Chapter 11
CASSIA
The sheets beside me are cold.
Cold, like he’s been gone for hours.
Morning light cuts across the ceiling in pale slashes. Somewhere downstairs, dishes clink. Staff murmur. Normal sounds. Ordinary sounds.
Nothing about last night was ordinary.
This can’t happen again.
His voice echoes through my skull. Four words. Precise. Final. Said while I was still trembling.
The pillow beside mine still holds the impression of his weight. Faint.
Already fading.
Like I imagined all of it.
I didn’t. His fingerprints still burn on my thighs. The ghost of his mouth. How he looked at me when I came apart. Hungry. Wrecked.
Then, gone.
The mask slid back into place. His voice went flat. His focus went somewhere I couldn’t follow.
I throw off the covers.
The shower is too hot. I don’t turn it down. Let the water scald my skin until the memory of his mouth gets washed down the drain with the soap. Until my body stops humming with aftershocks I wasn’t supposed to experience.
Useful. That’s what I am. That’s what I’ve always been.
Not precious. Not worth keeping. Just practical enough to be tolerated.
The kitchen smells like chicory and buttermilk biscuits. Nonna Rosa stands at the stove, stirring a pot of grits with the easy rhythm of decades. Her gray hair is pinned up, a few strands escaping, and she’s humming low and tuneless under her breath.
She doesn’t turn when I enter. She doesn’t need to.
Nonna Rosa hears everything.
“Tea’s on the coun’er, cher.” Her voice carries the soft cadence of the city, those stretched vowels and dropped consonants that make even ordinary sentences sound like song. “Haven’t seen you since dinner last night. Been worryin’.”
My stomach knots. Twists so tight the muscles ache.
“Thank you.” I take the cup. The ceramic burns my palms. I don’t register it.
Nonna Rosa turns now. Her dark eyes find mine, and the sharpness in them pins me where I stand.
“You didn’t sleep, dawlin’.”
Not a question. I don’t insult her intelligence by pretending otherwise.
“The ledgers.” The lie comes smooth, practiced. “I found some irregularities. Lost track of time.”
Nonna Rosa’s expression doesn’t change. The wooden spoon keeps its circular path through the grits. But her silence tells me she’s not fooled.
“Mhm.” She turns back to the stove. “Them ledgers gonna be waitin’. They don’t get cold. They don’t get hungry.” A pause. “You need to eat.”
“I’ll eat later.”
“That what you told yourself last night too?”
The words land soft. Not harsh. Somehow that makes them worse. My throat closes. I press my thumbnail into the pad of my index finger until the sting gives me something to hold onto.
“I should get back to work.” I set the cup down, tea untouched. “The discrepancies won’t document themselves.”
Nonna Rosa makes a sound. Low. Knowing.
“That study ain’t goin’ nowhere, cher. But you take your time. You do what you gotta do.” She waves toward the door. “Just know there’s grits and biscuits when you ready. I make enough for two, whether somebody shows up or not.”
I pause at the doorway. My throat tightens.
“Nonna Rosa.” My voice comes out wrong. Too tight. Too raw. “Thank you.”
She doesn’t turn around. Just keeps stirring.
“Go on now. Go find them numbers that don’t lie.”
The study is quiet.
Light floods through the windows, illuminating the desk I’ve claimed as my own. Papers stacked by category. Ledgers aligned with precision. Three pens arranged parallel to the edge, one inch apart.
I don’t remember arranging them like that.
I sink into the chair. Black. Blue. Red. Lined up like soldiers awaiting inspection. My hand hovers over them, fingers itching to adjust the spacing. Make them more even. More ordered.
Stop.
Palms flat against the desk. I count the grain lines in the wood until the itch fades. Pens in a row. Papers in stacks. Numbers that add up to the same answer no matter how many times you check.
Numbers don’t leave.
I open the first ledger. Supplier payments, February through April. Standard operating expenses. Nothing unusual in the totals, but a discrepancy caught my attention two nights ago and I never finished following the thread.
Two nights ago. Before the nightmare. Before his mouth found the hollow of my throat and his hands slid beneath my nightgown and I forgot how to breathe.
Focus.
The irregularity is subtle. Three payments to the same vendor. Different account names, different invoice numbers, but the amounts are too similar. Twelve percent above market rate. Without exception.
Someone is skimming.
I pull out my notebook. Start documenting. Transaction dates, amounts, shell companies. My pen moves across the page in neat, controlled strokes.
This should consume me.
But my mind keeps drifting. To his sheets, empty this morning. To how he said my name last night, rough and reverent, like he couldn’t believe I was real.
To the moment I looked at him after, soft and trusting, and watched resolve shatter behind his expression.
What did he see in my face that frightened him so much?
I set the pen down. Rub my temples.
I’m not going to cry. I didn’t cry when my parents looked right through me. I don’t cry.
But my throat aches. My eyes sting.
I thought I was prepared for this. A business arrangement. A replacement bride in a practical dress.
I wasn’t prepared for him to touch me like I was worthy.
I wasn’t prepared for him to stop.
Footsteps in the hallway.
My whole body goes rigid. I know that tread. Measured. Deliberate. The cadence of a man who owns every room he enters.
Dante.
Last night floods back in fragments.
Then.
This can’t happen again.
I grip the pen. Focus on the ledger. Breathing steady.
His footsteps grow louder. Closer.
A voice. Pietro, his advisor.
“The Valentino meeting moved to Thursday. Lorenzo is handling the advance team.”
“Good.” Dante’s voice. Low. Controlled. The mask back in place. No trace of the man who whispered my name into the dark like a confession. “And the shipment?”
“On schedule. Romano’s overseeing it.”
“Fine.”
My lungs refuse to cooperate. The pen has stopped moving. The words on the page blur.
His footsteps reach the door.
They pause.
His attention presses between my shoulder blades. I don’t look up. Don’t move. Every nerve screams at me to lift my head, meet his stare, see if last night left any mark on him at all.
I don’t.
I can’t.
Four seconds. Five. Six. Seven.
His footsteps continue down the hall.
I listen until they fade. Until the only sound is my own ragged breathing and the tick of the grandfather clock and Nonna Rosa’s distant singing.
He’s gone.
My hand is shaking. I curl my fingers into a fist.
Don’t hope. Don’t you dare hope.
My lungs won’t expand. The air sits right there, an inch from where I need it, and won’t come in. I press my palm flat against the desk. Count the grain lines in the wood.
Being touched like I mattered. And then being left in the cold sheets to wonder if I’d dreamed it.
The pen moves across the page again. Transaction dates. Payment amounts. Vendor names that lead to shells that lead to nowhere. But nowhere always leads somewhere if you follow it long enough.
Someone is stealing from this family.
I write until my hand cramps. The numbers hold still. The numbers make sense.
The ache behind my ribs doesn’t.
My pen keeps moving. Transaction after transaction. A trail that someone worked hard to bury.
Don’t hope.
I turn the page.