Chapter Twenty-Five
Morena
Three weeks later
The bruises on my feet had healed. The cut on my cheek had faded to a thin pink line.
Camilla had started sleeping through most nights without the bad dreams. Matteo moved through the penthouse with the black-and-gold cane, the crowned skull flashing under the lights every time he shifted his weight.
The limp had not improved. He did not complain about it. He simply adjusted, the same way he adjusted to everything else that had tried to break him.
My diary was almost full. Most of the pages were just variations of the same sentence: I hate him.
I turned to a clean page and wrote one last line, slower than the others.
Mrs Morena Ventura.
Then I closed the notebook and left it on the nightstand where he would see it if he looked.
He had given me space. He worked from the study. He took calls with the cane braced against his thigh. He sat on the floor with Camilla in the evenings and let her show him the drawings she made.
He never asked to get physical. He never pushed. The ring stayed on the nightstand where he had left it that first morning, brilliant-cut diamond catching the light every time I walked past it.
I spent weeks watching him. Deciding what to do. Watching the way he checked the locks twice every night. Watching the way his eyes followed Camilla whenever she left a room, like he was counting her steps. Watching the way he looked at me when he thought I was not paying attention.
On an evening after Camilla had fallen asleep on the couch, I stood in front of him and said it. “I’m staying.”
Matteo went completely still. The only movement was the slow stroke of his thumb over Camilla’s hair. I kept going before I could lose my nerve.
“But I have terms. I shower alone from now on. I get dressed alone, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be white.
The leash stays in a drawer unless I put it on myself because I want to.
If you need to know I’m safe, put cameras in the hallway, not a lock around my throat.
I am not livestock anymore. I am your wife, or I am nothing,” I said.
“Also, Camilla is not temporary. She lives here. She is my sister. Maybe she can become your family, too.”
My voice stayed steady. My hands did not.
“I will wear the ring,” I said. “But I will put it on myself. And I will keep it on because I choose you, not because you once paid for me and decided I belonged to you. So that’s it. I choose you.”
Silence stretched between us. Camilla sighed in her sleep and pressed closer to his leg. Matteo looked up at me. His gray eyes were dark and completely unguarded.
“Say the last fucking part again,” he said quietly.
“I choose you.”
He closed his eyes for a second like the words had landed somewhere deep. When he opened them again, the man staring at me was the same kingpin who had burned bloodlines, and he was also the man who had let a four-year-old fall asleep on his chest every night.
“I accept every term,” he said. “Without negotiation.”
I stood there with my pulse hammering in my throat while Matteo carefully shifted Camilla off his leg and onto the couch cushions.
She made a small sound of protest in her sleep but did not wake.
He braced the cane against the floor and rose, slower than he used to, the gold skull flashing under the low lights.
He pulled out a box from his pocket.
The same heavy gold band with the luminous stone that he had forced onto my finger the night he bought me glinted inside. The same ring I had thrown at his chest the night I left.
It looked different now. Smaller somehow. Or maybe I was simply looking at it with different eyes.
He stopped in front of me and held it out on his open palm. He did not reach for my hand. He did not try to slide it onto my finger the way he had the first time, in front of a room full of men who wanted to watch me break. He simply offered it, silent and still, and waited.
My heart climbed into my mouth.
If I put it on, I was choosing the man who had bought me, and killed for me. I was choosing a life where violence would always live just outside the windows and sometimes come home on his cuffs.
I was also choosing the only person who had ever looked at my sister like she was something to protect instead of something to use. The only person who had ever looked at me like I was more than a broken dancer.
My hand didn’t shake when I picked it up. I slid the ring onto my own finger.
It settled into place with a quiet finality that made my eyes sting. The heirloom stone caught the light the same way it always had, but this time the hand that put it there was mine.
Matteo’s breath left him in a slow, controlled exhale. He stared at my hand like he was watching something holy and dangerous happen at the same time. When he finally lifted his gaze to mine, the look in his eyes was so raw it almost hurt to hold.
Then he reached out and brushed his thumb over the ring, the touch almost reverent, and for the first time, the gold band felt like it belonged exactly where it was.
He kissed me like he had been waiting years instead of weeks.
One hand came up to cradle the back of my neck, the other stayed braced on the cane for balance, and his mouth met mine with a hunger that was no longer trying to conquer anything.
He pulled back. His eyes were dark and open and a little wild.
“Not with her in the room,” he said, voice practical. “But soon.”
The next morning, Camilla sat at the island with both hands around a mug of warm milk that was mostly foam. She was wearing the pink jacket over Matteo’s old T-shirt.
I stood on the other side of the counter with coffee. Matteo leaned against the stove, cane hooked on the handle of the oven, weight off the knee. He had cooked again without being asked. Camilla looked between us. “How is the bird?”
Matteo’s mouth twitched. “The bird is fine today.”
I set the cup down. My hand did not shake.
The diamond caught the light when I did it, and Camilla’s eyes went straight to it, the way they went to anything that sparkled.
She took a sip. Foam on her lip. I came around the island and sat on the stool next to Camilla so we were the same height.
I waited until she looked at me and not at the ring.
“There’s something else. You asked at breakfast a while ago. About my tummy.” I grinned. “Remember?”
Camilla’s spoon paused. “You said there wasn’t a baby. You said you were just hungry.”
“I wasn’t ready to say it then. I am now.” I put my palm flat on my own stomach, over the shirt. There was still nothing to see. “There is a baby. It’s very small.”
Camilla stared at the place my hand was. Then she looked at Matteo, then back. “Is it a girl?”
“We don’t know yet.”
She frowned, thinking it through. “I hope it’s a boy!”
She slid off the stool, walked around, and pressed both small hands to my stomach like she was checking for a heartbeat she couldn’t possibly feel.
“Hi,” she whispered to the shirt. “I’m Camilla. But you can call me CamiYou can never, ever eat my marshmallow cereal. Okay?”
She climbed back onto the stool like the meeting was adjourned, and picked up her toast.
I looked at Matteo over Camilla’s head and smiled. He was still holding the edge of the counter. For a second he looked like a man who had walked into the wrong kitchen and been allowed to stay anyway. Then he exhaled, slow, and nodded once toward the hallway.
“A new project is waiting, Cami,” he said. “Tape’s already up. Paint’s in the corner.”
Camilla’s head snapped up. Toast still in her mouth. “Are we painting?”
“Your room,” I said. “Your favorite color.”
She swallowed too fast and slid off the stool again, already gone before I could tell her to wipe her hands. Matteo watched her disappear down the hall, then looked at me. “You good?”
“I’m good.” I touched the ring with my thumb, just to feel it. “Come paint a wall with us before you start looking for problems.”
His mouth almost smiled. “Yes, wife.”
The room still smelled like new plaster. Soft yellow cans sat in a neat row against the far wall, lids already cracked. Painter’s tape framed the baseboards and the window in clean white lines. Camilla stood in the middle of it all with both arms out, turning a slow circle.
Matteo shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on the door handle. He kept the cane. He didn’t pretend he didn’t need it.
He pried a lid off the nearest can with the flat of a screwdriver and the yellow came up wet and bright, the exact shade of a morning that hadn’t gone wrong yet.
Camilla leaned over the can until her nose almost touched it. “That’s it. That’s my favorite color of all!”
She accepted the roller like a sword. Matteo poured a tray and set it where Camilla could reach without stretching. I took the second roller and started at the wall beside the window.
The first pass always looked too thin. The second pass made it a room. Camilla painted in serious, uneven stripes, tongue out, breathing through her mouth. Every few minutes she stepped back, squinted, and announced, “So pretty!”
Matteo worked the high corners. He had to shift his weight carefully, brace the cane against the drop cloth, reach, reset. He didn’t complain. When Camilla’s roller clattered and left a fat yellow comma on the tape, he crouched and handed it back without wiping the smile off her face.
Camilla sat down on an unopened box in the middle of the room, roller across her knees, and stared at the walls once we finished.
“Can the baby and I share a room?”
“The baby gets a different room,” I said. “When it’s time. This one is just for you.”
I rolled the last wet strip up under the ceiling line and stepped back. My shoulders ached. My shirt had a yellow fingerprint near the hem where Camilla had used me as a wipe. Matteo’s cuff was speckled.
Matteo set his roller in the tray and leaned on the cane. He looked at the wall, then at her, then at me. For once he didn’t look like he was waiting for the next threat to come through the door.