Chapter 22 Violet
VIOLET
The cage has a different shape now, wider. I’m no longer confined to a handful of rooms. In fact, Elio encourages me to explore, saying I’m safe on the estate. That it’s the only place I’m safe.
My heart disagrees. The only place it feels safe is next to him.
I spend most of my time in the gardens surrounding the property.
They’re different at night. During the day, they’re a manicured perfection.
Terraced hedges, lemon trees, gravel paths raked into precise patterns.
Evidence of control, wealth, and the same obsessive attention to detail that built my prison.
But at night, the edges soften.
Jasmine blooms heavy and sweet, the scent thick enough to taste. Orange trees cast shadows that shift in the breeze. The Mediterranean glitters in the distance, and if I squint, I can almost pretend I’m just a tourist. Just a woman taking an evening walk in a beautiful place.
Almost.
I wander deeper into the garden, my jeans and tank top a deliberate rebellion against the designer dresses hanging in my closet. Not that they aren’t designer. They are. But they make me feel a bit more like the person I used to be before Elio Marchetti decided to collect me.
Stay close to me.
His voice echoes in my head. The desperation in it. The way his hands shook when he thought I’d compared him to ordinary cheaters.
I told him he made me feel safe and I meant it. Whatever I feel for him has been slowly growing, and is now blooming like the plants in the solarium. Rich and vibrant despite being kept in a glass cage. Or maybe because of it.
Stockholm syndrome, the rational part of my brain whispers. Trauma bonding. Classic captor-captive psychology.
But it doesn’t feel like psychology, it’s too messy for a textbook. Too real for a diagnosis.
My fingers brush the leaves of a hedge as I walk, the rough texture dragging me back into my body, back into something real and present. I’m still here. Still me, even if I don’t recognise the person I’m becoming in this place.
A commotion near the main house stops me.
Sharp Italian voices cutting through the courtyard, heels cracking against stone with the kind of speed that means fury. I step back into the shadow of an orange tree as a woman storms through the courtyard entrance.
She’s stunning. The kind of stunning that makes other women feel inadequate just by existing. Dark hair swept back in a sleek twist. Cheekbones that could cut glass. A tight black dress that clings to every curve like it was painted on. High heels. Red-soled.
Two guards move to intercept her. She waves them off without breaking stride, her hand cutting through the air in a gesture that says don’t you dare touch me. The confidence of someone who’s never been told no in her entire life.
They let her pass, one of them speaking into their cuff as she continues on her way.
Mafia royalty, I think. She looks like she was born to this world, like she belongs here.
Everything I’m not.
She moves deeper into the garden, fury radiating off her in waves. Even from this distance, I can see her hands are shaking. Rage, not fear. The kind of anger that comes from wounded pride.
Then she spots me and her trajectory changes instantly. One moment she’s stalking toward the house; the next she’s cutting across the gravel path straight for me.
I straighten from the tree. Something in my gut says don’t let her catch you cowering.
She stops three feet away, close enough that her perfume hits me, expensive and aggressive, the kind designed to dominate a room before the woman wearing it says a word. Close enough that I can see the fury twisting her beautiful features into something considerably less so.
Her eyes move over me in a single sweep, taking in the jeans and the worn vest and the callused hands and the hair I couldn’t be bothered to style, and contempt settles across her face like she’s made up her mind about me already.
“Questo è quello per cui mi ha buttato via?” Her voice drips venom. “Una troia rossa del cazzo?”
I don’t speak Italian. But I catch enough. The tone. The body language. The way she spits troia rossa like it tastes foul in her mouth.
Red-headed whore.
Ah. So this must be Gabriella Rossi.
“My Italian isn’t great,” I say flatly. “But I got the gist.”
Her eyes narrow, and then she switches to English, accented but fluent.
“Good. Then you’ll understand this.” She steps closer. Into my space. “You’re a mistake. A distraction. A pathetic American he’ll tire of in a week.”
“And you’re the woman who got dumped via text message.” The words come out before I can stop them. Boston accent bleeding through. “Must’ve been quite a blow to the ego.”
Her face goes white. Then red.
“You think you know him?” She laughs. The sound is sharp and brittle. “You think you’re special because he fucked you?”
The word hits like a slap, not because it’s crude. I’ve heard worse in South Boston dive bars before I was old enough to drink in them. It’s the smile that follows that does it, slow and deliberate, the smile of a woman who has been waiting for exactly this moment.
“I’ve fucked him too, puttana.” The cruelty in it is almost elegant. “So many times. On a bed. In an office. On a desk while his guards stood outside the door.”
My stomach drops.
“He always comes back to me.” She’s enjoying this now. Watching my face for the crack. “No matter how many little distractions catch his eye. He gets bored. They all do. And when he does—” She leans in. “—I’ll be there. Waiting. Like I always am.”
The image slams into me before I can block it.
Gabriella. In his bed. Her dark hair spread across his pillow. Her nails raking down his back. Her mouth on his skin. Her legs wrapped around—
Stop.
I force the image away. But the damage is done.
Heat coils in my chest, vicious and possessive. A feeling I have no right to. He kidnapped me. Kept me prisoner. I shouldn’t care who he’s slept with. Shouldn’t care if he’s fucked every woman in Sicily.
But the thought of her hands on him.
How dare she touch my monster.
The anger floods my veins. Possessive. Primal. Completely irrational.
My monster.
Not the monster. Not Elio.
My.
“He’ll get bored of you soon.” Gabriella’s voice cuts through my spiral, smooth and certain. A phase. A novelty. That’s all I am. She’s permanence. She’s had him in ways I haven’t, knows his body, his patterns, and exactly what sounds he makes in—
Fury rises hot and sudden, drowning the hurt.
“Must be nice.” My voice comes out cold. A tone I learned from Southie girls who’d cut you as soon as look at you. “Thinking men are yours just because daddy signed a contract.”
Her eyes widen.
“Tell me something, Gabriella.” I step forward. Into her space now. “If he always comes back... why are you here?”
She flinches.
“Why aren’t you in his bed right now instead of storming through his garden screaming at his ‘distraction’?” I cock my head. “If you’re so confident he’ll tire of me, why do you look like you’re about to have a fucking stroke?”
“You—”
“He ended it.” I cut her off. “One text message. After twelve years. That’s how much you meant to him.”
Her face contorts.
I should stop. Should walk away before this escalates. But something dark and vicious has taken hold of me, and I can’t seem to make myself care.
“All those nights in his bed, all those times you spread your legs thinking you were securing your future—” The words taste like acid. “—and he threw you away for a red-headed whore he’s known for weeks.”
“Puttana!” She lunges, nails out, teeth bared., every trace of polished sophistication stripped away and replaced by something feral and ugly.
I bring my hands up to block her just as a guard steps between us, catching her arm mid-swing and hauling her back before her nails can connect. She fights his grip, spitting Italian curses, every line of her body vibrating with rage.
“Lasciami! Lasciami, stronzo!”
My heart pounds as adrenaline floods my system. But I don’t back down, don’t flinch. I stand my ground with my fists clenched and my jaw tight.
Come on, princess. Try again.
Footsteps. Fast. Heavy.
Elio appears at the edge of the courtyard.
Elio comes through the courtyard entrance and stops. He takes in the scene in a single sweep, Gabriella restrained and snarling, me braced, the guard struggling to hold her, and his expression goes lethal.
He crosses to me first. His hand finds my waist and pulls me against his side, his body angling between me and Gabriella. His other hand cups my jaw, tilting my face toward his, eyes moving over me with careful attention.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
His thumb grazes my cheekbone once. Then he turns and the warmth vanishes from his expression like someone flipped a switch.
“Gabriella.” Her name comes out flat. Cold. A full stop disguised as a word. “No one comes here without my invitation. You know this.”
“Elio—” She stops struggling against the guard. Tries to compose herself, smooth her hair, reclaim some shred of dignity. “Amore mio, you can’t seriously—”
“Don’t.” One word. It stops her cold. “The engagement is over. You received my message. You have never been welcome here, and you will not come again.”
“Never been welcome? I know I haven’t been here before—” The laugh that comes out of her is wrong, too sharp, cracking at the edges. “—but we’ve been promised to each other since we were children. My father—”
“Your father can discuss terms with my lawyers.” Elio doesn’t move. Doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t need to. “You and I have nothing left to discuss.”
“Because of her?” Gabriella’s eyes cut to me. Her top lip pulls back slightly, just enough to show teeth. “This... this nothing? This American trash you dragged in off the street?”
Elio goes still.
Very, very still.
The kind of stillness that comes before violence.
“Choose your next words carefully.” His voice drops so low I feel it more than hear it. “Because they will be the last ones you speak in my presence.”
Gabriella’s mouth opens, closes, opens again. For a moment, I think she’ll back down. Self-preservation finally overriding pride. Then her chin lifts.
“He’ll change his mind.” She’s talking to me now. Not him. Holding my gaze as her lips stretch slowly into a triumphant smile. “Enjoy him while you can, troia. I give it a week.”
She turns, shrugging out of the guard’s hold and walks away, heels clicking against stone, head high despite the guard shadowing her every step.
The garden goes quiet.
Just me and Elio and the jasmine-thick air and the words she left behind.
You’re a mistake. A distraction.
I fucked him so many times.
I’ll be there. Waiting.
The images won’t stop. Gabriella beneath him. Gabriella crying out his name. Gabriella knowing what he looks like when he comes, how he sounds, what he—
“Violet.” His voice pulls me out of my spiral.
My hands are trembling at my sides, jaw clenched so tight it aches.
“Look at me.”
I don’t want to. Don’t want him to see whatever’s written all over my face right now, especially don’t want to examine why her words hurt more than Cicero’s threats did.
His hand finds my chin and tilts my face toward his, careful in a way that makes it worse.
“Whatever she said—”
“I can’t believe you slept with her.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them, quieter than I intend, stripped of everything except the truth of them.
He pauses.
“Me neither.”
The admission hangs between us.
Not an apology. Not an excuse. Just truth.
I should feel vindicated. Like I’ve won something, having him confirm the regret out loud.
The hurt spreads anyway.
Because it doesn’t change anything. Doesn’t erase the fact that she’s had him. That her hands have touched what I—
What you what, Murphy? What you think is yours?
The question echoes through my skull.
I can no longer fight the answers that’s aching to break out.
I want him to be mine.
Not shared. Not divided. Not someone else’s former anything. Mine.
I was jealous. Genuinely, painfully jealous of a woman I’d never met, over a man who kidnapped me. In my head, I called him my monster.
The possessive pronoun is proof. My heart has moved to a place my logic hates. My feelings have shifted without my permission, planted roots I didn’t notice until they were too deep to pull.
I care.
More than I want to.
More than is safe.
The guards have dispersed. The garden is quiet again. Just the two of us standing in the jasmine-scented garden while everything I thought I knew about myself crumbles.