Lorenzo
The timing is what’s wrong.
I’ve finally figured it out. It’s taken me long enough, as I’ve been over it so many times. But it’s the timing that’s jumping out at me. The timings started at six weeks apart, then it crept down to four weeks, then two weeks, then four days and now, it’s less than twenty-four hours.
Whoever is doing this they’ve gotten extremely comfortable.
From everything I’ve learned, getting comfortable is when people make mistakes.
They stop being as careful as they were at the start because they've gotten away with it long enough to think they're untouchable.
I've seen it before. I've watched men who should have known better start to slip because they started to believe their own luck.
There's no such thing as luck. There's only discipline and the absence of it. The moment you stop being disciplined is the moment you become a liability.
I close the folder, lean back in my chair, and look at the ceiling.
The office is quiet, it's past eleven, and I've been in here since dinner.
Ciro knows not to interrupt after ten unless it's urgent.
The staff don't come near this part of the wing unless specifically asked. My father and Vittoria went to bed an hour ago. My siblings are on the same wing as my father and Vittoria, meaning I don’t have to hear them unless I venture to the main part of the house.
This is the best part of the day for thinking because there's nothing else competing for the space in my head.
Except tonight, something is competing. I can’t stop thinking about the Delaney house. More specifically, the way the people inside the house behaved.
When I arrived this morning, I had expected Daithí to inform his family that I was arriving. It turns out that he hadn’t done so and I turned up unexpectedly. Which I’m grateful for as it’s given me insight into the Delaney household that I wouldn’t have otherwise been privy to.
Quinn came down the stairs in a sundress with her hair half-dry, barefoot, clearly not expecting company. She was probably the most beautiful I’ve ever seen her be. She was comfortable in her own skin, and there was no pretense with her.
But what shocked me the most was the staff.
I know how the households of powerful men run.
I've been inside enough of them. You can tell a lot from how the staff move when the boss isn't home, how the family acts when they’re alone.
You get to see the true dynamics, and you can also tell what the atmosphere feels like when the tension of one person's presence is lifted.
The Delaney house without Ronan had a specific air to it.
It was looser, lighter, freer. The staff were doing their jobs without watching their step.
The moment Ronan Delaney came back, that changed.
While Quinn and I spoke, she was different, not as polished as she had been in our recent meetings.
Instead, she seemed at home. Still guarded, but not as rigid.
Watching her take in the engagement ring wasn’t something I had expected to enjoy.
It’s a piece of jewelry, but the beauty on her face when she opened the box was something to behold.
The moment was broken when Ronan appeared in the doorway.
I watched the adjustment happen. It was as though she’d been trained on how to act when her father entered the room.
She lifted her chin, the bright expression she wore when looking at her ring was shattered and in its place was the cold, distant look she’s been wearing.
Father and daughter had very little interaction, and from what I caught between the very little they did have, they do not get along.
Ronan and I went into his office. He’s trying really hard to get more out of my marriage to Quinn than what’s warranted, especially considering what his eldest daughter has done.
Forty minutes later, we exited his office, and there was such a tense atmosphere, like a fight had broken out.
Ronan led me through the house, and I spotted his wife, Bridget, and Daire seated on the couch in the main room.
When we passed the kitchen, I spotted Quinn standing at the counter with the most controlled face I’ve ever seen as she and Daithí spoke in hushed low tones.
There was nothing that I missed while I walked through that house, including the lack of staff on the ground floor, and no one to escort me out except for Ronan himself.
I also noticed the greenish bruise that mars Quinn’s face.
The light in the kitchen highlighted it for me.
I wonder what the hell happened and why she’s been covering it up?
It’s obvious that it’s not fresh. In fact, it seems to be fading, so what the hell happened?
I remember the dinner we had here at our house, almost a week earlier.
I’d been watching Quinn, observing how she interacted with my family, but it was when we were seated for dinner that I noticed Vittoria and Quinn speaking quietly as though they didn’t want to be overheard.
Whatever Vittoria said, Quinn's shoulders drooped, and she looked marginally less tense for the rest of the meal.
Vittoria had noticed something at dinner.
I need to know what she uncovered. It’s too late in the evening to go find her now, but tomorrow I’ll ask her.
I know that there’s no way I’ll be getting any more work done this evening, not when my mind is racing, and I have too many damn questions about my future wife.
Christ, I hadn’t expected this. I had wanted to keep Quinn at arm’s length, but the more I see her, the more I’m drawn to her. There are so many unanswered questions, and I’m the type of man who needs to know those answers.
As I walk down the stairs, I hear Vittoria’s low murmurs, and as I turn the corner, I see Matteo in her arms. She’s rocking him back and forth as she watches the garden. She turns when I come in, a small smile on her lips.
“Good morning, Lorenzo,” she greets me.
"At the dinner," I say, stepping closer to her. "You noticed something."
She stops rocking Matteo and stares at me. “Lorenzo…”
“I saw it, Vittoria,” I tell her. “It’s faded, but I saw it yesterday.”
"She has a bruise on her left cheek." She shifts Matteo against her shoulder. “She'd covered it well, but the dining room light is unforgiving. I saw it when she first sat down."
"What did she say?"
"That she walked into a door." A pause. "She said it very smoothly."
"Too smoothly?"
"Yes." She looks at me straight. "It wasn't a door, Lorenzo."
"Did she say anything else?"
"No. She didn't want it pushed. I gave her a tip about the makeup and left it there.
" She's quiet for a moment. "She seemed relieved that I dropped it.
She's used to covering it. You can tell the difference between someone surprised they have to explain a bruise and someone who's had the explanation ready for a while. "
So it wasn't new at dinner, and it wasn't new when I saw it yesterday.
Now I’m wondering just how many times she’s had to hide bruises?
"I told your father," Vittoria says.
I’m not surprised. She and my father don’t keep secrets from one another unless it’s to do with the famiglia, then Vittoria won’t know. "What did he say?"
"That it's a Delaney matter until she's under this roof." She says with a cold tone, and I know that she disagrees with my father’s words, as she herself was beaten and put in the hospital by her father.
I’m not surprised by my father’s decree, because strictly speaking, interfering in the internal business of an allied family before the marriage is formalized is a political problem we don't need on top of everything else.
I understand the logic of it, but it doesn't mean I like it.
"Thank you," I say. "For handling it the way you did."
She nods. “She’ll be happier once she’s free,” Vittoria whispers as I begin to walk out of the kitchen.
Vittoria is a dreamer, that’s for sure. She and my father have a relationship, a marriage, that many within our world don’t. Their marriage is filled with love and respect. I don’t doubt that she thinks that’ll happen between Quinn and me. I don’t have it in me to correct her.
My marriage is for an alliance, that is it.
Ciro’s exactly where I knew he’d be, in the study eating his breakfast as he reads something on his phone. I sit across from him, and he glances at me before putting his cell away. No doubt, he can read from my face that I'm not here for the coffee.
"The Delaney family dynamics," I say. "What did you make of it at dinner?"
He thinks for a second. "The mother and Daire run on the same wavelength. They’re extremely similar, not saying that’s a good thing.
” He reaches for his coffee cup. "Quinn's different from them.
She's quieter, but she doesn't miss anything.
I watched her all through dinner. At one point, the mother said something to her, one of those where it sounds like a compliment and isn't. Quinn looked at her plate for two seconds and came back as if nothing happened. "
"Like she’s used to it, she’s practiced how to act," I say.
"Very." He looks at me. "She's not weak, though. Don't make the mistake of reading the quiet as weak. People who've been dealing with something their whole lives are usually harder to break than people who haven't."
"I know that."
He nods. Then I tell him about the bruise, and I watch as he goes still. It’s just a small pause. It’s something he does when he’s trying to work things out. "The father?"
"Likely."
"Christ." He says it quietly. He's angry. "Does she know you noticed?"
"No."
"Good,” he says with a nod. "Once she's here, that stops."
"It stops," I say, roughly.
Ciro looks at me for a moment and then picks his phone back up, which means he understands everything I didn't say.