command men. Trade with kings. Re-route power lines and black markets. You can’t truly reject what you’ve never seen.”
I take one more step forward.
She doesn’t back away.
Mico does it for her, one arm curling slightly to guide her behind him.
It’s sweet, in its way.
But unnecessary.
I speak to her, never lifting my gaze. “Give me one day. I’ll show you what belongs to you. By dusk, if you still want out, I will not stop you. You have my word.”
Mico barks something under his breath, but I don’t hear it.
Lira is thinking.
It’s in her hands. In her breath. In the way her eyes keep flicking to the side as though she’s trying to picture the life she almost had, the one someone else carved behind her back.
Then her hand twitches. Mico starts to tighten his grip.
She pulls free.
The sound it makes—the small shuffle of fabric and defiance—is louder than his protests.
She steps toward me.
Her face is pale but resolute.
“You said I have power?” she asks.
I nod .
She blinks slowly, like she’s still not sure if any of this is real.
“How much power?”
I smile. I raise my right hand and snap my fingers.
The courtyard gates open in sequence.
From every doorway, from the corners of the mansion, from the trees at the perimeter, men begin to step out. They come in quiet lines—fifty, maybe more. All in black. Some with visible sidearms. Some with nothing at all.
They kneel.
All of them.
Heads bowed.
Hands behind their backs.
And still, I keep my eyes on her.
“This much,” I say.
“They aren’t even one tenth of the men who could answer to you,” I tell her.
My voice doesn’t rise. The show is doing the work.
She looks around. Her eyes scan every bowed head, every spine bent to her birthright. Her jaw is tense. Her fingers twitch at her side, then still. She blinks and locks eyes with me again.
“You could have it all if I go,” she says.
I tilt my head.
“But I want you to have it,” I reply. “It’s yours.”
She turns slowly to Mico. He stiffens as soon as he sees her face.
“I want to hear him out,” she says.
Mico’s mouth parts. No words come for a second. The disbelief carves straight through him. He shakes his head like maybe she’s speaking in a dream.
I almost laugh, but I don’t. I tuck it away, where it sweetens the edge of my grin.
Mico finds his voice, but it frays on the edges. “You can’t be serious. He’s playing you. Lira, he took you. You almost died in his house. You think this means anything to him?”
“I just want to hear him out,” she repeats.
Her voice is softer, but not unsure.
I smile and extend my hand to her, open and steady.
“It would be my honor to show you all you can be.”
Mico steps toward her, hand reaching as if he could still pull her back.
But Matteo is already moving.
He steps between them before Mico can reach her. No flourish. No threat. Just presence.
Mico freezes.
His eyes burn through me. If fury were a blade, I’d be bled through the ribs.
I don’t blink.
I turn to her again.
“Come with me,” I say.
Lira stands there, caught in the breath between decision and regret. Her eyes bounce more between the two of us.
She turns to Mico. He doesn’t speak . He only looks at her like the ground beneath his feet has turned to glass.
Her voice is barely audible, more breath than sound. “I just want to hear him out.”
Then she turns back to me.
My hand is still out.
She takes it.
Her fingers are cold.
Her grip is light.
But she doesn’t let go.
And I don’t stop smiling.