Chapter 7 – Gaspare
There are houses I’ve bought that never felt like anything more than a statement. Ornate walls, imported marble, sweeping staircases—symbols of power, not comfort. My home is one of those places. Gleaming, fortified, quiet. Every surface polished, every line clean. It’s exactly what it’s supposed to be: a fortress for a man who rules through fear.
But I never sleep there anymore.
Not since the wedding.
Not since I started spending my nights at her mansion.
The one I gave her. The one that’s supposed to be hers alone.
At first, I lied to myself. I told Enzo I was conducting inspections. That I needed to be hands-on with the new security setup. That I was only staying over when necessary.
But now I don’t bother with excuses.
I go because she’s there.
And because I don’t know how not to.
The first night I stayed late, Luca had begged me to stay for dinner. He looked up at me with those wide, unwavering eyes—Almeria’s eyes, only untouched by bitterness—and I hadn’t known how to say no.
So I stayed.
She didn’t tell me to leave.
The second night, I brought him a book on ancient gladiators. His face lit up as he pointed to a warrior and said, “That one looks like you.” Almeria rolled her eyes and said, “Because he’s holding a sword and glaring?” But she didn’t stop me from reading the first few pages to him while he sprawled across the rug, listening with open awe.
By the end of the week, I had my own coffee mug in the kitchen.
It’s the small things that start to slip.
I notice when she changes the curtains in the living room. She’s gone from icy gray to something warmer—moss green with golden thread. She says it was just what was available at the store, but I know better. I see her making space, little by little.
Not for me. Not yet.
But for something that looks suspiciously like peace.
I never bring it up.
Tonight, I’m standing outside the garden doors, watching the dusk settle in behind the mansion. Almeria’s in the kitchen, slicing fruit. Luca is sprawled on the floor with his blocks, building what looks like a crude version of the Colosseum. He tells me he’s making it “for warriors like you.”
My chest tightens.
“I’m not a warrior,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “Mama says you fight monsters.”
I glance at her. She says nothing, her eyes locked on the watermelon she’s slicing. Doesn’t even say anything to Luca.
I don’t even know if I should feel flattered.
And somehow, that hurts more than it should.
I sleep in the guest suite at the end of the hall where Luca and Almeria’s rooms are. Every night, just before midnight, or right after, I hear Luca’s door open and his noisy footsteps make his way to his mother’s room.
I’ve come to listen for it. And I almost always fall asleep shortly after he goes into her room. Almost like my mind is calm knowing that he’s not alone and is safe in his mother’s arms. A luxury I can’t boast of.
I could stay elsewhere—somewhere more strategic, less entangled—but the truth is, I sleep better here. Not well. Not deeply. But better.
Sometimes I hear her moving in the hallway at night. Light footsteps. A creak of the floorboards. She never comes to my door. Never knocks. But she pauses outside it long enough for me to know she’s there.
I never open it.
I think we’re both afraid of what might happen if I did.
One morning, I find her in the sunroom, barefoot, sitting cross-legged on the chaise lounge. She’s reading a novel, her face soft in the golden light, her robe slipping slightly off one shoulder.
She doesn’t notice me at first.
I don’t announce myself.
I just stand there and watch her like a man at the altar of something holy and forbidden.
When she finally looks up, I expect the sharpness. The cool eyes. The steel.
Instead, she smiles—small, reluctant, tired.
“You’re up early,” she says.
“You’re beautiful in the morning.”
She stiffens, her walls snapping back into place. “Don’t.”
“I’m not playing a game, Almeria.”
“Then don’t say things like that.”
“Why? Because they’re true?”
“Because I don’t want them to be,” she says, and turns back to her book.
And somehow, that honesty cuts deeper than if she’d just walked away.
Luca grows more attached to me by the day and I’m more than excited about that. He’s grown to become the best part of my day on some bad days.
He falls asleep on my chest during movie nights. He runs to greet me when I walk through the front doors. He sneaks extra pancakes onto my plate when he thinks Almeria isn’t looking.
One afternoon, when he comes home from school, he sees me waiting in the courtyard and runs straight into my arms.
“I missed you,” he says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
I hold him tightly, peppering his face with kisses like I usually see Almeria do. He’s so lovable that I feel like a big brother of some sort.
“I don’t want him to get used to this,” Almeria says to me that night, her voice quiet but sharp.
We’re in the playroom, putting away Luca’s toys. I’m drying out the watercolor painting he made, one he made me promise to dry, so my back is to her.
“Get used to what?” I ask, pretending I don’t know what she’s talking about.
“To you being here all the time,” she continues. “He deserves consistency, safety and permanence. Neither of which you’ve ever been good at.”
I don’t argue. I just say, “I’m trying. And why do you think I’m not good at all those?”
She laughs bitterly. “Why do I think...? I know how the life you lead works, Gaspare. Trying can never change what you did. What you caused.”
“No,” I say. “But it changes what I do now.”
And for the first time, she doesn’t reply.
There’s a heat building between us that neither of us talks about.
Sometimes our hands brush when we pass each other in the hallway. Sometimes her gaze lingers too long when I laugh at something Luca says. Sometimes I see her watching me from the balcony when I train with the guards I’ve stationed at her mansion out back.
And sometimes, I catch her closing her eyes when I speak softly in the quiet of the evening when we’re just sitting in the living room before dinner, as if my voice might be a lullaby she refuses to admit she needs.
But she always pulls away before anything happens.
That’s what she’s scared of. She’s scared for herself, not Luca. But she’ll use him as a shield just this once.
She always reminds me—without words—of the line I’m not allowed to cross.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
I come again two nights after our conversation. At a time when I’m sure Luca is asleep. This time, I find her in the music room.
She’s seated at the piano, her fingers gently ghosting the keys. She doesn’t play anything. Just presses notes at random, like testing memories.
“I didn’t know you played,” I say.
She looks up at me startled and opens her mouth like she’s about to ask how or when I got here. But at the last minute, she decides against it and closes her mouth, turning her attention back to the piano.
“I don’t. Not anymore.”
“Why?”
She shrugs. “Lost the music.”
I walk in slowly. “Maybe it’s not lost. Maybe it’s just buried.”
She doesn’t answer.
But she raises her hands to the keys and starts playing. Seconds turn into minutes, and she keeps playing. Serenading the room with a familiar tune from our childhoods.
Two weeks later, I do something reckless.
I ask her to have dinner. Just the two of us. No Luca. No staff. No guards.
She raises an eyebrow. “A date?”
“No,” I lie. “Just food.”
She thinks about it for a long moment. Then she says, “Fine. But I pick the wine.”
It’s more than I expected.
I take it as the beginning of a truce.
That night, after dinner, we sit on the patio.
She sips her wine. I sip my guilt.
“Do you think you can ever forgive me?” I ask.
The question is a risk.
A knife between us.
She sets her glass down.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Some days, I wake up and I think maybe I can. Maybe there’s a version of us that makes sense. And other days, I look at Luca and remember the alley, and all I feel is rage.”
“I would undo it if I could.”
“I know,” she says. “But you can’t.”
Silence.
“And I can’t forget,” she adds.
“But you still let me in,” I say. “Why?”
She looks at me, really looks at me.
“Because you’re trying,” she says. “And because—God help me—I still want to believe there’s a part of you that’s worth saving.”
Her voice cracks on the last word.
And I don’t touch her.
I don’t lean in.
But I remember how to hope again.
I don’t know what we’re building.
I don’t know if it will last.
But I know that every night I spend here, in this mansion, in this strange, delicate balance between regret and redemption—
I feel less like a monster.
And more like a man. A man worthy of a second chance at love.