Chapter 16
DANTE
Renzo finds me in the east hallway.
I’m coming from a meeting with the port captains, head full of shipping routes and profit margins, when he steps out of the shadows like he materialized from the stone itself.
“We need to talk.”
Three words. From Renzo, that’s a speech.
“About?”
He doesn’t answer. Just looks at me with those flat stares that see everything and give nothing back.
“You’re in love with her.”
Dio.
I don’t flinch. Don’t react. Eleven years of running this family have taught me how to keep a blank face when the world is tilting.
“That’s not—”
“Don’t.” He cuts me off. No heat. Just facts. “I’ve been watching you for weeks. How you track her across rooms. How you say her name. How you come out of that study at three in the morning looking like someone cracked you open.”
I lean against the wall. Cross my arms. Armor I don’t feel.
“What’s your point?”
“You know what my point is.” He steps closer. His presence alone is enough to make most men step back. “You know this is dangerous.”
“I know.”
“You know she was supposed to be a transaction. A political alliance. Business.”
“I know.”
“You know what loving someone did to Papa.”
My jaw locks. Shit. There it is.
“Renzo.”
“His heart stopped the same moment Mama’s did.” My brother’s voice is flat. Clinical. “Eleven years, and his body just caught up.”
Silence.
“Don’t give someone that kind of power over you.”
The quiet between us stretches. I know he’s right.
“It’s too late.” The admission scrapes out of me. Raw. Honest.
Fuck.
The first time I’ve said it out loud.
Renzo studies me. Whatever he finds in my expression makes him exhale, long and controlled. Not disappointment. Heavier than that. His mouth thins. He looks away.
“Yeah.” He steps back. “I figured.”
He walks away without another word.
Damn him.
I stand in the hallway for a long time after he’s gone.
I should go to my office.
Instead, I walk.
Through the east wing, past the kitchens, through the gallery with portraits of dead men who built this empire. My feet know where they’re taking me before my mind catches up.
The garden.
The evening air hits my face as I push through the side door.
Jasmine overwhelming, the way it always is this time of year.
Mama planted it thirty years ago, trained it up the iron trellis that frames the stone pathway.
Papa used to cut stems for her, leave them on her pillow when he came home late from business he couldn’t talk about.
I haven’t walked this path in months. Couldn’t bring myself to. What the hell am I doing out here.
The bench sits at the end of the garden, beneath the live oak that’s older than this house. Wrought iron, weathered to black, with scrollwork Mama said reminded her of music.
Papa proposed to her on that bench.
Told her he was a dangerous man with a dangerous life and she deserved better, and she laughed and said she’d take him anyway.
I was eight when she told me that story. Sitting on her lap in the library, asking why Papa looked at her like she hung the moon.
“Because I did,” she said. “For him, I did.”
I haven’t been able to sit on that bench since she died. Haven’t been able to look at it without seeing my father there, reaching for a woman who wasn’t there anymore.
I stop at the edge of the pathway.
She’s there.
Cassia.
Sitting on the bench like it was built for her. Shoes off, feet tucked beneath her, head tipped back against the iron scrollwork. Her eyes are closed. The last of the sunset paints her in gold and amber, catching the copper threads in her hair.
She’s not reading. Not working. Just being. Breathing in the jasmine. Letting the evening settle around her.
She doesn’t know.
Doesn’t know whose bench that is. Doesn’t know what happened there thirty-five years ago. Doesn’t know that my father knelt in that exact spot and offered my mother his heart and his empire and everything he was.
She just saw a pretty bench in a pretty garden and sat down.
And she fits.
Fuck.
She fits there. In the place where my parents’ story began. In the space I’ve avoided for years because it hurt too much to look at.
She’s sitting in the heart of everything I’ve been afraid of, and she looks like she was always meant to be there.
I want this. Her in my garden. Her on my parents’ bench. Her breathing in jasmine at sunset like she has nowhere else to be.
I love her.
My grip on the iron trellis turns my knuckles white. I can’t let go.
Cazzo.
I’m in love with my wife.
She shifts on the bench. Stretches her neck. In a moment she might open her eyes. Might see me standing here like a man watching his own destruction unfold.
I step back. Quiet. Careful.
And I walk away before she ever knows I was there.
The study is empty when I pass it that night.
I stop at the entrance. The desk lamp is on. Her papers are spread across the surface, annotated in her precise handwriting.
She’s been working. Waiting.
It’s past midnight. Our usual time. Every nerve in my body tells me to go in.
Fuck that.
I turn around.
I walk to my bedroom. Our bedroom. The bed is made. Empty. Cold.
I don’t undress. Just sit on the edge of the mattress in the dark and try to remember how to breathe.
Cristo.
If I lose her, I will become him.
I swore I’d never give anyone that power.
The clock on the nightstand shows 1:47.
She’s still in the study. I know she is. Waiting for me to come through the door like I have every other night. Waiting for the pattern to continue.
I don’t fucking go.
I lie back on the cold sheets and stare at the ceiling. My father’s blood runs in my veins. His weakness is mine.
It’s late at night when I hear her footsteps in the hall.
She pauses outside the bedroom door.
I can picture her standing there. Confused. Hurt. Wondering what she did wrong.
Fuck.
The guilt is enough to make my hand reach for the door handle. I don’t get up. I make a fist around nothing instead.
Her footsteps continue down the hall. To the guest room.
The click of a door closing.
I tell myself this is the right choice.