Chapter 7
DANTE
Morning comes in thin, pale blades that slide between the curtains and cut across the bed.
The light touches Rosalina first, catching on the curve of her shoulder where my sheet has slipped, painting her skin in a soft stripe that makes her look almost unreal, like she belongs to another world than mine.
She breathes against me as if she has done it a thousand times.
Her cheek is pressed to my chest. Her hair is tangled over my ribs.
One of her thighs is thrown over mine with the casual possessiveness of someone who has forgotten the concept of distance.
Every few seconds she shifts slightly, the smallest movement, and her body finds me again without opening her eyes, like sleep has not erased where she fits.
It has never felt like this before.
I have had women in my bed. I have had women in my arms. I have taken what I wanted and walked away while they were still trying to decide whether to hate me or miss me.
This is different. This is weight and warmth and a quiet, dangerous sense of completion, the kind that makes a man soften in places he cannot afford to.
I lie still for a long time, letting the bliss sit in my bloodstream like a drug.
My wife.
The title forms in my mind and slides through my chest like it has always lived there.
A claim. A fact. My fingers tighten slightly at her waist, feeling the smooth skin beneath the sheet, the fine ridge of her hipbone, the subtle give when I pull her closer.
She makes a small sound in her sleep, a breathy murmur that makes me want to wake her up with my cock inside her.
Last night comes back in fragments. The way she looked at me with her mouth parted like she was shocked by what she wanted.
The way she tried to keep control, and how it slipped anyway.
The way my name sounded in her voice when she stopped pretending she did not need me.
The memory makes my throat go tight with satisfaction, and something darker beneath it, something that purrs like a predator that has tasted blood.
I am not romantic.
I am not gentle.
But in this quiet, with her curled against me, I feel something close to reverence.
Not for her innocence, because she does not have any left after last night.
Not for her purity, because purity burned away the moment I touched her.
For her presence. For the way she exists in my space like she was built for it.
I glance at her hand, the ring catching the morning light in a brief, sharp glint.
Mine.
And while I would like to spend the entire day looking at her, I know I need to start the day, so I can come back into this bed tonight and repeat all of the actions of yesterday, if she’s not too sore to take me.
I slide out of bed carefully, lifting her leg from mine and tucking the sheet around her.
She stirs, brows drawing together, lips parting like she is about to wake, but she just turns her back to me and curls into herself.
The sight hits me harder than it should. I turn away before I can indulge it.
I pull on sweatpants, leave my shirt behind, and move into the hallway barefoot. The house feels colder outside the bedroom. My skin is still warm, still marked by the memory of her hands, and I move through the corridor with the faintest edge of smugness sitting in my chest.
I am married to the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life.
This deal with my father couldn't have gone any more perfectly than this. An alliance sealed, yes, but also a woman in my bed who makes my blood run hot, who fits against me like she was designed for it, who looks at me like I am both threat and salvation. Yeah, I couldn’t have prayed for better.
I take the stairs down and swing into the kitchen with an extra skip in my step. The scent of coffee and toasted bread hanging in the air lets me know that Gabriel is already awake.
"Morning Gabe," I whistle, swinging open the fridge.
Gabriel sits at the long table with a mug in his hand and his phone facedown beside it. He looks up the moment I enter, and his gaze flicks over me with the quick, assessing sweep of a man who has known me his entire life and can read what I do not say as easily as he reads a book.
His eyes narrow slightly, then soften into something that could almost be amusement.
"Fuck you're happy," he says.
I hum pulling out the coffee creamer as I move to the counter and start to pour myself coffee. I mix in some of the creamer into the coffee, and raise it to my lips with a slight smile on my face.
"I am married."
I take a sip and let it burn my tongue, grounding me, but even the burn feels good this morning. Everything feels good.
Gabriel's mouth twitches. "A political marriage."
"Don't start," I reply, but there is no edge to it. "I just had a good night."
"I don't want to ruin your good mood," he says, and something in his tone makes the coffee turn bitter on my tongue.
He leans back against his chair and crosses his legs so his left ankle rests on his knee, but the casual posture is a lie.
I can see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his jaw is locked tight.
"How could you do that?" I ask, watching him over the rim of my mug. He's too calm. Gabriel is never this calm unless he's about to detonate something.
"Very easily. We run a mob," Gabriel says, but the joke falls flat, hollow.
My hand tightens on the mug. "Funny," I state, placing my coffee down on the counter with more force than necessary. The ceramic clinks against stone, loud in the suddenly tense kitchen. "Spit it out."
Gabriel exhales slowly through his nose, a controlled release of air that sounds like he is bracing himself—or bracing me. "I don't want to burst your bubble."
The happiness that was sitting warm in my chest thirty seconds ago evaporates like steam. "You already did," I snarl, and I hear my voice change, going cold and flat, all the lightness draining out of it in an instant.
My jaw tightens. The air in the kitchen feels suddenly thin, like someone has sucked the oxygen out and replaced it with something heavier, something that presses down on my lungs and makes it hard to draw breath.
"Say it," I tell him, and my voice comes out deadly calm. Controlled. The same way it sounds when I am deciding whether to kill someone or let them live.
Gabriel's eyes hold mine without flinching, without softening, without giving me any escape from what is coming. For a long moment he just stares at me, and I can see him weighing his words, calculating how much damage they will do.
Then he says it.
"Rosalina isn't the Irish princess."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
For a second, the entire house goes silent except for the low hum of the refrigerator and the sudden, loud hammering of my own heart in my ears.
My hand involuntarily tightens on the edge of the counter, knuckles going white, and I hear the faint clink of ceramic as my coffee mug rattles against the stone.
I do not remember my fingers moving.
My body is reacting while my mind is still trying to catch up, still trying to process the words, still trying to reshape reality around what he just said.
The sentence lands like a blade sliding between my ribs—not painful at first, just pressure, just the slow, creeping knowledge that something has pierced skin and is working its way deeper toward something vital.
I stare at him, and the muscles in my jaw tighten so hard my teeth ache, grinding together like they might somehow break the words apart if I just apply enough force.
"Explain." The word comes out barely above a whisper, but it carries more threat than if I had shouted it. "Now."
Gabriel does not look away. Does not soften. "The Irish princess is Erin O'Connor," he says, his voice steady and factual, like he is reading from a report instead of detonating my entire fucking world. "Seamus's real daughter. His biological child."
A face flashes in my mind like a match struck in the dark, sudden and bright and unwanted.
Red hair like flames. Pale skin scattered with freckles.
The girl I saw briefly at the O'Connor estate, surrounded by guards, laughing at something someone said.
The one who looked soft. Delicate. Breakable.
Nothing like the woman sleeping in my bed upstairs.
My stomach drops in a slow, sickening way, like an elevator descending too far into darkness, the cables groaning under weight they were not meant to hold.
"And Rosalina," Gabriel continues, and I hear the slight catch in his voice now, the smallest hesitation that tells me he knows exactly what this is going to do to me, "is Rosalina Carter."
The name detonates in my skull.
My hands curl into fists at my sides before I can stop them, knuckles going bone-white, nails biting into my palms hard enough that I feel the sharp sting of broken skin.
The name feels familiar—not because I have heard it whispered in Irish political circles or mentioned in negotiations, but because I filed it away under something else entirely.
A note in the margin. A suspicion I never followed up on.
A thread I never bothered to pull because I assumed the Irish had already bound her into place, had already made her part of their machinery.
Rosalina Carter.
I say the name in my head again, testing the weight of it, and it fits her like a blade fits a sheath. Sharp. Dangerous. Nothing like the soft, political bride I thought I was getting.
"I know that name," I say quietly, and the words taste like ash and betrayal on my tongue.
Gabriel nods once, slow and deliberate, giving me time to absorb the impact. "You should. She's Seamus's adoptive daughter. The security girl who was supposed to come with Erin to ensure her safety."