Chapter 18 Isabella #2
“Be careful with me. I might fall on you,” I say, taking Angelica's hand.
As she attempts to show me her spin technique, her little face serious with concentration, I feel a flicker of something.
Could Elena be right and if I play my hand right, I could find something more than what I have now, even if it isn’t freedom?
Later that evening, we return to the warmth of Roman's apartment, my cheeks still flushed from the cold and the unexpected pleasure of the afternoon.
Angelica rushes past me, chattering excitedly about her skating adventures to Mrs. Rossi while Roman helps me out of my coat.
"I'll make hot chocolate. You should warm up," he says, his voice softer than I've grown accustomed to.
The night before when he tried to talk to me, I figured it would be more of the back-and-forth we had in his office. But now it feels like he’s trying to be nice.
I nod, watching him move toward the kitchen with Angelica trailing behind him. There's an easy rhythm to their interaction, a comfortable familiarity I find myself envying.
Alone in the living room, I sink onto the couch and pull a throw blanket over my legs. The day plays back in my mind like a film I can't quite believe I starred in.
The Winter Village with its twinkling lights. Skating with Roman and Angelica. The genuine smile that crossed Angelica's face when she took my hand.
For a few hours, I forgot. I forgot I was essentially a prisoner. Forgot that Roman was my jailer. Forgot that our marriage was a business arrangement designed to keep me under surveillance.
I close my eyes, remembering the surprising gentleness in his hands as he fixed my scarf.
The solid warmth of Roman's arm around my waist when I nearly fell on the ice.
The way his eyes crinkled at the corners when Angelica made him laugh.
This is dangerous territory. Finding humanity in Roman makes everything more complicated.
It's easier when he's just the enforcer, the monster who might be ordered to kill me. Easier when I can hate him and everything he represents.
But today I glimpsed that part of him that had me wondering if we could have something more than an arrangement.
I hear laughter from the kitchen, Angelica's high-pitched giggle and Roman's deeper chuckle.
They're making hot chocolate, probably adding too many marshmallows the way Angelica likes.
I could join them. Pretend we're a normal family. Pretend this is the life I chose.
But the truth is that this isn't real. Whatever warmth I felt today, whatever connection seemed to spark between us, it exists within the confines of powerlessness on my part.
My eyes drift to the bookshelf across the room. Among the worn volumes and few framed photos sits a thick album I hadn't noticed before.
Curiosity pulls me from my seat. I pull the album from its place. The cover is simple dark leather with no markings.
When I open it, the first page shows Roman, younger, his face less lined with his arms wrapped around a beautiful woman.
Her smile lights up her entire face, and Roman looks… radiantly happy. Truly happy in a way I've never seen.
This must be Emilia.
I turn the page slowly. Here's Roman and Emilia at what appears to be their wedding. Another shows them on a beach somewhere.
Emilia's pregnant in the next series of photos, her hand protectively covering her rounded belly while Roman stands behind her, looking both proud and terrified.
Then Angelica appears, tiny, red-faced, wrapped in a pink blanket. Roman holds her with such careful tenderness, looking down at her with wonder in his eyes.
God, to have a man look at me like that. At our child like that.
Isn’t that one of the things my mother wanted for me? The ability to find true love, true happiness on my terms?
I flip through more pages. Angelica's first steps, birthday parties, Christmas mornings.
In every photo, Roman looks like a different man from the one I know.
Open. Vulnerable.
His smile reaches his eyes in a way I've only glimpsed in moments with Angelica.
I pause at a photo of the three of them ice skating, Angelica couldn't have been more than four.
Emilia looks thin and frail.
Roman is smiling, but fear and pain fill his eyes.
This must be right before she died.
All of a sudden, I feel like an interloper for having joined them today. Skating was their thing. This was his real life. His chosen life. It should have been Emilia, not me there today.
I trace the outline of Emilia's face with my fingertip. She was beautiful, not in the polished way I'd imagined but with a natural warmth that radiates even from these faded photographs.
A strange tightness forms in my chest. Is it jealousy? Not quite.
Something more complicated. I envy not just the woman, but the life captured in these images. The genuine happiness, the sense of belonging.
"She was extraordinary."
I startle, nearly dropping the album. Roman stands in the doorway, holding two mugs of hot chocolate. I close the album quickly, feeling like I've been caught trespassing.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"
"It's fine." He crosses the room and hands me a mug. "Angelica is having her cocoa with Mrs. Rossi who’s reading The Polar Express to her."
“Oh. That’s a good one.”
He sits next to me and opens the album. "She would have been thirty-seven next month," he says quietly. "Sometimes, I wonder what she'd think of… all this."
The way he says "all this" makes it clear he means our arrangement. Me.
"She would have hated it," I say before I think whether it’s wise. "The arrangement. Being forced to marry someone you don't love."
His lips twitch upward. "Yes. She would have."
An uncomfortable silence stretches between us. I find myself wanting to know more about this woman who clearly still holds his heart.
"You looked happy," I say finally. "In the photos."
"We were." He takes a long sip of his cocoa. "It wasn't complicated."
Unlike us, he doesn't say, but I hear it anyway.
"Today was nice." I surprise myself with the admission. "At the ice rink. Angelica seemed to enjoy herself."
Something shifts in his expression, an easing of the tension around his eyes.
"She did." He hesitates. "She asked if you could teach her to sew tomorrow."
I look up sharply. "You told me to stay away from her."
"I know what I said. I was angry." He’s not apologizing. He hasn’t even retracted his order.
“And now?”
“Now?” He sucks in a breath. “Now I want peace and calm in my home. I want my daughter to be happy and for you not to walk around me like I’m about to…”
“Kill me?”
He nods his affirmation.
I should still be afraid of him. I should still hate him for the life he represents, for the prison he's made of my existence.
But today at the ice rink, watching him with Angelica, looking through these photos, I'm beginning to see the man Elena described, the one who didn't know what hit him when he met Emilia.
And that complicates everything.
I move to stand, still feeling like I've intruded on something private. "I should put this back."
"No," Roman says, placing his hand on my forearm to keep me seated.
He picks up the album and opens it, turning to a page I hadn't reached. "This was Angelica's fourth birthday." His finger traces the edge of a photo showing Angelica with cake smeared across her face. "Emilia made the cake herself. Three layers. Took her all day."
I study his profile as he looks at the image. The hardness that usually defines his features has softened, replaced by something raw and honest.
It’s breathtaking.
"She looks so happy," I say, referring to both Angelica and Emilia.
"She was." Roman turns the page. "This was our last Christmas together."
The photo shows the three of them in front of a Christmas tree much larger than the one in his apartment now.
Emilia sits on the floor with Angelica in her lap, Roman kneeling beside them.
"What happened to her?" I ask softly, then immediately regret it. "I'm sorry, you don't have to—"
"Cancer," he says simply. "She fought. Fucking hell, did she fight." His shoulder presses against mine as he leans closer to show me another photo. "This was in Italy. Emilia had never been. She fell in love with it."
"It's beautiful," I say, taking in the stone villa surrounded by cypress trees.
"Angelica sometimes doesn’t remember her very well," he says after a moment. "These photos are all she has."
I don't know what to say to that. We sit in silence, his loss filling the space.
"You would have liked her," Roman says unexpectedly. "She was stubborn. Didn't take any of my shit."
That makes me smile despite myself. "I can imagine."
His fingers brush against mine as we both reach to turn the page. Neither of us pulls away immediately.
“She was part of this world, wasn’t she?” I ask, even as I think maybe I shouldn’t.
“Yes. Her father worked for Marco’s father.” He points to a picture of a couple in their sixties. “They didn’t last long after Emilia died. A part of me thinks it was a broken heart, but officially it was a heart attack for him and pneumonia for her.”
“So Angelica lost grandparents too?”
He nods. “My parents are retired in Florida. They tried to take Angelica from me.” His voice turns hard. “They don’t see her at all now. When she’s eighteen, she can visit them if she wants.”
So Roman’s protectiveness of Angelica extends even to his parents.
"Did Emilia mind what you do?"
He's quiet for a moment. "She knew who I was when we met. She used to say she fell in love with all of me, not just the parts that were easy to love."
His words settle in my chest, heavy with meaning. What would it be like to be loved that way? To be seen completely and accepted?
"She sounds remarkable," I say, and I mean it. Odds are he never had to scare the wits out of her, but she surely knew what he was capable of and chose him anyway.
"She was."
Roman turns another page, revealing a candid shot of him asleep on a couch with infant Angelica sprawled across his chest.
"This was after three nights of no sleep. Emilia took the photo before joining us."
I study his face in the photograph, younger, vulnerable, completely at peace. So different from the man I know now.
Yet sometimes, like today at the ice rink, I catch glimpses of that other Roman.
“You had what a lot of people wish they could have in a marriage,” I say.
“So I’ve heard.” He glances at me. “I suppose it’s what you wanted. I’m sorry you got stuck with me.”
I almost say, It could have been worse, until I remember it could always get worse.
"Thank you for sharing this with me."
He looks at me then, really looks at me, his dark eyes searching mine. "No one has seen these except me and Angelica. Maybe Mrs. Rossi."
I realize there is significance in this. I want to ask about it, but I’m unsure. I don’t want to dive too deeply into something that might make me feel like there’s something between us beyond family duty.
Instead, I carefully close the album and hold it out to him. Our fingers brush again as he takes it, and this time the contact feels deliberate.
My body aches for it to be true.
To touch him and discover the man Emelia had known. But I’m not her.
"Goodnight, Roman," I say, rising from the couch.
He doesn't answer immediately, and when I glance back, he's watching me with an expression I can't decipher.
"Goodnight, Isabella," he finally says, my name soft on his lips.
I walk to our bedroom, aware of his eyes following me until I reach the hall.
Confused feelings overwhelm me.
Things have shifted again, but I’d be a fool to think they meant anything.
He just wants me compliant and perhaps has figured out that pretending to care about me is one way to do that.
But oh, how I wish I could have the man Emilia had. The love. The devotion.
I recall Elena saying I was lucky to be matched to him because he was capable of love, but I know he’d never feel those feelings for me.
He had a once in a lifetime love. I’m happy for him.
Me? There’s no true love for me.