Chapter Six Rules of the House
Marco, it turned out, was not simply a bodyguard but something closer to a shadow — a broad, quiet man in his forties who fell into step three feet behind Elena wherever she went, spoke only when spoken to, and reported, she was certain, everything back to Dante.
"Does he tell you to watch what I eat, too?" she asked, on the fourth day, after Marco had trailed her to the kitchen and back to the library without a word.
"No, Signora." A faint twitch of his mouth — almost a smile. "Only where you go, and who you speak to. He worries."
"He barely knows me."
"With respect, Signora, he has done nothing but learn you for the better part of three months. I don't think 'barely' is the word I'd use."
That stopped her. "Three months?"
Marco's expression shuttered, as though he'd said more than he meant to. "You should ask him yourself."
She did, that night, at the long dining table where they ate dinner together in near-silence most evenings, Dante at the head, Elena at his right hand, a distance of careful feet between them that felt, some nights, like a mile.
"Marco said you've known about me for three months," she said, over a dinner she'd barely touched. "Not eleven days. Three months."
Dante didn't look up from his plate immediately.
When he did, there was no apology in his face, only that same unbothered certainty.
"I've known about your father's debt for over a year.
I've known about you specifically for three months — since I decided the debt would be collected this way, and not another. "
"What was the other way?"
"You don't want to know the other way."
"I asked."
He set down his fork, folded his hands, and regarded her with the patient, faintly dangerous look of a man deciding how much truth a person could hold.
"The other way was that I take the house, the business, and whatever assets your father has left, and your parents move somewhere considerably smaller and considerably less pleasant, assuming your father's kneecaps survive the collection process at all.
That was the offer on the table for over a year, Elena.
I changed it the day Marco showed me a photograph of you leaving your father's building — you were laughing at something, your head tipped back, and you had no idea anyone was watching.
" His jaw tightened, faintly. "I decided, looking at that photograph, that I would rather own the debt than collect it. "
"That's not romantic. That's insane."
"I never claimed to be romantic." A ghost of that dangerous smile. "I claimed to want you. Those are different things, and I'd rather you understand the difference now than be disappointed by it later."
Elena studied him — the hard lines of his face, the eyes that missed nothing, the stillness of a man who had built an empire on knowing exactly what he wanted before anyone else in the room did — and felt something complicated settle in her chest, something that wasn't quite fear and wasn't quite anything she wanted to name yet.
"What happens," she asked slowly, "if I never stop hating you for how this started?"
Dante Moretti considered her for a long moment, the candlelight throwing shadows across the sharp planes of his face.
"Then I will have a beautiful wife who hates me," he said, "and I will still consider it the best deal I have ever made.
" He rose, came around the table, and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head — the first time he'd touched her since the wedding — lingering a moment too long, breathing her in like something he still couldn't quite believe he'd been allowed to keep.
"But I don't think you'll hate me forever, tesoro.
I'm patient. And I intend to be very, very good to you. "
He left her sitting there, heart hammering, and Elena pressed her fingers briefly to the spot on her head where his lips had been, furious at herself for wanting him to do it again.