Chapter Fourteen Under Watch
After the lily, everything changed. Marco was no longer a discreet three feet behind her — he was joined by a second man, then a third, until Elena felt less like a wife and more like a piece of state property being escorted between rooms. Cameras appeared at every entrance to Larkspur Row within two days.
Dante began sleeping with a gun on the nightstand, something he'd apparently kept elsewhere before, out of some old instinct to shield her from the reality of his world. Now he didn't bother hiding it at all.
"I feel like I'm in a cage," she told him one night, watching him check the locks on the terrace doors for the second time that evening.
"You're in a fortress," he corrected, without turning. "There's a difference."
"Not to the person inside it."
That made him stop. He crossed the room, sat on the edge of the bed beside her, and for once didn't reach for composure first. "I know this isn't the life I promised you," he said quietly.
"I know 'I'll protect you' sounds different when it means armed men at every door.
But I would rather you resent the walls and stay breathing than have your freedom and end up like—" He cut himself off.
"Like the woman Salvatore mentioned."
His jaw tightened. "Yes."
"Tell me about her." Elena reached for his hand, lacing their fingers together, giving him the space to say it without pushing. "Please, Dante. I think I have a right to know what I'm being protected from."
He was quiet for a long moment, his thumb tracing slow circles over her knuckles.
"Her name was Isabel," he said finally. "She was engaged to my cousin, Nico, six years ago.
The Calvettis wanted territory Nico controlled, and when he wouldn't sell, they took her instead — used her to force his hand.
He gave them everything. It didn't matter.
" His voice had gone flat, distant, a man reciting a memory he'd worn smooth from replaying it too many times.
"They returned her a week later. She was never the same.
Nico wasn't either. He left the family within the year, and none of us have spoken to him since.
" His eyes met hers, dark with something that looked, for the first time, like real vulnerability.
"That is the world you married into, Elena.
That is what a lily on your doorstep means.
I would rather you hate every camera and every guard in this house than let anything close to that happen to you. "
Elena's throat had gone tight. She reached up, cupped his jaw the way he so often cupped hers, and felt him lean, almost helplessly, into her palm. "Okay," she whispered. "Then I'll hate the cameras. But I won't hate you for them."
He turned his face and pressed a kiss to her palm, his eyes closing briefly, and for a moment he looked less like the Don of the Moretti family and more like a man simply grateful not to be facing this alone.