11. Nova
— ? —
Nova
Two Days Before the Wedding
The dress is obscene.
Not in the obvious way - there’s no plunging neckline, no thigh-high slit, no desperate grab for attention. It’s obscene in the way that truly expensive things are obscene: the fabric alone probably cost more than a year of my old gallery salary.
It’s red. Not a soft, apologetic red - a red red. The color of blood. The color of warnings. The color of a woman who has stopped asking permission.
“Try it on.”
Luca is watching me from the doorway of the dressing room, his shoulder against the frame, his arms crossed.
He’s been watching me all morning - through the fitting, through the alterations, through the parade of seamstresses who descended on the mansion at his request. He watches like a man who can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.
I slip behind the screen. Let the silk whisper over my skin as I step into the gown.
The bodice is structured, boned, lifting and shaping in ways that make me look like someone else entirely. The skirt falls in a cascade of crimson silk, pooling at my feet like spilled wine. When I move, the fabric catches the light and shifts - darker, lighter, alive.
I step out from behind the screen.
Luca goes still.
Not the controlled stillness I’ve come to recognize - the predator waiting, the strategist calculating. This is something else. This is a man who has forgotten how to breathe.
“Well?” My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
He doesn’t answer. Just pushes off the doorframe and crosses the room in three long strides, stopping close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his body.
“Turn around.”
I turn.
His hand finds the small of my back - bare, the dress cut low enough to expose the curve of my spine. His fingers trace upward, following the line of my shoulder blade, and they pause on the faded marks there - the ones that healed wrong, the ones the dress leaves bare for anyone to see.
“You’re not covering them,” he says quietly.
“No.” I meet his eyes in the mirror. “Let them look.”
Something fierce moves through his expression. His fingers continue their path, up to the nape of my neck.
“You’re going to destroy them,” he murmurs. “You’re going to walk into that room, and every person there is going to see exactly what they tried to break.”
“And what’s that?”
“Something unbreakable.”
His mouth finds my shoulder. My neck. The sensitive spot behind my ear that makes my knees go weak. I feel his hands gathering the silk of my skirt, pulling it up, and I know I should stop him - the seamstresses are just downstairs, anyone could walk in-
“Luca-”
“I need you.” His voice is rough against my skin. “Right now. In this dress.”
“We can’t-”
“We can.” His hand finds the slit in the skirt - hidden, practical, designed for walking. His fingers slide higher. “We will.”
“Someone might-”
“Then be quiet.”
He spins me around. Lifts me onto the dressing table, scattering pins and thread and measuring tape. The mirror behind me reflects us both - him dark and hungry, me flushed and wanting in my blood-red gown.
“Hold onto me,” he commands.
I hold on.
He frees himself from his trousers with one hand, the other pushing my skirt up around my waist. And then he’s there, pressing against me, and I’m already wet - I’m always wet for him now, my body trained to respond to his presence like a reflex-
He pushes inside me in one smooth thrust.
I cry out. Can’t help it. He’s too deep, too sudden, too much - and he doesn’t give me time to adjust, just starts moving, hard and fast and relentless.
“This dress,” he grits out between thrusts. “You in this dress-”
“You like it?”
“I want to fuck you in it every day for the rest of my life.”
I laugh - or try to, but it turns into a moan as he hits something deep inside me. My hands fist in his shirt. My legs wrap around his waist. The mirror reflects the movement of his hips, the strain in his shoulders, the way my face has gone slack with pleasure.
“I’m going to come,” I gasp. “Luca - I’m-”
“Not yet.” His hand finds my throat. Not squeezing, just holding. “Not until I say.”
“I can’t-”
“You can.” His thumb presses against my pulse. “You will.”
He’s moving faster now, deeper, each thrust punching the air from my lungs. I’m right on the edge, every nerve ending screaming for release, and I’m holding back through sheer force of will because he told me to, because I want to be good for him, because-
“Now,” he growls. “Now, Nova.”
I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me, violent and consuming, and I’m dimly aware that I’m screaming - actually screaming, loud enough to scandalize every seamstress downstairs - but I can’t stop.
Can’t do anything except feel as he follows me over the edge, his body shuddering against mine, my name torn from his throat like a prayer.
We stay like that for a long moment. Tangled together on the dressing table, surrounded by scattered pins and ruined silk, both of us breathing like we’ve run a marathon.
“The dress,” I finally manage. “Is it-”
“Fine.” He pulls back enough to look. “A little wrinkled. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”
“The seamstresses-”
“Will pretend they didn’t hear anything.” His lips twitch. “I pay them well.”
I laugh. Really laugh, for the first time in what feels like forever. And he smiles - that rare, genuine smile that transforms his face from dangerous to devastating - and I think: This is what happiness feels like.
This is what I almost lost.
***
Later, after the dress has been taken away for final alterations and Luca has disappeared into his study for yet another phone call, I wander the mansion alone.
My feet carry me to the chapel.
I haven’t been back here since that first time - since Luca found me touching the dusty pews and told me about his grandmother. But something pulls me through the heavy oak door, into the cool silence, into the colored light filtering through stained glass.
I sit in the front pew. Look up at the empty altar.
“I don’t know if you’re listening,” I say to the silence. “I don’t know if I believe you’re there at all. But if you are-”
I stop. What am I supposed to say? Thank you for Luca? Please let this work? Help me destroy the woman who tried to destroy me?
None of it sounds like something you’re supposed to say in a chapel.
“I just want it to be over,” I whisper finally. “I want to stop being afraid. I want to wake up one morning and not wonder if today is the day she finds me, hurts me, finishes what she started.”
The silence doesn’t answer. But something in my chest loosens, just a little.
Two days, I think. Two days, and then it ends.
One way or another.
***
Luca
“The documents are ready.”
Marco’s voice crackles through the phone, tense with barely suppressed energy. “Everything. Medical records, witness statements, financial documents showing the payments she made to keep people quiet. It’s airtight, signore. She won’t be able to wriggle out of this.”
“And the distribution?”
“Every major news outlet has been contacted. They’re holding the story until your signal - the moment you give the word, it goes live. Papers, websites, television. By the time the wedding reception starts, everyone in the country will know what Vivienne Castellani really is.”
I stare out the window of my study, watching the sun sink toward the horizon. Two days. Forty-eight hours until everything I’ve been building comes to fruition.
“What about the venue security?”
“Handled. I have people inside - catering staff, mostly, a few guests who owe me favors. If Vivienne tries anything, we’ll know before she moves.”
“And Marta?”
A pause. “That’s… more complicated.”
My hand tightens on the phone. “Explain.”
“She’s scared, signore. Vivienne has been watching her closely - asking questions, making threats. Marta thinks she suspects something.”
“Has she been compromised?”
“I don’t think so. But she’s been forced to give Vivienne information - small things, things that don’t matter. It’s the only way she could maintain her cover.”
I think about Marta. Sixty-three years old, gray hair always pulled back in a severe bun, hands that shook when she called me to report on my mother’s latest cruelties. She’s been my eyes inside that house for three years, since the day I walked out. If Vivienne suspects her-
“Get her out.”
“Signore?”
“After the wedding. The moment it’s done, I want Marta extracted. New identity, new location, whatever she needs. She’s earned it.”
“And if Vivienne moves against her before then?”
“She won’t.” I say it with more certainty than I feel. “She’s too focused on the wedding. On maintaining appearances. She won’t do anything to disrupt her perfect day.”
“I hope you’re right.”
So do I.
I hang up. Stare at the phone in my hand.
Two days.
Everything is in place. The evidence. The media. The security. The dress - God, that dress, Nova in that dress, looking like vengeance given form.
But something still doesn’t feel right.
I know about the men. Marta saw to that - two of them, maybe more, waiting at the cathedral to make us disappear somewhere between the vows and the champagne. They’ll be off the board before they reach into their jackets; I’ve already seen to it.
And that’s exactly what unsettles me. It’s too easy. My mother has been outmaneuvering enemies since before I was born. She’s survived scandals, investigations, threats that would have ruined lesser people. She would never stake everything on a trap I could see this clearly.
There’s something underneath it. I know it in my bones.
I pull out my phone again. Dial a different number.
“I need more security at the mansion,” I say when Marco answers. “Double what we have. And I want someone on Nova at all times - not just at the wedding, starting now.”
“You think Vivienne will make a move before the wedding?”
“I think my mother never does anything without a backup plan.” I turn away from the window. “And I think we’d be fools to assume we know what it is.”