Chapter Four The House on Larkspur Row
The Moretti estate sat behind iron gates on Larkspur Row, a house so large Elena got lost twice in her first week trying to find the kitchen.
It smelled of old wood and lemon polish, of money that had been in a family so long it no longer needed to announce itself.
Portraits of Moretti men — fathers, grandfathers, men with Dante's same pale eyes — lined the main staircase, watching her pass with the same unreadable expression their descendant wore so easily.
"You'll have the east wing," Dante told her, the morning after their wedding night, once she'd finally found her way to her own suite — separate from his, filled already with her unpacked things, as though he'd known she'd want a space that was entirely her own even after a night that had been entirely his.
He said it simply, without ceremony, as though the intimacy between them the night before hadn't changed the practical shape of the house at all — though something in the way his eyes lingered on her said otherwise.
Now he stood in the doorway of her new sitting room in a gray suit, already dressed for whatever business consumed his mornings, watching her survey the space he'd apparently had decorated for her — soft creams and blues, a reading nook by the window, shelves already half-filled with books.
"How did you know I like to read?" she asked, before she could stop herself.
"I told you. I know things." He stepped further into the room, close enough that she caught the cedar-and-cold scent of him again.
"Your favorite color is the pale blue of a winter sky, not summer.
You read three books a week when you're not being watched by your mother, mostly things with unhappy endings, which tells me you don't trust happy ones.
You've had the same four friends since primary school and you haven't called any of them since the engagement, because you don't know how to explain this to them yet. "
Elena stared at him. "You had someone follow me."
"I had someone learn you." He said it without apology, the distinction apparently obvious and important to him. "There's a difference between watching someone to hurt them and watching someone because you refuse to marry a stranger."
"We are strangers."
"Not anymore." He reached out, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with two fingers, a gesture so gentle it didn't match anything else about him, and Elena had to remind herself to breathe.
"You'll have whatever you need in this house.
Books. Clothes. Anything. The only thing I ask —" his voice dropped, quieter, and something colder moved beneath it, "— is that you don't leave these grounds without Marco.
Ever. Not to the market, not to see a friend, not for any reason, without him beside you. "
"I'm not a prisoner."
"No." His hand stilled at her jaw, tilting her face up to his. "You're my wife. And there are people in this city who would very much enjoy taking something of mine to make a point. I won't give them the chance."
"Is that what I am? A point to be made?"
Something flickered behind his pale eyes — irritation, or maybe, she thought, something closer to hurt, though she couldn't imagine a man like Dante Moretti capable of being hurt by anything a person like her could say.
"You're the only thing in my life I haven't been able to plan for," he said, low.
"Every deal, every man, every enemy — I know their moves before they make them.
I have never, not once, sat across from someone and not known exactly what they'd do next.
" His thumb moved once, barely, against her cheekbone.
"You looked at me in your father's study like you wanted to set me on fire.
Nobody has looked at me like that in fifteen years. "
"Would you have let me?"
"Let you what?"
"Set you on fire."
For a moment, he actually laughed — a short, surprised sound, as though it had escaped before he could stop it, and it transformed his whole face the way it had at the altar. "No," he admitted. "But I would have respected the attempt."
He left her then, without another word, and Elena stood alone in her new sitting room with her heart going much too fast, staring at the door he'd closed behind him, and thought: this is going to be so much harder than hating him.