2. Cillian
CILLIAN
The shower in Connor’s wedding gift penthouse has excellent water pressure, which is the only thing I can say about my wedding night that’s unambiguously positive.
I stand under water hot enough to scald and I think about the woman on the other side of this door who is almost certainly plotting my murder.
I’ve just strong-armed my new wife into sharing a bed with me, and I try to decide if I feel bad about it.
I don’t. It was necessary. If Connor’s people—or the Santoro people, who are watching this building just as closely—get even a hint that this marriage is a hollow shell held together by mutual contempt and a negotiated bed line, the alliance cracks.
And when the alliance cracks, people start dying. That’s just how this works.
Still. Not my finest opening move.
I turn off the water and reach for a towel while I do a quick inventory of the day: got married, spent four hours performing at my own reception, strong-armed my wife into our bedroom while she bitched me out in different languages.
Tomorrow: report to Connor at noon, discuss whatever’s happening in Queens that’s apparently more urgent than the fact that I got married yesterday.
Business as usual.
This is my life now.
I wrap the towel around my waist and open the bathroom door.
Valentina is sitting on her side of the bed—the far side, as far from the bathroom as the king mattress will allow, because of course she is—wearing silk pajamas the color of deep burgundy.
They have a fitted button-down top and wide-leg pants that probably have their own dedicated drawer in some Milan boutique.
The fabric catches the low light from the windows.
Her dark hair is loose around her shoulders, and all the careful weddingness about her is gone.
She’s got her phone in her hand and her eyes fixed on it, studiously ignoring me.
I let the silence run.
One beat.
Two.
I open the top dresser drawer and take my time finding what I need. The apartment is warm and there’s no particular hurry to get dressed.
If she wants to pretend I’m not here, I’m happy to make that as difficult as possible for her.
As I pull out a pair of sleep pants, she looks up and her eyes go wide for about half a second before she pulls the aristocratic disdain back over her face.
I’m somewhat impressed.
Valentina Santoro has excellent control.
The moments where it slips are worth noting.
“Do you always walk around half-naked?” she asks coolly.
I shrug. “It’s my bedroom. I’ll walk around however I want,” I tell her.
“Our bedroom, apparently,” she corrects, with the particular acid sweetness she deploys when she wants to be right and annoying simultaneously. “And if you could at least pretend to have some modesty—”
A smirk crosses my lips, which I know will infuriate her. “I’ve been told I have nothing to be modest about.”
Her face flushes and she looks away sharply toward the window, very suddenly fascinated by the Manhattan skyline. “You’re disgusting.”
“And you’re a prude,” I shoot back as I turn around and drop my towel. I don’t bother to go back to the bathroom, because this is my bedroom too and if she wants to play territorial games then territory works both ways.
I hear her make a strangled sound behind me, but she tries to cover it and I still don’t turn around. I take my time.
I can feel how much she’s trying to not look at my naked ass, which is honestly the most entertained I’ve been since the open bar, and the open bar had good whiskey.
When I finally turn around, she is examining her fingernails with minute attention.
“You can look,” I say with amusement. “I won’t tell.”
Her head comes up sharply, dark eyes flaring with outrage. “I’d rather gouge my eyes out,” she hisses.
“Suit yourself.” I pull back the covers on my side of the bed. My side is always closest to the door and I lie down, looking at the ceiling. “Just so we’re clear on the rules,” I say. “You stay on your side. I stay on mine. No touching. No talking. And definitely no cuddling.”
“I wouldn’t cuddle you,” she says, with a vehemence that I find disproportionate, “if you were the last man on earth.”
“The feeling is mutual, Mrs. Brennan.”
She does not like hearing me call her Mrs. Brennan.
Her jaw tightens and there’s a fraction more height in her already rigid spine, a flash of something hot in her eyes before the control comes back down. I fight a triumphant smirk.
She can mull on Mrs. Brennan the same way I’ve been mulling with you’re marrying a Santoro.
Adjustment is a process.
I’m just helping her along.
She slides under the covers and positions herself so close to the side of the mattress that one bad dream puts her on the floor.
I stare at the ceiling.
She stares at whatever she’s staring at.
It’s silent in the room.
I’ve slept in worse conditions.
Field operations, cars, once a warehouse in the Bronx I have no interest in revisiting. A king bed in a penthouse is fine. Marvellous actually.
The silence stretches.
“This is ridiculous,” Valentina says finally. “We’re adults. We should be able to have a civil conversation.”
I turn my head to look at her. “You just said you’d rather gouge your eyes out than look at me.”
“Because you were being an ass,” she shoots back.
“I’m always an ass,” I tell her. “You’d better get used to it.”
She turns on her side to face me and I make the mistake of turning toward her too. In the low light from the windows her eyes look almost black, and dark hair spreads across the pillow.
Even with how much I detest her, I can also admit she’s beautiful with her high cheekbones, pert nose, and full lips. If we passed each other on the street, I would definitely have taken a second look.
“Why did you agree to this?” she asks. “The marriage. Why didn’t you fight Connor on it?”
I consider lying but decide there’s no point. “Because Connor doesn’t ask. He orders. And I do what I’m told.”
Her brow furrows. “You’re his heir. His nephew. Doesn’t that give you any leverage?”
“It gives me responsibility and obligations,” I say evenly “Not leverage.”
She looks at me like she’s trying to decide if she believes me. I’d be doing the same thing. “Connor and Teresa raised me after my parents died,” I say, ignoring the flash of pain that lances through me when I talk about them. “He gave me everything. In return, I give him obedience.”
“That’s not family,” she says. “That’s servitude.”
I shrug. “In our world, they’re the same thing.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and I think maybe she’ll drop it. That was stupid of me. “Leo treats his people with respect. He doesn’t order them around like—”
Is she seriously comparing me to her idiot brother? “Leo is soft.”
Even in the dim light, I can see anger flash in her eyes. “Leo is loved. There’s a difference.”
I laugh, and it comes out harsher than I intend, or maybe exactly as harsh as I intend—I’m not always sure. “Love is a liability that gets you killed.”
“Or it makes you stronger. Look at Leo and Emma.”
I ignore the other flash of pain at Emma’s name and bury it deep within me. “Leo kidnapped Emma on her wedding day for revenge,” I remind her. “If that’s love, I’ll pass.”
“And yet they’re happy,” she says. “Actually happy. Not performing for an audience.”
“We’re not them.” I turn back to the ceiling because this conversation is not going anywhere useful. “We don’t have the luxury of feelings. We have a job: make this alliance hold. Keep our families from killing each other. That’s it.”
“How romantic,” Valentina mutters.
“Romance is for people who have choices. We don’t.”
I can feel the weight of her gaze and I don’t look back, keeping my eyes on the ceiling. She turns over, the rustling sound of silk against sheets soft.
“You’re right,” she says, quietly enough that I almost don’t catch it. “We don’t have choices. But I can still hate you for it.”
“Hate me all you want,” I respond, to the rigid line of her back. “Just do it quietly. Some of us need to sleep.”
She doesn’t answer, but I can tell from the tension across her shoulders that she’s not sleeping any more than I am.
We lie on opposite sides of this massive bed with two feet of mattress between us, and somewhere underneath all the hostility is the exhaustion of two people who have been performing all day and have nothing left for each other but the truth of how much we don’t want to be here.
I stare at the ceiling for a long time.
There’s a version of my life where this doesn’t happen.
Where Connor never makes this call, or where I’m the kind of man who pushes back when he does.
I think about that version sometimes.
My parents died when I was eleven and my uncle and aunt took me in. I was angry and scared, and Connor gave me direction and structure.
A place to put the anger that made it useful instead of just destructive.
I’m not naive about what that shaped me into.
I know what I am.
I know what I do for him.
I just don’t let myself think too hard about whether I’d have chosen it if fate hadn’t taken my parents from me.
Valentina’s breathing eventually slows and evens out.
The tension goes out of her shoulders in increments, sleep taking her hostility apart piece by piece until she’s just curled on her edge of the bed looking smaller than I’d have thought possible given the amount of space she occupied all day.
She’s twenty-six years old and she got sold off to keep the peace.
I think about that for a moment, then I stop, because it’s not a useful thing to think about and I need to sleep.
We made the same calculation, her and me.
We both understood the cost and paid it, and here we are.
That’s not tragedy, that’s the job.
I close my eyes.
I wake before dawn.
My schedule runs early and fifteen years of adapting to it means my body doesn’t know how to sleep past five anymore, which is one of many things I could hold against Connor if I were keeping that kind of list.
Valentina is still on her edge of the mattress, curled into a tight ball like she was trying to take up as little space as possible even in her sleep.
Her dark hair is spread across the pillow and in the gray pre-dawn light she looks—