21. CHAPTER 19 #3
The next day, she baked with the staff, laughing, covered in flour, her hair tied up in a careless knot.
She’d integrated herself with the staff effortlessly. Talking, laughing, asking questions. The house breathed differently when she moved through it.
She had a way of making rooms feel alive without even trying. It was a gift, really.
I’d also heard about my mother’s lecture on the expectations of a Kade wife. Responsibilities, obligations, the appropriate level of visibility and obedience. I could picture the entire conversation in detail.
Knowing Léonie even slightly, I doubted any of it would stick.
None of it would lodge where my mother wanted.
“In this house, you walk wherever you like,” I said. “No one stops you.”
“That’s inside,” she replied. Her tone stayed polite; her eyes didn't. “Outside is another story. Men I don’t know follow my every move. Every step is flagged. Every outing has to be justified to someone with a schedule. I’m questioned at the door like a teenager out past their curfew.”
Her fork clinked against the plate. I almost flinched from the sound. She stood her ground, and continued. The words gathering momentum.
“I wake up and everyone calls me Madame Kade as if I’m a title, not a person. I change in a closet someone else curated, full of clothes I never chose. I try to step outside for an hour to see my cousin, and your guard…” she paused. “Security men, act like I’m under house arrest.”
I watched her, saying nothing. She didn’t relent.
“I eat breakfast alone at a table large enough to host God knows how many people. I eat dinner across a mile from a man who barely speaks to me. I have a library that looks like something out of a fantasy, but I still need clearance to step beyond the gates. You call it care. It feels like—” She searched for a word. “Confinement.”
A muscle ticked in my jaw.
“Life in this family does not match your idea of normal,” I said. “There is nothing normal about being a Kade.”
“Obviously,” she huffed, not hesitating.
“What does obviously mean?”
Her gaze met mine, defiant.
“It means I can’t get on a metro to see my best friend without filling out a security form,” she said.
“I can’t possibly walk down a street without three men deciding which angle is safest for my neck.
I can’t even choose my own clothes because I like the color, not because it blends into your house.
I want normal… and that is hearing my first name at least once a day inside my home.
Normal is leaving a building without feeling like I’m breaking a treaty. ”
Her fingers held onto her napkin.
“Normal is having a life that isn’t curated by other people’s fear and greed.”
The last words came out calmer, but nonetheless angrier.
I sat back, studying her. Amusement coiled through the irritation, because she had just defined my existence for the past decade and then rejected it outright.
She wants to break out of the system, but nothing is ever that simple. Not in this house, or in this world.
Regardless, every single word she spoke was the truth. A fractured piece of truth in a room built on beautiful lies.
“You married into fear and greed,” I said. “You also married into safety, power, and access.”
Her mouth tipped at the corner. The expression didn’t qualify as a smile.
“I married into a bigger cage,” she answered. “With better finishes, perhaps. But a cage nonetheless.”
That hit home more than she realised.
And my mother thought she was fragile. She had no idea that beneath the compliance, there was a riot.
“You wanted to go out today,” I said. “Where?”
“To see Isolde,” she replied. “She’s back from tour. I asked Isabella to excuse me from dinner, and the next thing I knew I was answering questions from men I’ve never met about routes and timetables. That isn’t a life. That’s imprisonment.”
My patience grew thinner.
“You are high-value,” I said. “Kidnapping, intimidation, leverage. These are real risks. You carry my name. Someone who targets you targets me. There is no universe where you step onto a public bus alone.”
“Then sit with the discomfort,” she said.
Her eyes sparked. “Because I lived twenty-five years without a permanent security detail glued to my shadow. I walked through Paris. I breathed without asking permission. I made mistakes that weren’t world-ending.
I’m trying to hold onto pieces of that girl before she completely disappears under your—” she threw her hands up, annoyed, the motion far too enticing for the point she was making—protocols.
Heat slid down my spine, and landed hard. I couldn’t tell where the anger ended and the need to fuck this out of my system began. I only knew both were a direct threat to my composure.
“You have more freedom here than you had in your father’s house,” I said.
“Do I?” she countered. “Because at least there, I knew the rules were rigged against me. Here you call them protection and pretend I’m free.”
We stared at each other across the table.
She had miscalculated one thing. I never pretend. I’m not sure how many times I’d have to tell her that, but I’ll continue to do so till she comes to terms with the fact that I always mean what I say.
“You are free inside our marriage in every way that matters,” I said, lowering my voice.
“You do not owe me your body. You do not owe me affection. You can fill your hours as you wish. You can invite who you want into this house, within reason. I will not set foot in your room unless you ask me to.”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed.
“But outside—” I emphasized. “Outside belongs to risk. Risk belongs to me alone, and I manage it my way. For your protection.”
“So I’m a variable in your equation,” she bit out. “How comforting.”
Is that what she got from what I just said?
Before I could respond, she pushed back her chair.
“I’m done eating,” she announced, her napkin already placed on the table like a white flag of surrender—or a challenge. “Thank you for dinner. The food was lovely.”
Her tone made it clear that while the chef had succeeded, the husband had failed significantly.
She rose.
“Léonie,” I called out to her. My voice threaded with a warning.
She didn’t stop.
Her dress slipped around her legs as she crossed the door way leading out of the room. The line of her back stayed straight. Her hair fell in a sleek curtain down her spine. Every step underlined the fact that she was determined to fight me on every inch of this.
A part of me resented it. The rest of me wanted to drag her back and see what her mouth tasted like when she was this angry.
My pulse kicked hard, my cock pressing uncomfortably against my trousers as I watched her leave the dining room without turning once.
My fingers closed around the stem of my glass. I forced them to relax.
Since the wedding, I had kept a deliberate distance.
The only real contact had been that dance—her body against mine, her hand in mine, her breath faltering when I guided her.
I'd treated this interval as an acclimatization period.
She needed time to adjust. I needed time to keep my hands to myself.
That strategy was losing its effectiveness.
The urge to follow her rose with the force of a tide, fully formed and relentless. The need to pull her back, pin her to the wall, and demand that she repeat the word freedom while I taught her many different languages for it.
It took all of my willpower to stay seated.
I reached for the decanter instead, and emptied the wine bottle into my glass, then took a slow swallow, using the burn to cauterize the almost maddening impulse.
Distance remained the only barrier between discipline and disaster. For tonight, I'd honour it.
Tomorrow, I'd decide whether her definition of freedom could coexist with mine.
If it could not, then something would have to give. And I had a suspicion it would not be me.