Chapter 20 Violet
VIOLET
It’s been three days since the restaurant. Since Elio’s mouth was between my thighs, showing me pleasure I didn’t realize existed. Since I followed a guard back to the villa instead of running when I had the chance.
Three days of tension thick enough to choke on.
We still eat meals together. Sit across from each other at the dining table like civilized people while everything unspoken crackles in the air between us.
He watches me. I watch him back. Neither of us mentions what happened.
Neither of us acknowledges the twelve red dresses hanging in my closet or the way my body hums whenever he’s in the room.
It’s unbearable.
So I hide.
The studio becomes my refuge. North-facing windows casting perfect light across the wooden worktables.
The German graphite pencils ranked by hardness.
Acid-free paper stacked by weight. Everything arranged exactly how I like it.
The studio has become the only space in this fortress that feels genuinely mine, which was probably Elio’s intent all along.
I’m sketching architectural details. The rose window from the cathedral. Arches and columns and tracery patterns. Anything that doesn’t require thinking about him. My hand moves across the paper. Crosshatching shadow into the carved molding. The repetitive motion soothes me.
This is what I know. This is who I am. A restorer. Someone who fixes broken things.
Is Elio a broken thing?
I shake the thought away. The fortress feels different today. I noticed it at breakfast. There’s a tension in the air I can’t name. Something’s wrong. Something’s coming.
I sigh and focus back on my sketch when the door opens.
“I thought I made it clear I needed space—”
The voice that responds is not Elio’s.
“My son has always had difficulty respecting boundaries.” Older. Smoother. Colder. A thick Italian accent wrapping around each word like silk over a blade.
I look up.
The man standing in the doorway is silver-haired and impeccably dressed. Mid-sixties, maybe. Handsome. He’s got Elio’s features. The same slope of the nose. The same eyebrow shape. His suit is tailored and expensive. His eyes…
His eyes are dead.
That’s the only word for it. Dark and flat and empty. Like looking into a well and finding no water at the bottom. Just stone. Just void.
He doesn’t ask permission. Just walks in, appraising the space. Tracing his fingers over the worktables, the supplies, the scattered sketches he passes, like he owns all of it. Like he owns me too.
The temperature in the room drops.
I’m on my feet before I make a conscious decision, instinct screaming that I should not be seated when this man is in the room. My spine straightens. Chin lifts.
“Who are you?” I try for steady. Almost manage it.
He smiles, but the expression doesn’t reach his eyes. A smile with nothing behind it.
“Cicero Marchetti.” He lets the name settle. “Elio’s father.”
Father.
I almost stumble in shock. This is the man who murdered Elio’s mother. Who raised his son in the shadow of that violence. Who shaped the monster I’ve been—
No. I can examine my changing feelings for Elio later.
I study him with new eyes. The silver hair. The controlled posture. The absolute stillness. This is what Elio could become. What he’s fighting not to be.
Or maybe what he’ll inevitably become anyway.
“I’m Violet,” I say, because I refuse to be nameless in front of this man.
His gaze sweeps over me, making me feel like I’m sitting on the surgeon’s table about to be cut to pieces.
“I know exactly who you are, Miss Murphy.” He takes a step closer. “The American girl who’s got my son distracted from his duties.”
Not the woman. Not even the girl. The American girl. Like I’m a species. A category. Something to be classified and dealt with.
He circles me. His steps are slow, movements deliberate. Unhurried. Certain. Nothing in this room threatens him and he knows it.
His cologne reaches me before he does. Expensive and wrong. Floral and chemical, so overpowering it turns my stomach. Nothing like Elio’s clean citrus and wood. This is artificial. Cloying. Like perfume sprayed on rot.
I want to step back, but have nowhere to go. My spine is already against the desk.
“Let me see you properly.” His hand lifts to my chin.
Not asking. Just taking.
Cold fingers grip my jaw. Firm enough to hurt if he wanted. Controlled enough that it doesn’t. Yet. He tilts my face side to side, examining me the way someone examines livestock at auction. Checking teeth. Looking for flaws.
I’ve been looked at before. Catcalled on the street. Leered at by colleagues who should know better. Even Elio’s obsessive gaze, as unsettling as it is, contains want. Contains something human.
This is different.
With Elio, even at his worst, there was hunger. Desire. The weight of his attention meant I mattered.
With Cicero, I’m an inconvenience. A variable in an equation. A thing to be evaluated and discarded. I’m inventory. Interchangeable. Disposable.
He releases my chin and takes a step back.
Still too close for my liking.
“Pretty enough.” His voice is clinical. Detached. Like he’s reading from a checklist. “Breakable, though.” A pause. “Porcelain has always shattered so easily.”
His words don’t feel like a metaphor. They feel like a threat.
My heart hammers against my ribs, but I force myself to speak anyway.
“I’m not—”
He smiles. Cruel. Patient. Then, he lifts one finger to his lips.
“Shh.” Shut up. You don’t get to speak.
The temperature drops further. I didn’t think that was possible.
“The last girl who distracted my son?” His voice remains pleasant.
Conversational. Like we’re discussing the weather.
“We sent her home in pieces. To six different addresses.” The room tilts.
“Do you know how long it takes to disassemble a human body?” He straightens his cuffs.
Picks an invisible piece of lint from his sleeve.
“Longer than you’d think. But my men are efficient. ”
I can’t breathe.
Can’t speak. Can’t move.
The image he’s painting is precise. Surgical. Six addresses. Six pieces. Some woman who made the mistake of catching Elio’s eye, dismembered and mailed home like a warning.
Is this what happens? Is this where I end up?
My lungs refuse to work. My vision narrows. The edges of the room go dark.
Breathe. Breathe, Murphy. Don’t give him the satisfaction.
But my body won’t cooperate. Won’t stop shaking. For the first time since waking up in Elio’s fortress I am genuinely scared.
The door slams open.
Elio storms in, fury radiating off him in waves, and the entire room compresses. He takes in the scene in a fraction of a second—Cicero too close, me pressed against the desk, my face pale and my hands shaking—and his eyes go flat. Cold. Dangerous in a way I haven’t seen before.
“Get away from her.” His voice is pure ice. And underneath it, violence barely leashed.
Cicero doesn’t move. Doesn’t even look at his son initially. Just continues studying me like I’m a specimen.
“We were just getting acquainted.”
“Now.”
Cicero finally turns. That cold smile still in place. He steps away from me slowly, proving he’s not intimidated, proving he moves on his own timeline, and brushes a speck of dust from his suit.
Elio positions himself between us, his body shielding me. Hands fisted at his sides. Every line of him vibrating with barely controlled rage.
My lungs remember how to work. The edges of the room sharpen. I’m still terrified, but the panic recedes slightly with Elio between me and his father.
“There was no last girl.” His voice is flat. Deadly. “You’re lying to scare her.”
Cicero shrugs. Elegant. Dismissive.
“Does it matter?” His dead eyes slide to me briefly, then back to his son. “The principle stands.”
Does it matter?
The lie was designed to terrify me. And it worked. But the threat behind it, the willingness to lie, to manipulate, to use fear as a weapon, that’s real regardless of whether there was ever a girl.
Elio’s jaw tightens. “What do you want?” His voice is low, lethal. “You know I don’t allow visitors. Not even you.”
“What I’ve always wanted. For you to fulfill your obligations.” Cicero straightens his cuffs with meticulous precision. “Gabriella expects you to pick out wedding rings by the end of this week. Her father has his speech ready.”
The room tilts.
Wedding rings?
Gabriella?
All of this—the kidnapping, the obsession, forcing me to admit I want him, the I want to show you what our life could be—and he’s engaged?
The word echoes in my skull. Engaged. To someone named Gabriella. Someone who exists outside this fortress, waiting for rings and speeches and a wedding.
“I’m not marrying Gabriella.” Elio’s voice is steel.
“Then I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.” Cicero gestures toward me without looking. Like I’m furniture. Like I’m not even worth acknowledging directly. “Simple equation. The girl goes, or the alliance goes. Choose.”
“She’s not negotiable.”
I find my voice. “She is right here.”
Both men turn. Cicero’s dead eyes land on me like I’ve done something distasteful by existing. Elio’s expression shifts, fear flickering beneath the fury.
“And she wants no part of your sick family.” The words pour out, hot and bitter. “Or your bargains. Or—” My gaze locks with Elio’s. Betrayal raw in my throat. “—your fucking lies.”
Our life. What our life could be.
What a joke. What a goddamn joke.
Cicero doesn’t acknowledge that I spoke. Doesn’t even glance in my direction.
Like my words evaporated before they reached his ears. Like I’m a piece of furniture that made an unexpected noise, startling, perhaps, but ultimately irrelevant.
He addresses only his son. “Then you’ve made your choice. And I’ve made mine.”
He pulls out his phone. Dials with calm, precise movements. Speaks in rapid Italian as he walks toward the door.
Elio grabs my hand.
I try to pull away. He holds firm. Fingers locked around my wrist like a shackle.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight with him here.”
He follows Cicero, keeping me behind him. A shield between me and the monster. Like that makes any of this okay. Like I’m not also his hostage.
Italian words wash over me. Too fast to catch most of it, but three words stand out.
Elio.
Americana.
Ferrante.
At that last word, Elio goes rigid. Stops walking.
“What does Ferrante mean?” I hiss at him.
He doesn’t answer. Jaw set. Eyes tracking his father.
“Elio.” I yank at my wrist. “What the fuck does Ferrante mean?”
“Not now, Violet.”
Cicero ends the call. Pockets the phone with the same precise movements. Pauses at the main entrance. Looks back at his son. Only at his son, like I’ve already ceased to exist.
“You have one week to reconsider.”
The door closes behind him.
Silence.
Heavy and absolute. The kind of silence that follows gunshots. The kind that means something irrevocable has happened.
I rip my hand from Elio’s grip.
“Who’s Gabriella?”
He doesn’t answer. Won’t meet my eyes.
His jaw works. Throat bobs. Guilt and shame written across every angle of his face.
“Who the fuck is Gabriella, Elio?”
The silence stretches. Unbearable. Damning.
Then, quiet.
“My fiancée.”