3. Nova
— ? —
Nova
That Night
The Rolls-Royce moves through the city like a shark through dark water - silent, inevitable, cutting through the night with a precision that feels almost predatory.
I drift in and out of consciousness, my cheek pressed against the cool leather of the seat, watching streetlights blur past the tinted windows like dying stars.
By rights I should be terrified of the man in the front seat. But my body has decided fear is a luxury it can’t afford tonight, and the warmth bleeding back into me is louder than any alarm. All I can do is float in the strange suspended space between waking and sleeping.
Between dying and being saved.
“Stay awake.”
His voice cuts through the fog, low and commanding. I drag my eyes open and find him watching me in the rearview mirror, those dark eyes reflecting the passing lights.
“Tired,” I manage.
“I know. Stay awake anyway.”
It’s not a request. There’s something in his tone that makes me think he’s seen people slip away before - people who closed their eyes in the back of a car and never opened them again. The thought should scare me. Instead, it makes me feel oddly cared for.
He’s worried about me. This stranger. This formidable man with scarred knuckles and a face like a fallen angel. He’s worried I might die in his backseat.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Something shifts in his expression - surprise, maybe, or amusement. It’s hard to tell with a face like his, all sharp angles and shadows.
“No,” he agrees. “It’s not.”
We drive in silence after that. The city gives way to countryside, streetlights to starlight, the cramped chaos of urban streets to long winding roads lined with cypress trees. I watch the world change through the window and try to remember the last time I was outside the city limits.
Lake Como, I think. The honeymoon that wasn’t. Vivienne’s portrait watching me from every wall.
This feels different. This feels like leaving, not just traveling.
This feels like escape.
***
The mansion appears without warning - one moment there’s nothing but darkness and trees, and the next there are iron gates swinging open, a long gravel drive, and then this.
I sit up slowly, my breath catching in my throat.
It’s not a house. It’s a gothic cathedral masquerading as a residence, all dark stone and pointed arches and windows that gleam like eyes in the moonlight.
Ivy crawls up the walls like it’s trying to devour the building whole.
Gargoyles crouch on the corners of the roof, frozen mid-snarl, guarding against something I can’t see.
It’s beautiful. It’s terrifying. It looks exactly like the kind of place where a man like Luca Castellani would live.
A house as dark and beautiful as its owner.
The thought surfaces before I can stop it, and I shove it down immediately, burying it beneath layers of exhaustion and pain and the very reasonable reminder that I am in no condition to be noticing anyone’s beauty, least of all the brother of the man who destroyed me.
The car stops. Luca is out and around to my door before I can gather the strength to move, and then he’s opening it, reaching in, and I realize with a start that he intends to carry me again.
“I can walk,” I say, even though I’m not sure I can.
“No.” He slides one arm behind my back, the other beneath my knees. “You can’t.”
He lifts me like I weigh nothing - like I’m made of paper and air and all the fragile things I’ve become - and I hate how good it feels. Hate the warmth of his chest against my side, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my ear, the way his arms tighten around me when I shiver.
Stop it, I tell myself savagely. Stop noticing. Stop wanting. You’re half-dead and he’s-
He’s carrying me up the front steps of his gothic mansion, and the door is opening before we reach it, and there are people inside - staff, I realize dimly, watching with carefully blank faces - and I should be embarrassed, should be ashamed of being carried into a stranger’s house like a broken doll, but I’m too tired to feel anything except the heat of him seeping through my clothes.
The entrance hall is enormous: vaulted ceilings, stone floors, a staircase that sweeps upward into darkness.
Candles flicker in iron sconces along the walls, throwing dancing shadows across centuries-old tapestries.
It smells like woodsmoke and old books and something else, something darker, something that makes me think of churches and confessions and sins that can never be absolved.
“The east wing,” Luca says to someone I can’t see. “And send for Dr. Marchetti.”
“Signore, it’s past midnight-”
“Then wake him.”
His voice leaves no room for argument. I hear footsteps retreating, doors opening and closing, the quiet efficiency of a household that knows better than to question its master.
We’re climbing the staircase now, and I should probably protest - should probably insist on walking, on maintaining some shred of dignity - but my legs gave out in the alley and I’m not sure they’ve come back yet.
So I let him carry me, let my head rest against his shoulder, let myself be weak for just a few more minutes.
Just until I’m inside. Just until I’m safe. Then I’ll be strong again.
“You’re thinking very loudly,” he says, and I startle.
“What?”
“Whatever you’re telling yourself right now - that you should be stronger, that you shouldn’t need help, that accepting this makes you weak.” His voice is low, matter-of-fact. “Stop.”
I open my mouth to deny it, but the words won’t come. Because he’s right. He’s exactly right, and I don’t know how he knows, and it makes something in my chest crack open in a way that feels dangerous.
“You don’t know me,” I manage.
“I know what she does to people.” He turns down a corridor, his footsteps echoing off the stone. “I know what it takes to survive her. And I know that the fact that you’re still breathing after six weeks on the street means you’re stronger than anyone in that family has ever been.”
I don’t have an answer for that. I don’t have an answer for any of this - for the rescue, for the mansion, for the way his words settle into my chest like stones, heavy and warm and impossible to ignore.
We stop in front of a door. He shifts me in his arms - carefully, so carefully - and turns the handle.
The room beyond is large and dark and beautiful, all deep reds and golds, a four-poster bed draped in velvet, a fireplace already crackling with heat. It looks like something out of a period drama, the kind of room where tragic heroines pine for impossible loves.
Appropriate, I think, and almost laugh.
He sets me on the bed with the same impossible gentleness, and I feel the loss of his warmth immediately - a cold rush of air where his body used to be, an absence that feels larger than it should.
“The doctor will be here within the hour,” he says, straightening. “In the meantime, don’t move.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
His lips twitch. Not quite a smile, but close. “Good.”
He turns to leave, and I hear myself say, “Wait.”
He stops. Turns back. Those dark eyes find mine, and I feel pinned in place, like a butterfly under glass.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I told you. Someone in that house still has a conscience.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I push myself up on my elbows, ignoring the pain that shoots through my ribs. “You could have sent someone. You could have made a phone call, had one of your people pick me up. Why did you come yourself?”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Long enough that I think he’s not going to answer, that he’s going to turn and walk out and leave me alone with my questions and my suspicions and the memory of his hands on my skin.
Then: “Because I needed to see.”
“See what?”
His jaw tightens. Something flickers behind his eyes - something dark, something dangerous, something that looks almost like fury.
“What she does when no one’s watching.”
He leaves before I can respond, the door clicking shut behind him with a sound like a period at the end of a sentence. I stare at the carved wood for a long moment, my heart pounding, my mind racing.
He needed to see what she does when no one is watching.
Because he knows. He knows what Vivienne is. He grew up under those same hands, learned to flinch at the same sounds, carries the same scars-
The thought is too big, too heavy, and I’m too tired to hold it. So I let it go, let my head fall back against the pillow, let my eyes drift closed.
The fire crackles. The wind howls outside the windows. And somewhere in this dark and beautiful house, Luca Castellani is making phone calls that will burn his family to the ground.
***
I dream of heels on pavement. Perfume. Nails breaking skin.
Come near my son again and I’ll bury you-
I wake screaming, clawing at the sheets, my heart slamming against my ribs like a caged animal trying to escape.
“Easy. Easy.”
Hands on my shoulders. Large. Warm. Gentle.
Not her hands.
I blink, gasping, and find Luca crouching beside the bed, his face level with mine, those dark eyes searching my face with something that looks almost like concern.
“You’re safe,” he says. “You’re in my house. She can’t reach you here.”
I’m shaking. I can feel it, the tremors running through my body like aftershocks, and I can’t make them stop. Can’t make anything stop - not the shaking, not the tears suddenly streaming down my face, not the horrible broken sounds coming out of my throat.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp. “I’m sorry, I don’t - I can’t-”
“Don’t apologize.” His voice is firm, brooking no argument. “Never apologize for surviving.”
He doesn’t touch me again, doesn’t try to hold me or comfort me or do any of the things that well-meaning people do when someone falls apart in front of them. He just stays there, crouching beside the bed, his presence solid and steady and somehow exactly what I need.
I cry until I can’t cry anymore. Until the tears dry up and the shaking stops and I’m left hollow and exhausted, wrung out like a dishrag.