Chapter 23
twenty-three
Vincenzo
By the time I get home, the day has gone from exhilarating to surreal.
I should be thinking about consequences, timing, and the fact that I just left a hotel room where I let the man I have loved for more than eight years put his hands all over me until I forgot my own name. I should be thinking about the thousand ways this can still go wrong.
Instead, I’m thinking about the way he looked at me when he said he loved me. The way he cupped my face and begged me not to cry while looking like he might break open himself if I did.
I’m thinking about the island idea, ridiculous and impossible, and already half-real in his head before I could even make a joke out of it.
I’m thinking about his hand at the small of my back when he walked me to the door, how reluctant he looked to let me go, how alive I felt because of it.
The villa is dark when I arrive, quiet in that expensive way only heavily guarded homes ever are. The fountain in the courtyard still runs, lit from beneath. The front doors open before I reach them because someone in this house is always watching.
The staff says nothing; they never do. They take my coat, note the hour, and file away the signs of where I’ve been and who I’ve been with and make the smart choice to mind their own business.
I head upstairs without bothering to speak to anyone.
Our room should be empty, since Arabella has elected to sleep in her own suite rather than the room attached to my personal one. We haven’t shared a bed in any meaningful way for longer than either of us likes to say out loud.
We share appearances, functions, a surname, a household, and a table when necessary. But the actual bed itself has become one more expensive piece of furniture between us, useful for photographs and very little else.
So, when something pulls me toward that bedroom, and I push open the door to find two tangled bodies under my sheets, I don’t stop because I’m shocked.
I stop because, for half a second, I genuinely have to recalibrate what I’m looking at.
Arabella is asleep on her side, facing toward the door, silk hair spilled over one pillow, bare shoulder out from under the duvet. Behind her, one arm slung over her waist, is Lucien.
Lucien.
My second-in-command and oldest surviving friend, if that word can still be used for men like us. The man who has stood at my shoulder through coups, funerals, votes, wars, and every other version of blood we politely call business.
He is very naked, very asleep, and very much in my bed with my wife.
I stand in the doorway for three long seconds and feel… nothing like what I should.
That’s probably the most alarming part, if I’m being fair. A husband with any traditional claim to his own marriage would likely feel something sharper. A cut to pride, a punch of humiliation, or anger hot enough to shake the hand.
I feel none of that, but not because I am saintly. God, no. Dismay requires investment, and what Arabella and I built together was never the kind of structure likely to inspire jealousy when it cracks.
I don’t even feel betrayal at first. I feel… tired, maybe. Dryly unsurprised. The kind of weariness that comes when the universe decides to make a point, and you can already see the shape of the lesson before anyone speaks.
The strongest thing in me at that moment is the dry, almost amused thought that Nikolaj is going to find this hilarious.
I step fully into the room, fold my arms over my chest, and clear my throat.
It’s not even a particularly loud sound.
Lucien wakes like a soldier. One second dead asleep, the next upright and scrambling, the sheets tangling around his legs as his eyes snap open and find me in the doorway. The blood drains from his face so fast, I’m honestly impressed.
“Jesus—” he chokes out, already halfway to his feet. “Vincenzo, I—”
There is a brief, chaotic flurry of limbs and sheets and half-formed explanations while Arabella screams at the sight of me.
I remain exactly where I am and draw the gun before he gets any further.
The motion is so smooth it barely feels like movement.
The sound of the safety clicking off is small in the room and somehow louder than Arabella’s scream.
Lucien stops speaking instantly, both hands going up without any real decision involved.
Good. Learned behavior is one of the few things still worth relying on.
“Shut up,” I tell him, and he does.
Arabella has gone sheet white. She is clutching the comforter to her chest with one hand, the other pressed to her mouth as if she might still be able to contain this by looking horrified enough.
She’s beautiful even like this, and the tragedy is that beauty has never once been the problem between us.
It’s easier to survive ugliness in a marriage. Harder when the person opposite you is lovely and intelligent and fundamentally unsuited to the life she’s been living.
I keep the gun trained on Lucien and look at my wife.
“Arabella,” I say calmly. “What is this?”
That breaks her more effectively than shouting would have.
Some part of her was prepared for rage. For thrown objects, raised voices, maybe even violence. She wasn’t prepared for composure.
It forces honesty into the room where drama might have given her cover. Her face crumples and then hardens again, all in the span of one breath, because Arabella has always preferred anger to shame when given the choice.
“What does it look like?” she snaps.
“It looks sloppy.”
Lucien makes a small sound that might be my name again. I shift the gun an inch higher in his direction without taking my eyes off Arabella.
“Shut up,” I tell him, “and let my wife speak.”
Arabella stares at the gun, then at me, then at Lucien, and some of the screaming panic drains out of her face, replaced by exhausted fury. “Put that away.”
“No,” I say. “Talk. I want to know why this had to be done in our bed.”
Her mouth twists. “You don’t get to stand there and act righteous.”
“I’m not acting anything.” I keep the gun exactly where it is, pointed at Lucien, because I know him well enough to know he’ll be the first one to make a stupid move in the name of dignity. “I’m asking a question before pride dictates I kill you both.”
She looks at me then, really looks, and I see the exact second she realizes there is no jealousy in my face. No heartbreak, and no husbandly devastation. That hurts her in a way I don’t think the gun does.
“I was lonely,” she snaps, and the words come out with years behind them. “I wanted closeness. I wanted something that felt real for once in this godforsaken house.”
“That’s what we both signed up for, but continue,” I say.
“I was unhappy,” she says, voice shaking now with anger instead of fear.
“Miserable. I thought sleeping with Lucien might help. I thought maybe if someone looked at me and actually wanted me, if I could just have one thing in this marriage that felt…” She cuts herself off with a harsh laugh. “It didn’t help. It made it worse.”
That gets my attention more than the affair itself did. “Worse how?”
Her eyes flick toward Lucien, then back at me pointedly. I frown, waiting for her to continue, but she doesn’t. She bites the inside of her cheek hard enough that I see it, then glances at him again, and it clicks all at once.
She isn’t looking at him like he’s the problem; she’s looking at him like he’s the witness.
I cross the room in three strides before either of them fully realizes I’ve moved. Lucien starts to speak again, maybe to explain, maybe to defend her, maybe to save himself, but I don’t care.
I bring the gun down, catch him across the side of the head with the solid back end of it, and he drops immediately, hitting the floor with a graceless thud and one last half-formed curse.
Arabella gasps. “Vincenzo!”
“He’ll live,” I say, stepping over him and setting the gun on the dresser now that the room has one less source of pointless noise. I lean one shoulder against the wardrobe and wait. “Now speak.”
She stares down at Lucien sprawled unconscious on the carpet, then back up at me, and I see that she’s more exhausted than afraid.
It’s all over her face. Years of trying to contort herself into something this house could use.
Years of sleeping alone, being decorative, and trying not to rot inside it.
“I was in love before I married you, but it could never work,” she says finally, voice thinner now, less rage and more old grief.
“So, I did what everyone expected. I married you and did my duty. I smiled. I hosted. I dressed properly. I sat through dinners and board meetings and charity events and all of it, and I told myself I’d get over it. ”
My expression must shift because she laughs again, bitterly. “You understand that word at least. Duty.”
I don’t answer.
“Lucien wasn’t…” She glances down at the floor where he’s out cold and snorts softly through her tears.
“He wasn’t the point. He was convenient, and I was desperate to feel wanted by anyone.
But it only made things worse because every time he touched me, all I could think about was the person I actually wanted. ”
I fold my arms. “Who?”
She goes red. It’s almost comical, given the circumstances. Here she is in my bed with my unconscious second at her feet, tears on her face, silk sheets clutched to her chest, and somehow this is the part that embarrasses her.
“Arabella.”
Her eyes cut away. “Marie.”
I’m genuinely shocked at this revelation. “Marie,” I repeat, because apparently my brain needs to hear it twice to believe it.
She nods without looking up.