Chapter 9 #3
‘Good.’ He glances at me, his gaze unreadable. ‘And the clothing issue?’
The woman pivots and gestures towards a pair of lacquered doors. ‘Six couturiers, present and next season. Exclusive selection. As requested.’
Renzo turns and I follow his line of sight.
The double doors to a smaller living room are open and inside, rows upon rows of clothing await inspection.
Dresses, silks, and linens hang like a thousand whispered choices I’m not ready to make.
And beside each row, tall towers of shoes.
Delicate, strappy, decadent. Perfume bottles glint on a vanity table, faintly mocking the simplicity I once wore like armour.
A firm hand arrives at my back and I’m propelled towards the spectacle. ‘What is this?’ I ask, even though I suspect the answer.
‘Your new wardrobe. Whatever you choose will be relocated to your suite upstairs.’
I shake my head. Glance down at my habit. The only uniform I’ve known in six years. I grow dizzy with the shifting sands beneath my feet and I struggle to steady myself.
‘Renzo. This morning I was… I was… You can’t expect me to simply turn myself inside out, Signore. And even if I wanted to, this… this is obscene,’ I breathe.
Renzo’s lips twitch with displeasure. ‘You’ll need clothes, baby. And I love that you used my name. I look forward to hearing more of it.’
I shiver at the heat in his voice. ‘I have clothes,’ I snap, clutching at my habit. ‘God provides.’
‘Yeah?’ His gaze drags over me, slow, sinful. ‘When He sends Dior and silk to your doorstep, you might want to say thank you.’
I stiffen. ‘I will not wear—’
‘You will,’ he interrupts, firmly but not unkindly. ‘When you’re ready. No one’s forcing you, Benedetta.’
He says the name like it’s a private joke he’ll stop telling when I remember who I am.
‘But fair enough if you need time to acclimatise. We all do, it seems,’ he adds under his breath.
Then he leaves me standing in that room full of temptation, the click of his crutch on the marble a steady heartbeat until it fades away.
* * *
I spend the next few days trying to reconcile the contradictions of my new existence.
Every morning, sunlight floods the room through tall windows. The sea air curls into my hair and the sound of gulls replaces the convent bells.
The doctor visits with quiet efficiency, checking vitals, asking questions, noting how often I drift when I speak.
Renzo comes and goes like weather, sometimes silent and brooding, sometimes all fire and motion. He insists on daily physiotherapy, curses through every step, and yet somehow still manages to look like a man made of control.
I try not to stare when he goes through his motions, shirt damp with sweat, jaw tight with pain.
I fail more often than I admit.
The wardrobe remains untouched until the third day, when a housekeeper brings in laundry and leaves a soft linen dress on my bed. It’s white, simple and long enough to cover almost everything.
‘For the heat,’ she says kindly. ‘The Signore worries.’
I touch the fabric like it might burn me. It smells faintly of citrus and sun.
I wear it the next morning, convincing myself it’s practical. I tell myself I’m not surrendering. Just adapting.
Renzo notices. Of course he does.
He’s standing on the terrace, overlooking the sea, when I step out. His gaze slides over me, slowly and deliberately, filled with enough heat to power a small city. And as I watch, unable to tear my gaze away, something darkens in his eyes.
‘You’re shedding your skin,’ he murmurs.
‘I’m dressing for the weather. Apparently you worry.’
‘Sure, I do,’ he says, smirking, but there’s something softer under the tease, something like reverence. ‘About a lot of things.’
I turn away, pretending to watch the horizon, but my heart thunders like the surf below.
Over the next three days, more layers fall away – the heavy stockings, the veil, the starched undershirts. Piece by piece, I begin to resemble the woman in the mirror more than the nun in the chapel.
Yet one thing remains: the wimple. I can’t let it go. It’s the last thread between who I was and what I fear becoming.
He never mentions it. Not directly. But I catch him watching sometimes – the way his eyes linger on that simple strip of fabric as if it’s both a barrier and a promise.
One evening, I find him in the palazzo’s courtyard.
The sun is melting into the sea, gilding his skin in light. He looks up when I approach, and for a heartbeat neither of us speaks. The silence hums with everything we can’t say.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ I whisper.
He smiles faintly, gaze softening in a way that terrifies me. ‘Because I’m fucking dying to see you,’ he says. ‘All of you.’
My breath catches. ‘You already can.’
‘Not yet.’ His voice drops to a husky rumble. ‘Not until you take that off. Not until I see your hair. I’ve imagined it a thousand times, running my fingers through it, wrapping it around my wrist. Gripping it tight when I take your mouth or you take my cock. It’s driving me fucking insane.’
The bluntness of it steals my words. Heat rushes up my neck, my fingers trembling where they touch the hem of my sleeve.
‘You can’t say that to me.’
‘I can. They’re not offensive. They’re the truth.
And you’re on shore leave from piousness, remember?
You can do whatever you want. Including kissing and fucking.
And for the sake of every man in the thousand-mile radius and be-fucking-yond, the only person you’ll be fucking and kissing is me.
Because if someone else so much as dreams of you, I’ll hunt him through every church and alleyway in Sicily, slit his throat…
and I’ll still come home to lift your skirt like the world didn’t just bleed for us.
Because I’m the one who found you. I’m the one you melt for.
And if some bastard even looks at you like he’s worthy, I’ll send him to meet your God myself. ’
I feel my mouth gaping with every dirty, raw word. ‘You’re… crazy.’
‘I’ve been telling you that for days, baby.’
‘And I cannot… will not… do those things you speak so disgracefully about,’ I whisper.
He takes a step closer, slow and careful, the after-effects of his physio making him move with a kind of rough grace.
‘You will,’ he murmurs. ‘When you’re ready.
Not before. But when you do, cara mia’ – his eyes flare gold in the dying light – ‘it’ll be beautifully dirty and holy.
The kind they’ll sing about beneath the Sistine Chapel. ’
He’s demented. I should turn away. I should pray.
Instead I stand there, the wind teasing the edge of my veil, thinking that maybe holiness and hunger aren’t opposites after all.
That night, I can’t sleep. I lie awake listening to the sea and the rhythm of his footsteps in the corridor outside my door.
I tell myself it’s wrong. That I am being tested. That the ache low in my belly is temptation, not truth.
But when I close my eyes, all I see is his hand lifting the edge of my wimple, his voice a sin I’ve already half-committed.
And for the first time since my life was turned upside down, I want to remember everything. Just so I know how to fight this hold Renzo Salvatore has on me.