First Contact
POV: Evie
The first rule of proximity is that distance lies.
A man can be across the ocean and still sit at the table with you every morning.
A man can be locked in the south wing with guards, orders, restrictions, and the full weight of Alessandro Vitale’s displeasure arranged around him like expensive furniture and still find a hallway.
That’s the trouble with houses. They pretend walls are choices. They’re merely suggestions.
This is just rude. One expects murderers to appear at midnight. Possibly in the rain. Somewhere with shadows, dramatic architecture, and the decency to announce themselves with ominous music.
Not before lunch. Not while I’m carrying folded fabric samples because Teresa has decided the north rooms require “adjustment,” and apparently adjustment comes in the form of linen.
I’m alone for ninety seconds. That’s all. Ninety seconds between Teresa being called toward the lower stair and Luca’s replacement taking position at the far end of the hall.
I know because I count. Not exits this time. Just the seconds.
One.
Two.
Three.
The portrait gallery is long, polished, and lined with dead Vitales who all seem to share the same genetic commitment to judgment. Tall men in dark clothes. Pale women with careful hands. Children painted like future disappointments.
There are five exits. Main stair behind me. North corridor ahead. Music room doors. Service passage hidden behind the third panel. Window alcove with breakable glass and a drop that would be complicated for a pregnant woman.
Five. Only one that’s safe.
Naturally, Dante comes through that one. He turns the corner from the north corridor like he has every right to exist in it.
He isn’t supposed to be here. That’s the first fact.
The second: he looks better than he should.
Not well. Not stable. But expensive, polished, handsome in the way damaged men often are when someone has spent a great deal of money making sure the damage reads as charm.
Dark hair. Clean jaw. Suit too sharp for a man who smells faintly of mint, tobacco, and something alcoholic trying to hide under both.
His eyes are wrong. That’s the third fact. Too bright. Too hungry. Too pleased to find me alone.
My body knows him before my mind completes the inventory. It stops.
Dante stops, too. For one second, he only looks at me. Then his gaze drops to my stomach. A visible calculation moves across his face before he can discipline it.
I don’t cover myself, though I want to.
“Evie,” he says.
My name hasn’t improved in his mouth. It still sounds borrowed. Worse now, because he thinks history gives him permission to use it.
“Wrong corridor,” I say.
His smile appears slowly. “I was told the north wing was restricted.”
“It is.”
“And yet, here I am.”
“Yes. That does seem to be your greatest talent.”
His smile thins.
My pulse is steady. That’s surprising. My hands don’t shake.
Even better. The fabric samples sit against my arm, making us look absurdly domestic, as though we’re about to discuss upholstery instead of the fact that he killed my father and everyone in this house has arranged politeness around that gaping wound.
He steps closer. One pace. I don’t move. My body wants to, but my body is wrong. My body is pregnant and therefore overly invested in continuing to be alive. Valid, but inconvenient.
“You look different,” he says.
I look at him. “That’s your opening?”
His gaze flicks again to my stomach. “A lot different.”
“Yes. Time passed. You remained disappointing.”
A muscle moves in his jaw. There it is. The temper beneath the suit.
My father died because that temper found a gun and a room full of men willing to call murder an accident.
The thought lands so hard, the hallway narrows around me. I breathe once.
“I heard,” he says, lowering his voice, “about the pregnancy.”
“Heard?” I ask. “How quaint. Did the council send a newsletter?”
His eyes sharpen. “Twins.”
The word comes out almost softly. A man like Dante should never say soft things. They don’t become tender in his mouth. They become damp. Slimy.
I shift the fabric samples to my other arm. “Yes,” I say.
“My father’s.”
“No, Dante. The stork was Sicilian.”
His mouth tightens. “You think you know what happened.”
My skin goes cold. He’s going to do it. He’s going to stand in a hallway beneath portraits of his ancestors and talk about my father like the story belongs to him.
I feel something inside me shift. The crack. A hairline opening.
I hold still. “I know enough,” I say.
“No. You don’t.”
“There it is. Every guilty man’s favorite sentence.”
“You weren’t there.”
I narrow my eyes. “I was near enough.”
“Near enough isn’t there.”
“You would know. You were supposed to arrive later.”
He goes still. “What did you say?”
I should stop. Truly. This is the moment when strategy should step in, wearing sensible shoes and reminding me that I’m pregnant and currently alone with a man whose impulse control has historically been poor enough to become fatal.
Strategy is delayed, however. Rage arrives first.
“I said,” I answer, each word precise, “you were supposed to arrive later.”
His face closes. The false charm is gone now. Good. I prefer monsters without varnish.
“Careful, Evie.”
I tighten my grip on the fabric. “Don’t say my name like you have a right to it.”
His gaze drops again. This time, not only to my stomach. To the curve of the dress. To the evidence that his father has touched what Dante considers his.
A hot, clean hatred moves through me, so pure it frightens me. Not because I simply hate him. That part’s easy. Because for one second, the hatred gives me a solution.
I see them.
The scissors in Teresa’s sewing basket.
The letter opener on the table at the end of the hall.
The bronze bust beside the music room doors. I could pick it up. I could swing. Pregnancy shifts one’s center of balance, but rage compensates.
There are guards not far away. Alessandro would intervene. The council would move. The twins...
No.
The thought dies.
Not because he doesn’t deserve it. Because I’m no longer a woman with only my own consequences. That’s the prison inside the prison.
My hand moves to my stomach before I can stop it.
Dante sees. His expression changes. “Protective.”
The word is mild, but I want to break his teeth. Instead, I smile. “Maternal instincts. Terribly inconvenient. You wouldn’t understand anything instinctive that didn’t involve self-pity.”
He laughs once. “You really think you won.”
The sentence is absurd enough that for a second, I can only stare. Won. My father is dead. I’m trapped in the house of the man who covered for him. I’m pregnant with twins whose future is already being measured by men in council rooms.
And Dante Vitale thinks this is a game I’ve won because he has lost something he never owned.
A laugh rises in me. “Won?”
His face shifts. “Look at you. In his house. In his wing. Carrying his children.”
My grip on the fabric tightens until my fingers hurt. Good. Pain is grounding.
“You were supposed to marry me.”
“No,” I say. “I was contracted to survive you.”
His eyes flash. “My father took what was mine.”
I go very still. This man killed my father, and somehow he’s still the wronged party in his mind. The purity of his idiocy is almost impressive.
“You were never owed me,” I say.
His smile is gone entirely now. “Your father disagreed.”
For one impossible second, I’m not in the portrait gallery. I’m in the rain. I’m hearing my father’s voice in his study. I’m seeing his thumb beside my signature. I’m smelling peat smoke and ink and damp wool. I’m saying, Be right.
He wasn’t.
He wasn’t.
He wasn’t.
The fabric drops from my arm, scatters across the polished floor. Blue. Ivory. Gray. Useless little flags of surrender.
I don’t bend to pick them up. Neither does Dante. He watches me as if he has finally touched something tender enough to prove he still matters.
That’s the moment I know I could kill him. The want is physical. It terrifies me, because it feels clean. After months of strategy, ambiguity, surveillance, silence, the rage feels honest enough to mistake for salvation.
I take one step toward him. Only one. His eyes brighten.
That stops me.
He wants the reaction. Of course he does. Men like Dante are most alive when they make someone else lose control. It proves, if only for a second, that the chaos belongs to everyone.
No. Not mine.
He doesn’t get mine.
I inhale slowly. Door. Music room. Service panel. Main stair. Window alcove.
Five.
The crack holds. Barely.
Dante’s gaze narrows. “I’m sorry about your father,” he says. “Terrible accident.”
“Don’t.”
One word. It cuts the hallway clean in half.
Dante stills.
I continue, voice low. “Don’t put your mouth around my father’s death and call it an accident.”
His jaw tightens. “People say things when they’re grieving.”
“Yes. And murderers say ‘accident.’”
His eyes go flat. There. Truth has struck bone.
A sound at the far end of the hall. Footsteps.
Luca.
Too late or exactly on time, depending on which man gave the order.
Dante hears him, too. His expression shifts instantly. Charm returned. A mask dropped back into place so quickly, it should embarrass him.
“Evie,” Dante says softly.
“Don’t,” I repeat. This time quieter. Deadlier.
Luca appears at the corridor turn. His pace doesn’t quicken. That’s how I know he has assessed the scene and is already deciding how much violence is acceptable in front of these portraits.
“Signor Vitale,” Luca says.
Dante turns slightly. “Luca.”
“You’re outside your assigned corridor.”
“I got lost.”
I laugh once. Both men look at me. I bend slowly and gather the fallen fabric, because my hands need work and my body needs proof it can still obey.
The floor is too far away now. Luca takes one step forward, but I hold up a hand without looking at him. “No.”
He stops. I collect the fabric myself. Every piece. Blue. Ivory. Gray. My fingers are steady now. That feels like both a miracle and a threat.
When I straighten, the room tilts. Just slightly.
Dante sees. Luca sees.
But they also see I’m still standing, and I’m pretty sure that’s the most important part of all of this.