Chapter Eight The Cost of Silence
Two weeks into the marriage, Elena learned that Dante Moretti's world ran on a currency far more dangerous than money: silence.
Nobody in the house on Larkspur Row spoke about what Dante did during the long hours he disappeared into the city.
Nobody spoke about the men who came and went from the study late at night, voices low, sometimes raised, once accompanied by a sound Elena told herself was a chair being thrown and not anything worse.
Nobody spoke about the thin white scar that curved along Dante's ribs, which she'd glimpsed once when his shirt rode up as he shrugged off his jacket, and which he'd covered again so quickly she wondered if she'd imagined it.
She asked him about it at dinner, because she was tired of the silence, tired of feeling like a guest in her own marriage.
"It's nothing," he said, not looking up from his plate.
"It's not nothing. It's a scar."
"Elena." A warning, quiet but unmistakable, the coldness she'd almost forgotten sliding back into his voice like a blade returning to its sheath.
"There are parts of my life I will not discuss with you.
Not because I don't trust you. Because some things, once you know them, cannot be unknown, and I would rather you sleep well at night than understand everything I've done to make sure you can. "
"That's not fair."
"No," he agreed. "It isn't. Very little about this is.
" He finally looked up, and something in his gaze had gentled, just slightly, an apology he didn't have the vocabulary to say outright.
"Ask me anything else. Ask me what my mother's name was.
Ask me what I wanted to be before I was ten years old and my father decided for me.
I'll answer those. But not this. Please. "
The please undid her more than anything else could have. She had not expected a man like Dante Moretti to know the word, let alone use it, and something in her chest ached at the crack of vulnerability in it.
"Your mother's name?" she asked instead, softly.
"Renata." His mouth curved, faint and unguarded, a smile she hadn't seen before — not the sharp, satisfied smile of a man getting what he wanted, but something almost boyish.
"She died when I was nineteen. She used to sing while she cooked, badly, on purpose, to make me laugh.
I haven't been able to stand anyone singing in a kitchen since. "
Elena's eyes stung, unexpectedly. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It was a long time ago." He reached across the table then, an uncharacteristic gesture in the middle of dinner, and covered her hand with his. "Thank you for asking about her instead of pushing about the scar."
She turned her hand over beneath his, let their fingers lace together, and did not pull away.