Chapter 7 #2
Fury rises in my chest like bile, hot and sharp and acidic, mixing with something uglier beneath it—betrayal. The kind that burns from the inside out because it comes from someone you let get close. Someone you let touch you. Someone you let inside your defenses.
The door swings open behind me with the careless ease of someone who does not consider this house capable of holding secrets from him.
Luca walks in wearing sweatpants and nothing else, his hair still damp from a shower, chest misted with water droplets that catch the morning light.
He takes one look at my face—at whatever expression is carved there—and his eyes flick immediately to Gabriel, then back to me.
His entire posture shifts from casual to alert in the space of a single heartbeat.
"He told you," Luca says.
It is not a question. It is a confirmation.
Which means Luca already knew.
Which means they both fucking knew, and I was the only one standing in the dark like a fool.
I turn my head slowly toward him, feeling every muscle in my neck protest, feeling the tension coil tighter and tighter like a spring wound past its breaking point. "You knew."
Luca shrugs, moving toward the coffee pot like the air is not suddenly charged with violence, like he cannot feel the way my entire body is vibrating with the effort of not breaking something—or someone. "We suspected."
"How." The word comes out calm. Too calm. The kind of calm I use when I am deciding how much damage to inflict, how deep to cut, how permanent to make the lesson I am about to teach.
Luca pours coffee with steady hands, takes a leisurely sip, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. When he speaks, his voice is matter-of-fact, almost gentle, like he is explaining something painfully obvious to a child who should have figured it out already.
"Because Gabriel met Rosalina a couple of days ago when we went to visit the O'Connors." He turns to face me fully, leaning back against the counter. "She told him then that she wasn't the princess, and I did some digging and it’s true.”
"So the Irish fucking played us," I say, and the words taste like blood in my mouth.
Luca's gaze flicks over me, careful and assessing, like he is trying to gauge how close I am to snapping. "No," he says slowly. "She's technically a daughter of Seamus. Just not the princess."
I can feel the blood rising in my ears, when the footsteps sound on the staircase.
All three of us look up at once, synchronized, predatory.
Rosalina appears at the top of the stairs, and the sight of her sends a visceral jolt through my system that has nothing to do with betrayal and everything to do with the fact that she is here, in my house, wearing my shirt like it belongs on her skin.
The white button-down hangs loose on her frame, sleeves rolled carelessly to her elbows, the collar gaping open at her throat in a way that makes me want to put my mouth there and feel her pulse jump against my tongue.
The hem brushes mid-thigh, exposing long bare legs that are still faintly marked by my hands from last night, evidence of what I did to her, how thoroughly I claimed her, how completely she surrendered beneath me.
Her hair falls in wild bronze curls over her shoulders, still mussed from sleep and from my fingers, and for just a second—one brief, unguarded second—her face is soft, relaxed, almost peaceful.
Then she sees us.
All three of us watching her with the kind of focused intensity that makes prey animals freeze.
The softness vanishes like smoke. Her entire posture transforms in an instant—shoulders rolling back, spine straightening, chin lifting in that defiant way that speaks of training and discipline and someone who has learned to assess threats before they become fatal.
Her eyes sharpen, pupils contracting as they flick between the three of us, scanning, calculating, measuring distances to exits and cataloging potential weapons within reach with the automatic precision of someone who has survived situations that would have broken softer people.
The guard returns, sliding into place behind her expression like armor being donned, and I realize with a dark thrill of satisfaction that this is who she really is underneath all the lies and carefully constructed facades—not a delicate princess who needs protection, but a warrior who knows exactly how dangerous the world is and has made herself dangerous in return.
She comes down the stairs slowly, each step deliberate and measured, bare feet silent against the wood, and I watch her with a clarity I did not have twelve hours ago when I thought I knew who she was and what she meant.
I see the way she keeps her weight balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to move in any direction at a moment's notice.
I see the way her eyes never stop tracking us, the way she marks Gabriel's position by the table, Luca's proximity to the counter, my stance near the center of the kitchen.
I see the micro-expressions flickering across her face—wariness, calculation, that razor-edge tension of someone preparing for violence.
"What's going on?" She asks when she reaches the bottom of the stairs, her voice even and controlled, but there is a faint tightness threading through it, a tension that tells me she can already smell blood in the water, already knows something has shifted in the air around us.
Gabriel answers before I do, his voice flat and factual, stripped of anything that might soften the blow. "We know."
Rosalina stops at the edge of the kitchen, and I watch her gaze flick from Gabriel to Luca to me, the movement quick and assessing, like she is weighing who poses the most immediate threat, who she would need to neutralize first if this turns into the kind of confrontation that ends with bodies on the floor.
"Know what?" She says, and her tone is careful, neutral, giving absolutely nothing away.
"Who you are," Luca replies, and there is an odd softness creeping into his voice now, like he is trying to keep the blade from cutting too deep too fast, "and who you aren't."
I see it happen in real time. I see the exact moment the truth lands in her consciousness and detonates like a grenade going off inside her skull.
Her pupils dilate slightly, blown wide with what might be fear or adrenaline or some volatile combination of both.
Her jaw tightens, muscle jumping beneath skin.
Her shoulders go rigid, every muscle in her body coiling tight like a spring wound past its breaking point, like a predator gathering itself to strike or flee depending on which option presents itself first.
Her gaze darts toward the door behind her—just for a fraction of a second, but long enough for me to see her calculating distance, calculating whether she can make it, calculating what happens if she cannot.
She pivots.
She is going to run.
Gabriel moves faster than I have ever seen him move outside of actual combat situations where lives hang in the balance.
He crosses the kitchen in three long strides that eat up the distance between them, and his hand shoots out to catch her wrist before she can take a single step toward freedom, his grip firm enough to stop her momentum without breaking bone, without leaving marks that would be visible later.
But Rosalina does not freeze. Does not submit.
She whips toward him like a striking snake, wild and dangerous and absolutely feral, and I see the exact moment training overrides panic, the exact moment instinct takes control.
Her free hand comes up fast, fingers curled into a weapon, nails aimed at his eyes with the kind of precision that speaks of someone who has been taught exactly where to strike to cause maximum damage.
She twists her body, using the momentum of his grip against him, trying to break his hold with a technique I recognize from advanced hand-to-hand combat training—the kind of thing you do not learn unless someone has invested serious time and money into making you lethal.
Gabriel blocks her strike with his forearm, deflecting it away from his face, and uses her own forward momentum to spin her around, getting behind her, wrapping his arm around her waist and hauling her back against his chest with the kind of controlled strength that comes from years of subduing people who do not want to be subdued.
She thrashes against him, all wild fury and desperate violence, her elbow driving back toward his ribs in a blow that would crack bone if it landed clean.
He shifts, taking the impact on the thicker muscle of his shoulder instead, and she lets out a frustrated snarl that is barely human, barely controlled, pure animal rage at being trapped.
"Let go," she snaps, and her voice is all edges now, all threat, stripped of anything soft or yielding.
"Sit," Gabriel says, his voice low and calm and utterly unmovable, the voice of someone who has done this a thousand times and knows exactly how it ends.
She tries once more, dropping her weight suddenly in an attempt to break his grip, but he anticipates it, follows her down, and when she tries to stamp on his instep he moves his foot, avoiding the strike entirely.
She is good—well-trained, fast, vicious when cornered—but Gabriel is better, and we both know it.
I see the moment she realizes it too. The moment she understands that fighting him outright will cost more than it gains, that this is not a battle she can win through force alone.
Her body goes still, but it is not surrender.
It is strategy.