Chapter 30
THIRTY
VALENTINA FERRARA
The floor was cold beneath my bare feet as I moved down the dark hallway toward the kitchen.
The whole house was submerged in that particular kind of silence only places like this could create—luxury silence. Thick and muffled, as if even ordinary sounds were forbidden here. As if the walls had been trained to swallow everything.
My nightgown barely reached mid-thigh, a soft, thin fabric that didn’t hide much. But at two in the morning I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be awake.
Clara was sleeping deeply, still emotionally drained from the whiplash of the last few days. My girl was brave, but she was still small—four years old, barely past babyhood in the ways that mattered. Her mind and body were paying the price for a war adults were waging around her.
It made guilt sit in my veins like poison.
And Enrico…
Enrico was determined to make sure guilt became my default state.
After storming into my room like a hurricane, declaring I was his property, demanding I eat dinner with him every night, provoking me with nonsense meant only to cut, pinning me against a wall with his mouth too close to mine—and then leaving as abruptly as he’d entered—he’d spent the rest of the evening acting as if none of it had happened.
As if he hadn’t shaken something loose inside me.
But I couldn’t.
I remembered every breath he’d taken too close to my skin, and I hated myself for it. How could I still register his silence—still notice him—when the only purpose of his words was to hurt me?
At this hour he should’ve been locked away in some isolated corner of the house with his own frustrations.
Or, with any luck, choking slowly on his pride.
I poured myself a glass of water and leaned against the cold counter, letting the quiet wrap around me for a few fragile seconds.
For a brief moment, I almost forgot where I was.
Almost let myself pretend that this place could be home.
Then I heard footsteps.
Steady. Unhurried.
Painfully familiar.
I closed my eyes, not even bothering to curse—my body did it for me. Every muscle locked up in an instant, a reflex as automatic as breathing.
“Can’t sleep either?” Enrico’s voice cut through the silence, far too calm to be honest. Too slow not to be deliberate.
I took a slow breath, assembling myself before turning.
He was leaning against the kitchen doorway like he belonged there—black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, forearms bare, the muscle and veins visible under warm light. Tailored pants, slightly wrinkled as if he’d stopped caring halfway through the night.
Barefoot.
Relaxed.
Dangerously attractive.
Idiot, I told myself.
I looked away for half a heartbeat—an instinctive, stupid reaction—and the second I did, I knew he noticed.
“Or are you avoiding me so thoroughly,” he drawled, “you’d rather go thirsty than look at me after dinner?”
Heat crawled through my blood, slow and angry. I kept my spine straight. Took a measured sip of water. When I lifted my eyes again, I held his gaze like a weapon.
“I don’t hide from any man, Enrico,” I said, voice controlled, cold. “I simply appreciate the peace silence offers. Something you seem incapable of providing.”
A dangerous smile curved his mouth.
He walked into the kitchen, steps unhurried, each one calm enough to be intimidating, until he was close—too close.
“If you’re going to live here,” he said quietly, “you should start wearing something less… provocative for your little midnight walks.”
His eyes dropped over my body with slow, deliberate heat, burning along my skin as if the fabric didn’t exist.
“I have limits,” he continued, voice lower now. “And they’re dangerously short when I find you walking around my house in the middle of the night wearing that damn thing.”
A sharp spark flared inside me—something I tried to crush immediately.
I couldn’t.
My breath caught. A shiver ran up my spine that had nothing to do with cold.
Enrico took another step and erased the last inches between us. His heat mixed with mine. My heart sped up, traitorous and involuntary.
“Are you trying to provoke me, Valentina?” he murmured, so close his breath brushed my mouth. Warm. Slow. Intentional.
I lifted my chin slowly, defiant.
Locked my eyes to his.
“And if I am?”
His jaw flexed. His gaze darkened until it felt like storm clouds pressed against my skin. The air between us vibrated—tight with tension, with expectation.
My nipples tightened beneath the thin fabric, and I hated myself for noticing.
He leaned in further, reducing the distance to almost nothing. His voice came out rougher, darker—heavy with a promise that was both threat and temptation.
“Then don’t pull back when I give it back to you.”
My body screamed to give in.
My pride refused.
I didn’t step back. I didn’t surrender.
I held his gaze and burned from the inside out with the insane, reckless urge to grab him by his shirt and prove I wasn’t the only one who could play this game.
But pride kept my bones rigid.
And he knew it.
Maybe—just maybe—that silent resistance was exactly what was driving him crazy.
I stepped away slowly, breaking the dangerous closeness like it was a wire I couldn’t afford to touch. I walked toward the hallway, feeling the heat of his stare on my back.
I didn’t have to look behind me to know he followed.
Firm steps. Slow steps.
Infuriatingly calm.
I stopped at my bedroom door and felt him approach again. I breathed in, then threw him a look over my shoulder, sharp as glass.
“Are you going to keep following me?”
Enrico’s eyes stayed locked on mine—arrogant, unshaken, absolutely certain of his power.
“Until you learn to obey simple instructions.”
I yanked the door open and stepped inside, expecting him to stay in the hallway.
He didn’t.
The soft creak of wood under his feet warned me before I even turned.
“This house has twelve bedrooms, Enrico,” I said, voice low with anger. “Are you sure you want to die in this one?”
He closed the door behind him slowly.
The soft click sounded like a warning.
The bedside lamp cast our shadows across the wall—his larger, darker, more imposing than it had any right to be.
“Dying in here would be poetic,” he said quietly, moving closer. “Considering this is where you decided to forget we have an arrangement.”
I raised an eyebrow, crossing my arms with a calm I didn’t actually feel.
“An arrangement?” I asked. “I thought it was just a threat dressed up like a proposal.”
Enrico’s mouth curved into a half-smile that never reached his eyes—a smile I remembered far too well.
“Proposals come with flowers, Valentina,” he said. “What I gave you was an order.” He stopped close enough that I could feel the change in air. “Did you really think you could challenge me and then sleep peacefully afterward?”
I held his gaze, refusing to move.
“I sleep peacefully because you no longer have the power to take my sleep from me.”
Lie.
My hands were cold. My pulse was too fast. My fingers trembled slightly at my sides.
Enrico noticed instantly.
He took two steps.
Only two—but the space around us turned hotter, denser, electrified with tension.
“You really think this is going to work?” he asked quietly, tilting his chin toward the room, the hallway, the minimal distance between us. “Living here. Pretending all this hatred between us is stable.”
I didn’t retreat.
“Unlike you, Enrico,” I said, “I’m excellent at pretending.”
His eyes pinned me.
“Are you?” he asked. “Then why is your chest rising and falling like you just ran a marathon?”
I swallowed, irritation flaring.
“Maybe it’s disgust,” I shot back, voice low and steady. “I tend to react that way around certain creatures.”
He gave a quiet laugh—short, dangerously amused—never taking his eyes off me.
“And yet,” he said slowly, gaze dragging over my face, “you didn’t leave the room. You didn’t tell me to get out.”
“Because I don’t need to prove anything to you.”
“Of course not,” he said, voice dripping with irony. “You only need to keep pretending you don’t feel anything.”
Silence settled between us like a dare.
Neither of us gave. Neither of us moved.
For a fraction of a second, his gaze dropped to my mouth.
Less than a heartbeat.
But I saw it.
And I saw the moment he realized I saw it.
“Good night, Valentina,” he said finally, a cynical smile playing at his lips.
He turned toward the door with deliberate calm, fingers closing around the handle with slow provocation. And before he stepped out, he glanced over his shoulder and said:
“Lock that door. I don’t plan on staying this controlled forever.”
He left.
The door shut softly behind him, but his warning stayed suspended in the air like smoke.
I stood exactly where I was, staring at the wood, my heart hammering too fast.
And in a silent, deliberate act of defiance—
I didn’t lock it.
The quiet returned.
But the heat he left behind clung to my skin, lingering in the room like a cursed perfume.
I stared at the door.
Breathed in.
Then, like a woman split in two, I crossed the room and turned the lock.
Click.
My chest eased for half a second.
Then I unlocked it again.
Click.
I stayed there, hand on the knob, staring at it as if it could decide for me. As if it could choose safety over pride.
I exhaled hard and rubbed my arms with cold hands. I still felt cold even in the still air, even wrapped in fabric, even in a bed that cost more than my entire life used to.
I crossed the room, ears straining like I expected him to return—expected him to storm back in with venom and eyes that didn’t feel like poison until it was too late.
I turned off the lamp and slipped into bed carefully.
Sleep didn’t come.
The sheets were soft. The pillows smelled clean. The mattress was huge.
Everything was perfect.
Everything was wrong.
I turned onto my side, then onto my back. I shifted again and again, exhausted but unable to surrender. My mind ran in circles, replaying the night like punishment.
His voice.
His stare.
His breath too close.
And above all, the altar.
The humiliation still burning as if it had happened an hour ago instead of years.
Eventually, exhaustion won.
Not gently.
I fell into sleep the way someone falls into water—without control.
And the nightmare found me first.
It started low, like a cruel whisper that wouldn’t stop.
“I will not marry this woman.”
Again.
Again.
Again.
The cathedral spun around me—vast, cold, dizzying. People in the pews smiled with sharpened teeth. The benches turned into thorns. And Enrico—
Enrico stood at the altar and looked at me with eyes like stone. Distant. Dead.
I tried to run.
My legs wouldn’t move.
They were heavy as lead, pinned to the floor. My belly was huge—pregnant, swollen, impossible to carry. My dress—white and beautiful—was stained dark red with blood, the pain seeping through it like ink.
Then he was too close.
Too close.
His mouth near my ear, his words slicing deeper than knives.
“You will never touch me again. You will never breathe the same air as me.”
I screamed, but no sound came out.
No one heard.
Not even him.
“Please—listen to me,” I begged, my voice dissolving into nothing, swallowed by the cathedral.
I woke up gasping.
Sweat on my skin. My body shaking. A scream trapped in my throat like a hand around my windpipe.
My hands flew to my face, trembling, and the tears came before my mind fully caught up—silent and unstoppable.
I curled in the center of the bed, pulling my knees to my chest, desperate for something solid, something safe. My breathing came in ragged bursts while I fought a sob I couldn’t control anymore.
And there in the dark—where no one could see me break—
I finally let myself cry.
I cried for everything I refused to show during the day.
I cried because no matter how much anger protected me in front of him…
at night, when no one was watching—
it was always the pain that won.