Chapter 13 Violet
VIOLET
My hand slides under the pillow before my eyes even open.
Empty. Still empty. Of course it’s still empty.
The caliper is gone. Has been gone for days now, and will stay gone because Elio Marchetti doesn’t leave loose threads, and my pathetic little weapon was the loosest one of all.
I stare at the ceiling, watching the morning light crawl across the plaster. Somewhere in this gilded cage, cameras capture every breath I take. Somewhere, he’s probably watching right now.
Good morning, asshole. Hope you enjoyed the show.
But the words feel hollow in my head. There’s no real heat behind them anymore. No fire. Just this bone-deep exhaustion that settles into my chest like water damage creeping through stone, slow and irreversible.
He’s taken everything. My freedom. My weapon. My sleep. My certainty. My ability to hate him without—
Without what?
I don’t finish the thought. I can’t finish it.
Instead, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and pad barefoot to the bathroom, stripping off yesterday’s clothes as I go. They drop in a careless heap on the tile.
The shower runs cold before I even step inside. Punishment. My body needs to remember whose side it’s on.
I force myself under the spray without waiting for it to warm, water hitting my skin like shards of ice, making me gasp sharply as I tightly wrap my arms around my middle.
I stay there anyway, teeth clenched, letting it pound against my shoulders, my back, my face.
Forcing myself to feel something, anything, other than the memory of yesterday in the library.
His thumb catching my tear. Lifting it slowly to his mouth. The way his dark eyes held mine the entire time, unblinking, while he tasted my defeat like it was fine wine.
The cold seeps deeper, numbing my fingertips, my toes, but it can’t quite reach the heat that still lingers low in my belly from that single, stolen moment. I hate it. I hate him. And I hate that the hate feels thinner every day, fraying at the edges like something worn too long.
That’s the worst part. The way my body betrayed me. Heat pooling low when I should have felt nothing but revulsion. The way I didn’t pull away when he touched my face. The way I almost—
Stop.
I scrub my skin harder, nails dragging over arms and ribs until it stings red, but the cold water can’t wash away what happened. What’s still happening inside me. The slow, relentless erosion of everything I thought I knew about myself.
When I finally step out, shivering and raw, the blue dress waits exactly where I left it—draped over the chair by the window.
His chair. The one he claims every morning while he feeds me breakfast and talks about art and history like we’re equals, like we’re colleagues instead of captor and captive.
I reach for the silk without thinking.
Then stop.
My fingers hover an inch from the fabric. Blue. He told me to wear blue. And I’m going to. Like a trained dog performing tricks for treats.
He likes you in blue.
I yank my hand back like the fabric has burned me.
The wardrobe looms across the room, filled with clothes I didn’t choose. Clothes he chose. For me. Because he’s been watching me for months, taking note of my measurements, my preferences, my routines.
I should find that terrifying. I do find it terrifying.
But.
But what, Vi? But it’s also kind of flattering that a beautiful man spent months obsessing over you? Jesus Christ, get a grip.
I turn away from the blue silk and cross to the wardrobe. I grab a gray dress instead. Boring. The opposite of the elegant blue he selected. A rebellion so small it barely registers, but it’s all I have left.
Dressed and as ready as I’ll ever be, I sit on the edge of the bed and wait.
Listen for his footsteps.
When did that start? When did I begin tracking the rhythm of his approach like some kind of internal alarm system? The soft fall of Italian leather on ancient stone. The pause before the lock clicks. The particular way he opens the door. Never hesitant, always certain.
You’re pathetic.
Maybe. Probably. But the footsteps come anyway, right on schedule, and my pulse kicks up like a startled bird.
The lock clicks, the door opens, and Elio walks in.
He carries the same tray as always. Ccoffee, bread, fruit. But today my eyes snag on details I shouldn’t be noticing. The way his long fingers curl around the tray’s edge. Artist’s hands, I’ve thought before. Strangler’s hands too.
He sets the tray on the small table by the window and turns to look at me, his gaze traveling over the gray dress jaw shifting. Not quite displeasure. Not quite amusement.
“Gray today,” he says it like a statement.
“Gray today,” I confirm, my chin held high.
He doesn’t comment further as he settles into his chair and begins preparing my coffee.
“When I was a child,” he says, stirring, “I was obsessed with Giuseppe Arcimboldo.”
I blink at the non sequitur. “The guy who painted faces out of fruit?”
A flash of surprise crosses his features. “You know him.”
“Art history classes.” I accept the cup he offers, careful not to let our fingers brush. “Though I always thought his stuff was more weird than beautiful.”
“That’s because you’re looking at it wrong.” He picks up an orange from the tray, and I watch his hands as he begins to peel it in swift, efficient movements. A thin spiral of rind unfurling. “Arcimboldo understood that beauty is assembled. Constructed from pieces that mean nothing on their own.”
His thumb digs into the flesh, separating a segment. Those same hands caught my tear yesterday. Brought it to his mouth.
Stop.
“He painted the Holy Roman Emperor as a pile of vegetables,” I say flatly. “That’s not beauty. That’s a Renaissance shitpost.”
Elio’s mouth twitches in almost a smile. Not quite. But god help me, I want to see what it would look like if he actually let it happen.
He extends the orange segment toward me. “Try this.”
I should refuse. I should—
My mouth opens. His fingers brush my lips as he places the fruit on my tongue. Citrus explodes across my taste buds, sweet and sharp, flooding my sense. And for one insane second I imagine what his skin would taste like if I caught his finger between my teeth.
What the fuck is wrong with you, Violet?
I chew. Swallow. Look anywhere but at him.
“You didn’t shave this morning,” I hear myself say.
Where the hell did that come from?
But it’s true. Dark stubble shadows his jaw, softening the sharp edges of his face. Making him look less like a marble statue and more like—
More like a man.
The scar through his left eyebrow catches the light as he tilts his head, studying me. I’ve never asked how he got it. Never wanted to know anything personal about him.
Liar.
“I had other priorities this morning.” His voice is low, rough.
“What priorities?”
He doesn’t answer. Just watches me with those dark, fathomless eyes.
“Violet?”
I startle. “What?”
“I asked how you slept.”
He did? When?
I’ve been too busy studying the planes of his face to hear him. Tracking the curve of his mouth, the way shadows pool in the hollow of his throat, the scar across his knuckles I’ve never noticed before.
Stop noticing things. STOP.
“Fine,” I manage. “I slept fine.”
And he smiles. Not the almost-smile. Not the smirk. An actual, genuine smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes and transforms his entire face into something devastating.
“That’s good, Violet.”
My name in his mouth. The way his accent curls around the syllables, softening the hard ’t’ into something almost like a caress.
I miss tesoro. Miss the possessive warmth of it. But Violet sounds… good. It sounds good.
You’re losing your mind.
A shiver runs through me, partly my body betraying me, partly the chill of still-damp hair dripping down my back.
Elio stands without a word and shrugs off his jacket, charcoal gray today, before draping it over my shoulders.
His fingers brush my collarbone. And there is nothing I can do to stop myself from leaning into the touch.
Half a second. Maybe less. But enough for both of us to notice.
His hands still. My breath catches.
Then I’m pulling the jacket tighter around myself, drowning in the scent of him wondering when the smell of my captor became something that made me feel safe instead of terrified.
He takes a steps back, his posture rigid.
“Call your mother.”
The words hit me hard, and I look up to find Elio holding out an expensive looking phone. Nothing like the cheap one I smashed against the wall days ago.
“Tell her you’re safe.”
And just like that, whatever strange warmth had been building between us evaporates.
“You want me to lie to my mother.”
“I want you to reassure her.” He sets the phone on the table between us. “The alternative is she continues worrying. Possibly contacts authorities. Start making inquiries that would be... inconvenient. For everyone.”
The threat isn’t subtle. It doesn’t need to be.
I pick up the phone with shaking hands and dial.
She answers on the second ring.
“Violet? Violet, is that you? Oh thank God, I’ve been worried sick, you haven’t called in three weeks and you know how I hate text messages. I tried the number you gave me but it just kept ringing and ringing—”
Her voice. Jesus Christ, her voice. It sounds like Sunday dinners and burnt coffee and the apartment in Southie where I grew up. It sounds like home.
My throat closes. For a moment I can’t speak, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but clutch the phone and try not to shatter.
“Ma.” I force the word out. “Ma, I’m fine. I’ve just been buried in work. The cathedral restoration, it’s—there’s a lot of damage. More than we expected.”
Elio watches from the doorway. Leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, perfectly still. Predator-still.
“Are you still in Sicily? Why can’t you call more often? Are you eating? You sound thin.”
I almost laugh. The sound comes out wrong, too high, too sharp.
“You can’t hear thin, Ma.”