Chapter 5 #3
Angelo’s eyes glitter. “Good. See that you learn quickly.”
They discuss dates and guests for a few more minutes, covering what needs to be said publicly, and make plans as if they were arranging furniture.
I walk out of the study with my phone gone, my friends ordered away, and a party looming over me like a storm.
The house feels different, every corridor narrower, every laugh in the distance a reminder that the world outside my room is being rearranged without asking me.
Alone in my room later, I press my palm to the place on my arm where the man grabbed me in the alley—the bruise throbs.
My chest still hums. The absence of Raffael is a hollow I am not allowed to fill.
I tear a strip of fabric from a towel and bind the bruise because moving feels better than thinking.
Outside, the household begins choreographing the announcement.
Inside, my heart makes a small, private mourning for the life I might have had.
It’s been four days since the alley. Four days since the screams and the gunshots and the blood on my dress.
Four days without seeing him. He's been recalled from being my bodyguard and put in charge of security for the house. A promotion to show Daddy Dearest's appreciation for the man who saved my life. It’s late afternoon, the sun stands low and golden, the mansion's yard is silent except for the distant clack of someone’s heels on tile. I’m standing on the second-floor balcony when I spot him in the yard.
Patrolling, casual but alert, one hand resting near his hip where I know his gun sits.
Raffael.
I know I shouldn’t. My brother would kill me. My father would do worse. But I go anyway. Down the stairs, across the courtyard, and finally catch up to him by the fountain. He doesn’t stop when I approach, just slows enough that I can walk beside him.
My heart is still hammering in my throat, and on my lips, I can still feel him, the ghost of his mouth, warm and impossible.
I’ve been pacing like a caged thing, not sure why I wanted to find him, maybe because he saved me.
Maybe because I want him to say it again: that he’ll keep me safe.
Maybe because some ridiculous, furious part of me thinks he’ll take me away if I ask.
Now he stops and stands there, his arms folded, making his biceps swell underneath the too-tight jacket.
His jaw looks like it was cut from stone.
When he glances at me, those blue eyes soften for the smallest fraction of a second, almost like a shadow lifts, and I can see the man who saved me in the alley, but then his face closes up as if somebody slammed a lid down.
“I wanted to talk to you,” I blurt before I can stop myself.
He looks at me properly, and I feel naked under that look. “Don’t be so stupid again,” he says, the same line as before. Only now it’s colder, sharper. He’s not walking away. He’s planting himself there, like he means it.
My mouth falls open. “That’s it?” I bark. “That’s all you have to say after—after you—”
He cuts me off with a single, small motion. “Princess,” he says, and there’s something tired in it. “That kiss was a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened.”
A laugh that’s all hurt bubbles out of me and tastes wrong in my mouth. “A mistake?” I spit the word back at him. “How can it be a mistake? I felt it. I still feel it. That kiss wasn’t small. It wasn’t nothing. You don’t—you don’t get to call that a mistake.”
He stares at me coldly, making me feel vulnerable. For a moment, there’s no answer in him, only the line of his shoulders. Then, quieter, as if the sound itself would keep trouble from hearing, he says, “It was a mistake. You need to understand what’s at risk when men see you with me.”
My palms go slick. “What is at risk? You? Me? Because if you’re worried about you—” My voice breaks on the last word.
I hate the tremor. I hate how small and eighteen it makes me sound.
“You told me you’d do whatever it took to keep me safe.
Are you going to tell me that was a mistake, too? That saving me was a mistake?”
He flinches a little, and some ridiculous, brutal part of me wants to think I hurt him by asking.
But then he squares his jaw. “You don’t understand what you’re asking.
I’m not in a position to be reckless, and neither are you.
You’re eighteen, and you have a family who will tear anyone who gets close into ribbons.
My being seen with you will make it worse. ”
“So that's what you're worried about? Yourself?” The words snap out of me sharp and raw.
He nods like a man stating facts, not feelings. “You don’t get to put me in the line of fire just because you want to play games.”
I hate that he’s right. The thought coils in my stomach like a live thing: he’s right, I put him in danger, just by being here.
It makes heat and shame crawl up my neck.
But I’m not going to let him get away with pretending this was some casual thing you can apologize for.
I’m not playing games. I step closer until I can see the tiny line at the corner of his mouth, the one that might have smiled in the alley, and I make my voice the blade it needs to be.
“You don’t get to walk away and call it a mistake,” I tell him.
He looks at me, hard and flat and unreadable, like a man who’s learned how to swallow the whole world. For a second, I think I see something like guilt, and then he gives me that formal little bow he does when he’s closing a file.
“Goodbye, Miss Orsi,” he says in a final tone, using the formal address to put distance between us. My heart breaks at his tone, his words, and the purposeful intent in his stride when he turns and walks away.
My hands are shaking with fury and something else, something too big to name—want, grief, humiliation, all tangled together.
I lunge for the nearest thing: a small, flat stone from the garden path.
It flies from my fingers and thuds against the back of his head.
For one suspended heartbeat, he keeps walking; then I think I hear the barest, almost-catlike chuckle slip from him.
It might be madness, it might be the wind. Either way, he doesn’t look back.
The sound is a blade. It cuts me open more than the cold rebuke ever did.
My chest heaves, and angry, stupid sobs rattle up.
I swat them down because I'm not going to make a scene. Not here. Not now. Not with Angelo’s rules ringing in my ears like a gavel.
I am eighteen, and I am full of mistakes, but I am also not going to hand him the power to own my shame.
I stand there until his figure disappears into the hedges, until the steady clip of his boots is just another memory, and when I finally turn, I can feel the ghost of his mouth on mine like a brand. I wrap my hands into fists at my sides and shove the churn of feelings down into a tight, hot knot.
Inside the house, the lights feel sharper, the chandeliers accusing.
I walk through the halls like a girl holding a secret that will get someone killed if I breathe it out loud.
I tell myself the sensible things: I will obey, I will not put him at risk, I will keep my head down.
But under that sensible layer is a flame that will not be stamped out, not by speeches, not by threats, not by a stony goodbye.