Chapter 25 Violet #2
My breath stutters. No one’s ever articulated it like that before. Not even the professors who trained me, the colleagues I’ve worked beside. They talk about historical significance and architectural integrity. They don’t talk about meaning.
“How do you—” I stop. Start again. “You read my grant proposal. The one I submitted to your foundation.”
“I read everything you’ve ever published.” Not apologetic. Factual. “The paper on salt crystallization damage to medieval limestone. The case study on the church in Ravenna. Your thesis on the preservation ethics of digital reconstruction.”
“That thesis was terrible.”
“It was idealistic.” His mouth quirks. “There’s a difference.”
“You remember my thesis?”
“I remember everything about you.”
I should find that creepy. The months of surveillance, the obsessive cataloging of my life. But hearing him discuss my academic work, work I’ve barely thought about in years, warms my chest.
“The Ravenna paper was my favorite,” he continues.
“Your argument about the ethics of restoration versus preservation. The line you drew between maintaining historical accuracy and allowing sacred spaces to remain functional for their communities.” He pauses.
“I disagreed with your conclusions, but I admired your reasoning.”
“You disagreed?”
“You prioritized function over form. I would have argued that some structures are valuable precisely because they can no longer serve their original purpose—their ruin becomes part of their meaning.”
I prop myself up on one elbow. Stare down at him. “That’s the most pretentious thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Is it wrong?”
“No,” I admit. “It’s not wrong. It’s just—” I search for the right words. “Restoration isn’t about choosing between function and form. It’s about finding the balance. Keeping enough of the original to honor what was, while allowing enough change to serve what is.”
“Like relationships.”
My heart stutters.
He’s watching me with those dark eyes. The ones that see too much, that strip away every defense I try to build.
“Are we talking about cathedrals,” I ask carefully, “or us?”
“I was talking about cathedrals.” His thumb strokes my cheekbone. “But the metaphor works, doesn’t it?”
It does.
We can’t go back to what we were. Strangers in a café, potential colleagues, a woman with a grant and a man who funded it. That foundation crumbled the moment he drugged my coffee and brought me here.
But maybe we can build something new on the ruins.
Afternoon fades into evening.
Someone knocks—staff, I assume—and Elio pulls on pants long enough to retrieve a tray of food. Fresh fruit. Cheese. Bread still warm from the oven. A bottle of wine that looks dusty and expensive.
We eat in bed, crumbs be damned.
“You’re going to attract ants,” I say, brushing pastry flakes from his chest.
“I’ll buy new sheets.”
“Rich people are disgusting.”
“You’re not wrong.” He feeds me a grape. His fingers linger at my lips, and I bite them gently. “Though I notice you’re not complaining about the thread count.”
“The thread count is the only reason I stay.”
His smile is slow. Dangerous. “Is it?”
“That and the sex.”
He rolls me beneath him. Kisses me until I forget about the food, the crumbs, everything except his weight pressing me into the mattress and his cock hardening against my thigh.
“What about this?” He slides inside me in one smooth thrust. “Is this why you stay?”
I gasp. “Partly.”
“What else?” He moves. Slow. Deliberate. Each stroke hitting deep. “Tell me.”
“The library.” My voice wavers. “That 1820s restoration manual—ah—”
“What else?”
“The view.” I wrap my legs around him. “The gardens. The—fuck—the way you talk about art like it matters.”
He stills inside me. Vulnerability shining through in his gaze.
“What?” I ask.
“You like how I talk about art?”
“I like—” I hesitate. But his eyes are so open, so vulnerable, that the truth spills out before I can stop it. “I like your mind, Elio. The way you think. The connections you make. It’s—” I swallow. “It turns me on as much as this does.”
His whole body goes still. Like I’ve said something he doesn’t know how to process.
“My mind,” he repeats.
“Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m not making it—” He shakes his head. Starts moving again, but slower now, more careful. His gaze stays locked on mine. “No one’s ever said that to me before.”
“What, that you’re smart? Elio, you run a billion-dollar empire—”
“That’s not the same thing.” His hand cups my face. “People value my strategic mind. My ability to calculate risk, to outmaneuver enemies. But the way you—” He stops. Swallows. “You’re saying you like the way I think. Not what it produces. The process itself.”
Oh.
I understand now. The wrong-footed look on his face. The careful way he’s holding me.
He’s been wanted for his body. His power. His name. His money. The violence he’s capable of and the protection that violence provides.
But no one’s wanted him for him. For the man who reads Latin for fun and remembers random theses about restoration ethics. For the mind behind the monster.
“Yes,” I say simply. “That’s what I’m saying.”
His eyes close. His forehead drops to mine. A tremor runs through him, the earthquake of being truly seen. When he opens his eyes, something new lives there. And when he starts moving again, it’s reverent. He makes love to me like I’ve given him a gift he doesn’t know how to repay.
Night falls. Rises. Falls again.
We lose track of time entirely. The world outside the windows cycles through darkness and dawn while we exist in our own bubble, touching and talking and touching again.
That afternoon, we finally make it to the shower. He washes my hair the way he did that first time, fingers gentle against my scalp, but this time I’m not weak from starvation. This time I can turn around and drop to my knees and take him in my mouth while hot water pounds our backs.
He comes growling my name. Then he picks me up, pins me against the tile, and returns the favor until I’m shaking and crying out and forgetting my own.
Back in bed, damp and sated, I curl into his side.
“I’ve never had this,” I say quietly.
“Had what?”
“This.” I gesture vaguely at the tangled sheets, the destroyed pillows, the room that smells like sex and us. “Someone who wants to talk as much as they want to fuck.”
His arm tightens around me. “Your previous relationships—”
“Were either physical or practical. Sometimes both.” I map the ink of his tattoo, finally asking: “What does this mean?”
“Family crest.” His voice is neutral. “My father had it put on me when I was sixteen.”
“Had it put on you?”
“I didn’t have a choice.” A beat. “I rarely did, when it came to Cicero.”
The name drops between us like a stone into still water. Ripples spreading outward, threatening to disturb the peace we’ve built.
“He’s still out there,” I say.
“Yes.”
“This can’t last forever. This—” I wave at the bed. “This bubble.”
“I know.” His hand finds mine. Laces our fingers together. “But not yet. Give me a little longer.”
Give us a little longer.
I should push. Should demand a plan, a timeline, something concrete. But his body is warm against mine, and outside the window the stars are scattered like spilled salt across the dark sky, and I’m so tired of fighting.
“Okay,” I whisper. “A little longer.”
His phone buzzes somewhere in the room. He ignores it.
I pretend not to notice.
Morning comes again. The second, maybe. Time has lost meaning.
I’m draped across Elio’s chest, half-asleep, when the knock comes.
Sharp and urgent. Not the polite tap of staff delivering food.
My stomach drops before my brain catches up. Elio’s body goes rigid beneath me. Relaxed one second, coiled for violence the next.
“Stay here.” He’s already moving, sliding out from under me, reaching for the gray sweatpants he discarded sometime yesterday.
I watch him dress. The way the fabric hangs low on his hips, revealing the V of muscle that disappears beneath the waistband. Even now, after everything, my body responds to the sight of him.
He crosses to the door. Opens it enough to speak to whoever’s on the other side.
I can’t hear the words. Just the low rumble of voices, the tension in the guard’s posture, the way Elio’s shoulders tighten with every syllable.
“No.” His voice is flat. “I’m not leaving.”
More murmuring. The guard’s tone is urgent now, almost pleading.
“I said no.”
But even as he says it, his posture shifts. The refusal gives way to something else—his jaw working, his hand flexing at his side.
His eyes find mine. Just for a second. There’s a ghost of something in them he doesn’t want me to see. Something that makes my stomach drop.
“Violet.” He’s back at my side in three strides, hand cupping my jaw, tilting my face up. “I have to go.”
“What’s happening?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.” A lie. We both know it. “Stay in this room. Don’t leave for any reason. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Elio—”
He kisses me. Hard. Desperate. His fingers dig into my hip like he’s trying to memorize the feel of me.
“Stay,” he says against my mouth. “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
One more kiss. Then he’s gone.
The door closes behind him. The lock engages with a soft click.
And just like that, the bubble shatters.
Time stretches differently without him.
I try to distract myself. First with sleep, then with the stack of books sitting atop his nightstand, some in languages I don’t speak. I pick up a worn copy of Dante’s Inferno in the original Italian and stare at the pages without seeing them.
The sheets still smell like him. Like us. I pull them around me like a shield and wait.
Hours pass. Four? Five? The sun climbs, peaks, then descends toward the sea.
Business, I tell myself. It’s business. He deals with things all the time. He’ll be back.
But the dread settles in my stomach anyway. Heavy. Cold. Growing with every minute that passes without the door opening.
I think about my confession. I like your mind, Elio. The way his expression cracked open, just for a second, before he covered it. The way he touched me afterward, like I’d given him something precious.
What if he doesn’t come back?
Stop it. I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. Stop being dramatic. He’s fine.
But the silence presses in. The room that felt like a sanctuary now feels like a tomb.
I get up. Find his shirt, a white button-down that smells like him, and pull it on. It hangs to mid-thigh, loose and soft.
The window draws me in. Terraced gardens spilling toward the sea. Palermo glittering in the distance. Somewhere out there, something is happening. Something that pulled him away from this room, from this bed, from me.
He’ll be back.
He has to come back.
I shower to kill time, then return to the window, watching for him.
Finally, there are footsteps in the corridor.
My breath catches, and I spin toward the door, already moving, already reaching—
The lock disengages.
But it’s not him.
Three guards fill the doorway. Their expressions are blank. Professional. The kind of blank that means they’ve been trained not to react, not to show anything that might be used against them.
“Miss Murphy.” The tallest one speaks. His voice is flat. “You need to come with us.”
“Where’s Elio?”
“We’ll take you to him.”
“Where is he?”
No answer. Just that empty stare. Waiting.
The contrast is chilling. Hours ago, there were hands on my skin, warm and wanting. A voice murmuring my name. A body pressed against mine, inside mine, learning every inch of me. Now there are gloved hands. Distance. The cold formality of men following orders.
“Miss Murphy.” The guard’s voice is patient. Implacable. “Now, please.”
They step into the room. Not threatening. Not yet. But the message is clear.
This is not a request.
I look back at the bed. The twisted sheets. The indent where his body lay beside mine mere hours ago.
Then I follow the guards out of the room.