Chapter 8
Giulia
SONG: BE QUIET AND DRIVE BY DEFTNESS
Day three in my gilded cage, and I'd already counted every book in the house library.
Two thousand four hundred and seventy-three, to be exact.
Organized by genre and then alphabetically by author.
Someone had taken great care with the collection.
Leather-bound classics sat next to contemporary fiction.
History texts filled an entire wall. There was even a small section on Byzantine studies that made my chest ache.
Papa must have told someone about my interests. Or maybe Mamma had provided a list. Either way, the library was perfect. Beautiful mahogany shelves, reading chairs positioned near tall windows, and a fireplace that Margaret kept constantly lit despite the mild weather.
I should have been in heaven.
Instead, I couldn't focus on a single page. I'd started three different books since arriving, putting them all down after a few paragraphs. The words just wouldn't stick. My brain kept replaying that last morning in the penthouse. The coldness in Dimitri's eyes. The casual way he'd dismissed me.
I'll handle my needs however I see fit.
I slammed the book shut. Some Russian novel about doomed love that felt a little too on the nose.
"Mrs. Morozova?" Helen appeared in the doorway. The cook was in her fifties with kind eyes and a permanent flour dusting on her apron. "Lunch is ready. I made that tortellini you mentioned liking."
I hadn't mentioned liking anything in particular. But Helen seemed determined to feed me into submission. Every meal arrived perfectly prepared and thoughtfully presented. As if the right food might make me forget I was essentially under house arrest.
"Thank you. I'll be there in a moment."
She hesitated. "You barely touched breakfast."
"I wasn't hungry."
"You weren't hungry yesterday either. Or the day before." Her voice was gentle but firm. "You need to eat, dear."
Dear. Like I was a child who needed coaxing instead of a twenty-one-year-old woman trapped in a marriage she didn't understand. But Helen was just doing her job. None of this was her fault.
"You're right. I'm sorry." I stood and followed her to the dining room.
The table could seat twelve, but Margaret always set a single place at the head. Crystal and china and fresh flowers that probably cost more than my monthly rent used to. All for an audience of one.
I sat and picked at the pasta. It was excellent. Of course it was. Everything in this house was excellent. Excellent food. Excellent sheets. Excellent isolation.
"Is everything alright?" Helen hovered nearby, worried.
"It's perfect. Really. You're an amazing cook."
"My grandmother was from Naples. She taught me all the old recipes." Helen smiled. "If there's anything specific you'd like, you just let me know. I can make anything."
"Maybe tomorrow we could cook together?" The words came out before I'd really thought them through. "I never learned properly. My mother tried to teach me, but I was always too busy with school."
Helen's face lit up. "I'd love that! We could start with something simple. A good tomato sauce maybe."
"That sounds nice."
After lunch I wandered through the house. Again. I'd done this every day since arriving. Walking the same routes, counting the same doors, like a prisoner memorizing her cell.
The mansion had twelve bedrooms. Eight bathrooms. A gym I'd never use. A wine cellar that could stock a restaurant. A media room with a screen the size of my old apartment. Every room was tastefully decorated and completely impersonal.
No family photos. No personal touches. Nothing that indicated an actual human lived here. Because no one did. This was just a place Dimitri had bought to store his unwanted wife.
I ended up in the master bedroom. My bedroom now, I supposed. Though calling it mine felt presumptuous. Everything belonged to Dimitri. The house. The staff. Me.
I sat on the bed and stared at my phone. Three missed calls from Mamma. Two from Isabella. A text from Papa asking if I was settling in.
I hadn't responded to any of them. What would I say? That I was fine? That everything was wonderful? That my husband had abandoned me before the honeymoon ended?
My phone buzzed with a new message.
Unknown number: This is Maxim. Dimitri asked me to check in. Do you need anything?
I stared at the text. Dimitri couldn't even check on me himself. He had to send his enforcer to make sure I hadn't burned the house down or escaped.
Me: I'm fine. Thank you.
Maxim: The guards report you haven't left the property.
Because I was a prisoner. We all knew it even if no one said it out loud.
Me: Where would I go?
Maxim: There's a car available if you want to go into the city. Shopping, restaurants, whatever you need.
Right. I could go shopping. Buy things with Dimitri's money. Play the role of a Bratva wife browsing boutiques while my husband did God knows what with God knows who.
Me: I don't need anything.
I threw my phone on the bed before I could say something I'd regret.
The sun was setting. Golden light streamed through the windows and turned everything amber. It should have been beautiful. Instead, it just reminded me how much time had passed. Three days. Seventy-two hours. Four thousand three hundred and twenty minutes since my husband had looked at me.
Not that I was counting.
I moved to the closet where all my clothes hung next to empty space where Dimitri's suits should have been. Evidence that he never planned to live here. That this house was never meant for us. Just for me.
My wedding dress hung in a garment bag at the back. I pulled it out and unzipped the bag slowly. Forty pounds of silk and crystals. Three thousand hand-sewn details. Twelve feet of train.
I'd felt like a princess wearing it. For exactly one day. Then I'd become Cinderella after midnight. Except instead of losing a shoe I'd lost my husband.
I zipped the bag and shoved it back in the closet. This was pathetic. I was being pathetic.
Dimitri had made his intentions clear. This was a business arrangement. An alliance sealed with a wedding night and then filed away like a completed contract. I could either accept that or make myself miserable fighting it.
Except I didn't know how to accept it.
I'd gone into this marriage expecting distance. Expecting formality. But then he'd touched me like I mattered. Held me like he cared. Made me believe for one night that maybe we could find something real in this arrangement.
That had been the cruelest part. The hope.
I changed into pajamas even though it was barely six o'clock. Crawled into the enormous bed and pulled the covers over my head like I was twelve instead of twenty-one.
My phone buzzed again.
Isabella: Call me. Please. I'm worried.
I should call her. I should talk to someone who knew me before I became Mrs. Morozova.
Before I became this hollow thing rattling around in an empty house.
But I couldn't find the words to explain what I was feeling.
The loneliness. The rejection. The growing certainty that I'd made a terrible mistake.
The bedroom door opened. I sat up fast, heart pounding. Margaret stood in the doorway with fresh towels.
"I'm so sorry! I thought you were downstairs." She started to back out. "I'll come back later."
"It's fine. I was just resting."
She set the towels in the bathroom and paused on her way out. "Mrs. Morozova? Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Are you...are you happy here?"
The question caught me off guard. No one had asked me that. Not my parents. Not Dimitri. Not even myself, really.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I don't think happiness is really the point."
Margaret's expression softened with something that looked like pity. "What is the point then?"
"Survival. Duty. Making sure the alliance holds and people stop dying." I pulled my knees to my chest. "The usual mafia wife reasons."
"That's a heavy burden for someone so young."
"I'm twenty-one. Not that young."
"You're young enough." She moved closer. "My daughter is your age. She's finishing college. Worrying about job interviews and student loans. Normal things."
"I used to worry about those things too. Three weeks ago, I was planning my thesis. Now I'm planning...I don't know what I'm planning."
"Maybe you should plan to take care of yourself first." Margaret sat on the edge of the bed. Probably breaking some professional boundary but I was grateful for it. "You can't pour from an empty cup, dear."
"Everybody keeps calling me dear. Or Mrs. Morozova. Nobody uses my actual name."
"What would you like us to call you?"
"Giulia. Just Giulia." I hugged my knees tighter. I feel like I'm disappearing. Like Giulia Rossi died at that altar and Mrs. Morozova is this blank thing that hasn't figured out who she's supposed to be yet.
Margaret was quiet for a moment, then she said, "You know what my grandmother used to tell me? That we're all multiple people over the course of a life. The trick is making sure each version is someone you can respect."
"And if I can't respect being a woman who sits in an empty house while her husband ignores her?"
"Then change the story." She stood. "You're not powerless, Giulia. You're the wife of the Pakhan. That means something in this world. You could use it."
"Use it how?"
"That's for you to figure out." She headed for the door. "But hiding in bed with the covers over your head probably isn't the answer."
She left me alone with that uncomfortable truth. I lay back down and stared at the ceiling. Margaret was right. I was hiding. Sulking. Waiting for Dimitri to come rescue me from the prison he'd built. But he wasn't coming. He'd made that perfectly clear.
Which meant if anything was going to change, I'd have to change it myself.
The question was how.
I sat up and looked around the bedroom with new eyes. At the expensive furniture and designer sheets and all the trappings of wealth without substance.
This was my house now. My life. Whether Dimitri wanted to be part of it or not. I could sit here and waste away. Or I could figure out what it actually meant to be the Pakhan's wife. What that role required. What power it might hold.
I thought about Mamma. About how she'd run Papa's household with quiet efficiency. How people came to her with problems and left with solutions. How she knew everything that happened in our neighborhood before Papa did. She'd made herself essential. Indispensable.
Maybe I could do the same. I got out of bed and pulled on a robe, then went downstairs to the library. I found a notebook and pen. At the top of the first page, I wrote Things I Need to Learn. Then I started listing:
Russian language
Bratva structure and hierarchy
Key players and their relationships
Traditional expectations for a Pakhan's wife
How to cook properly
How to run a household
Everything about Dimitri's world that he thinks I'm too delicate to know
I stared at the list. It was ambitious. Probably impossible.
But it was something. A plan. A purpose beyond sitting in this house counting books and waiting for a husband who didn't want me. If Dimitri thought he could lock me away and forget about me, he was wrong.
I'd learn his world. Master it. Make myself someone he couldn't ignore. And then maybe I'd figure out if this marriage was worth saving or if I should just take Papa up on his offer to come home. Either way, I was done being helpless. I was done hiding.
Starting tomorrow, I'd become the wife Dimitri didn't know he needed.
Whether he liked it or not.