6. Nova #3
“Because I’ve been watching you for three years,” he says finally.
“Because I knew what my mother was doing to you and I didn’t stop it, and I have to live with that every day.
Because I told myself that walking away was the right thing to do, the noble thing, when really it was just the cowardly thing, the thing that let me keep my hands clean while you suffered. ”
My heart stops.
“What - what do you mean, you’ve been watching me?”
“I mean I never stopped.” His voice is raw. “After that first dinner - when Dante brought you home, when I saw you laugh, when I realized what my mother was going to do to you - I left. I told myself I was leaving because I couldn’t stand to watch. But I never actually stopped watching.”
I should be alarmed. Should be frightened. A man I’ve known for three weeks just admitted to surveilling me for three years - that’s not romantic, that’s obsessive, that’s the kind of thing that gets discussed on true crime podcasts.
But I don’t feel alarmed.
I feel… seen.
For three years, I thought I was invisible. I thought no one noticed the bruises, the flinches, the slow erosion of everything I used to be. I thought I was suffering in silence, screaming into a void that didn’t care.
But someone was watching. Someone saw.
Someone cared.
“Why didn’t you help me?” I whisper.
His arm tightens around me. “Because the one time I tried, I made it worse.” The words come out rough, dragged up from somewhere he doesn’t visit often.
“A year in, I went to Dante. Told him what our mother really was - what she’d done to me growing up, what she was doing to you.
He laughed in my face. Said I was jealous. Said I’d always resented the family.”
“Then I went to her. Stood in her drawing room and told her I knew. That if she put one more mark on you, I’d take everything she had.
” A pause, and his arm goes rigid around me.
“She broke your wrist that same week. The ‘fall.’ And she made certain I heard exactly how it happened - made certain I understood she’d done it because I’d dared to reach for you.
That every time I moved against her where anyone could see, you would be the one who bled for it. ”
“So I stopped reaching where she could see. I went quiet. I started building something she couldn’t laugh off - medical records, witnesses, a case that wouldn’t care how many judges she owned.
” His voice frays. “And I told myself patience was the same thing as love. That if I was careful enough, I could get you out without getting you killed.”
“But careful is just a prettier word for coward when it’s someone else doing the bleeding.” He breathes. “And I wanted you. From the first moment. I told myself that if I stayed away, if I kept my distance, the wanting would go away.”
“Did it?”
“No.” The word is barely audible. “It got worse. Every report I received - every update on your well-being, every piece of evidence that she was destroying you - it just made it worse. Made me want to burn it all down just to get you out.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because burning it down would have meant becoming her.” His lips press against my neck again, harder this time, almost desperate. “And I swore a long time ago that I would never become her.”
We lie there in silence. The morning light is getting stronger, streaming through the tall windows, turning the room from silver-blue to gold. I can feel his heart pounding against my back, can feel the slight tremor in his hands, can feel how much this confession is costing him.
“You should hate me,” he says.
“I don’t.”
“You should be afraid of me.”
“I’m not.”
“Nova-”
“I’m grateful.” I turn in his arms - carefully, slowly, until we’re face to face on the pillow. His eyes are dark and tortured, his face drawn with something that looks like shame. “You’re the only one who believed me. The only one who came for me. The only one who-”
I stop. Reach up. Touch his face.
He flinches like I’ve struck him.
“Luca.”
“Don’t.” His voice cracks. “Don’t be grateful.
Don’t look at me like I’m some kind of hero.
I watched you suffer for three years and what I did was never enough.
I tried once, the wrong way, and she made you bleed for it - and instead of finding a better way fast enough, I went quiet and called it patience.
I could have pulled you out at any point and burned the rest down.
But I told myself careful was the same as saving you, and I let my mother-”
“She’s not your mother.”
He blinks.
“She’s the woman who raised you,” I say. “That’s not the same thing. A mother protects. A mother nurtures. A mother doesn’t-” I stop. Take a breath. “Whatever Vivienne is, she’s not your mother. And her sins are not your fault.”
Something breaks behind his eyes.
I see it happen - some wall he’s been holding up for years, some carefully constructed barrier between himself and his own guilt.
It crumbles, and suddenly he’s not the untouchable mafia prince who pulled me off a street corner.
He’s just a man. A broken man, carrying wounds as deep as mine, trying to figure out how to live with what he’s done and what he’s failed to do.
“I’m going to destroy her,” he whispers. “Everything she has. Everything she is. I’m going to tear it down piece by piece and make her watch while it burns.”
“I know.”
“And when it’s done, when she’s finished, I’m going to ask you to stay.” His hand comes up to cover mine where it rests on his cheek. “Not because you owe me. Not because you’re grateful. But because I-”
He stops.
“Because you what?”
His eyes search my face. Looking for something. Finding something.
“Because I don’t want to be alone anymore,” he says finally. “And I don’t think you do either.”
I should respond. Should say something to match the raw honesty he’s just offered me. But my throat is tight and my eyes are burning and all I can do is lie there, looking at him, feeling the weight of everything between us.
“We should get up,” I manage finally. “The doctor-”
“The doctor can wait.”
“Luca-”
“Just-” His hand tightens on mine. “Just give me one more minute. Please.”
I give him ten.
We lie there in the golden morning light, face to face on his pillow, and we don’t touch except where our hands are joined. We don’t speak except with our eyes. We don’t move except to breathe.
And something settles between us. Something unspoken and fragile and new.
Something that feels like the beginning of everything.
***
Neither of us mentions it at breakfast.
He’s already at the table when I come downstairs, dressed in his usual dark trousers and rolled-sleeve shirt, reading something on his phone. He glances up when I enter, and our eyes meet, and the air between us goes thick with everything we’re not saying.
“Coffee’s hot,” he says.
“Thank you.”
I sit. Pour myself a cup. Study the grain of the wooden table like it contains the secrets of the universe.
I slept in his bed last night.
I woke up in his arms.
He told me he’s been watching me for three years.
He told me he wants me to stay.
The silence stretches. Neither of us seems to know how to break it, or maybe neither of us wants to. Maybe the silence is safer than the alternative, than acknowledging what passed between us in the dark.
“The doctor comes at two,” Luca says finally, his voice carefully neutral. “He wants to check the progress on your wrist.”
“Okay.”
“I have business in the city this afternoon. I should be back by dinner.”
“Okay.”
More silence.
I look up, and he’s watching me. That same intense, focused attention he always gives me, but there’s something different in it now. Something that wasn’t there before.
He told me he wanted me since the first dinner.
He told me watching me suffer was killing him.
He told me-
“Nova.”
“Yes?”
“Tonight.” He sets down his coffee cup. “If you have another nightmare.”
I wait.
“My door is open.”
It’s not a command. Not a request. Just a statement. A fact.
My door is open.
Come to me if you need to.
Come to me if you want to.
“Okay,” I say.
And I watch the tension drain out of his shoulders, just a little.
***
I don’t go to him that night.
Not because I don’t want to - God, I want to, want it so badly I can barely breathe - but because I need to prove something to myself. I need to know that I can survive the darkness alone. I need to know that my need for him is about him, not just about the safety he represents.
So I lie in my own bed, in my own room, and I stare at the ceiling and I don’t sleep.
The nightmare comes anyway.
Click. Click. Click.
Perfume.
“Did you really think you could run?”
I wake gasping, drenched in sweat, and I’m out of bed before I’m fully conscious. Down the corridor. To his door.
I stop.
My hand is raised to knock. My heart is pounding. My entire body is trembling with the aftershocks of the dream and the desperate, overwhelming need to be close to him.
You don’t have to knock, a voice whispers. He said his door is open.
I push it open.
The room is dark, but not completely - moonlight streams through the windows, just like last night, turning everything silver and shadow. And there, in the massive bed, is Luca.
He’s awake.
He’s sitting up against the headboard, watching the door, like he’s been waiting for me. Like he knew I would come.
“Nightmare?” he asks quietly.
I nod.
He lifts the covers.
I cross the room and climb in beside him, and this time there’s no hesitation. No careful distance. I press myself against his side, my head on his shoulder, my arm across his stomach, and his arms come around me immediately.
“I’m here,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’ve got you.”
“I know.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
His hand strokes down my back. Slow. Soothing. “Try.”
I close my eyes. I listen to his heartbeat. I feel the warmth of him surrounding me, the strength of him holding me, and I think:
This is becoming a habit.
This is becoming something I need.
This is becoming dangerous.
But dangerous doesn’t feel like something to run from anymore.