Chapter 20 Mia
MIA
By late afternoon staff moved a beat faster. Guards I hadn’t seen before rotated in at the end of the hall, eyes sweeping, radio earpieces. I tried to read in the library and couldn’t get past the same sentence three times. Tried music—too much noise.
Footsteps approached the library. A soft knock. “Mrs. Di Fiore?”
I turned. Meredith stood in the doorway, hands folded at her waist, a line between her brows she tried to smooth away. “Would you like tea?” she asked. “Or coffee? The kitchen can send something—”
“I’m fine.” I forced a smile. “Thank you.”
She hesitated. “There will be dinner in the east dining room at eight.”
“Is my husband joining?”
“I’m not sure.” An apology lived in the dip of her head. “If you need anything—”
“I’ll call.”
When she’d gone, the silence slipped back over everything. I stared at the book in my lap. My reflection ghosted faint in the window—updo loosening, dress I’d chosen carefully this morning now wrinkled at the hip.
I closed the book when I noticed a small black box. I lifted the lid. Keys inside, nestled in velvet.
When you want to see it.
The townhouse. Marco said something about it yesterday. For you, if you want it. A place in the city, smaller than this palace.
For a wild, traitorous second I let myself picture it: a morning without guards at the gate, a coffee shop on the corner that knew my name, flowers from a vendor who didn’t need to run my background to hand me peonies.
A life measured in small joys instead of large weapons.
Catrina would be laughing, hauling me from store to store, making me try on dresses just because we could.
Except Catrina’s laugh hadn’t rung true this morning. And the house—his house, now mine—had set its jaw.
A voice drifted from around the bend, low and familiar. Marco. Another voice answered—a guard I didn’t know. I stepped into the alcove by the window and listened, hating myself for it and doing it, anyway.
“…tighten the west approach,” Marco said. “No gaps. I want eyes. Rotate every hour. Nobody falls asleep on my watch tonight.”
“Yes, sir.”
Footsteps moved away, their echo swallowed by the carpet. I stayed in the alcove with the keys pressing into my skin. My phone, when I checked, held a single text.
Catrina: Come to my room before dinner?
I almost said no.
Her room was a sanctuary. A shrine to femininity. She held up two dresses before I’d stepped fully inside. “Black. Or red. Black says untouchable. Red says I dare you.”
I snorted. “Since when do I need to declare war with a hemline?”
“Since your life started reading like a headline,” she shot back, but her eyes searched my face in that way she had—quick, precise, cataloging bruises no one else could see. “You slept?”
“Not really.”
“You eat?”
“Does coffee count?”
She clicked her tongue and thrust the red into my hands. “Try this. If you hate it, we’ll set it on fire.”
I slipped behind the screen. The dress slid over my skin like it had been waiting for me. When I stepped out, Catrina let out a low whistle.
“Enrico will love taking that off you later.” She paused, then frowned. “If he shows up.”
My stomach dipped. I kept my eyes on the mirror and smoothed the fabric at my hip. The woman in the glass appeared almost dangerous. A perfect illusion.
“What’s going on?” I asked, meeting her gaze in the reflection.
She hesitated, the admission already gathering behind her teeth. “He’s… focused,” she said. “There’s chatter. I don’t have any details.”
“Because they don’t tell you, or because he asked you not to tell me?”
“Both.”
I turned. “I asked for honesty.”
Catrina’s mouth softened. “He’s still learning.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s the truth,” she said, and for once, there was no defense in it. Only fatigue.
She stepped behind me to fix a strand of hair, fingers sure and gentler than she wanted people to know. When she finished, she rested her hands on my shoulders and met my eyes in the mirror.
“You are not an afterthought. Don’t let his silence convince you otherwise.”
Dinner at eight turned into dinner at eight-thirty turned into dinner at nine. Plates came and went under silver domes, courses I couldn’t taste. I kept glancing toward the door like a fool, waiting for him to fill the space he’d left. He didn’t.
When Meredith cleared the untouched dessert, she set down a small envelope beside my glass. No monogram. No wax seal.
Hope to sleep next to you tonight.
– E
I let my thumb trace the line where the ink had sunk deeper into the paper. I folded the note. I did not cry.
Afterwards, I walked. Hallway. Gallery. Footsteps behind me. I didn’t turn.
“You missed dinner.”
“I know.” He sounded tired. Not the kind of tiredness you fix with sleep.
Something in my chest softened and then stiffened; danger disguised as tenderness. “You got what you wanted. You married me in front of everyone. The alliance is sealed. My father sleeps easier. The underworld applauds. And now—” I gestured at the space between us. “Now you’re gone.”
He went very still.
“I’m not gone.”
“You’re somewhere else. You sure the fuck aren’t sleeping with me.”
He locked his eyes on mine. “This part is mine. You don’t need to stress over business stuff.”
“What am I supposed to do while you keep the world from burning down? Try on dresses? Pick curtains?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It isn’t.” As my husband, he should know better. How many times did I have to tell him different?
“Then don’t.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Nothing about this is easy,” he said, and the fatigue scraped through again. He shifted, and the bench creaked. “I’m asking you to trust me.”
Silence stretched again. “You told me I was yours,” I said finally, not looking at him. “And for one minute, I believed that meant wanted. Not just kept.”
“You are wanted,” he said. The words were steady.
“Of course you say that,” I muttered, but the sting didn’t have teeth.
“Someone is coming for what I built. Plus, they might be after you too. Hell, for the crown they think sits light on my head.”
I turned then. A stripe of light from the high window cut across his cheekbone. “And you can’t tell me more.”
“Not yet. I don’t have much to go off of yet.”
“Because you don’t trust me?”
“Because I trust you,” he said, finally meeting my eyes. “And I won’t turn you into something to be compromised.” He shook his head once. “I will not make you a tool.”
“I hate that your protection feels like punishment.”
“I don’t know another way to keep you safe,” he answered, voice roughening at the edges.
These last two days have been lonely. He suggested we slept in separate rooms, but then I didn’t see him at all. Loneliness was not something I signed up for in this marriage. And I wouldn’t stand for it.
“I thought you weren’t interested anymore. That you had gotten what you wanted and casted me aside.”
His jaw tipped toward surprise, then anger—not at me; at whatever force in the world had given me that idea. “You think I married you and then lost interest?” He shook his head like he could dislodge the thought. “You think I am capable of indifference now that you sleep under my roof?”
“I think I was something you wanted and now that you have me… the fun and games are over.”
He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, like a man admitting a sin he didn’t yet know how to stop committing, “I am trying to be a different man. For you. How to be the type of husband you deserve.”
The confession landed in my chest like a weight and a relief.
“Come here,” he said, and the words were soft enough to be optional.
He didn’t reach for me right away, but our fingers threaded together, the simple human fact of it making something unclench along my spine.
His skin was warm. The callus along his ring finger rasped my knuckle when he tightened his grip, like an apology and a claim in one.
He didn’t kiss me. He didn’t pull me into him like I wanted and erase all the edges.
“Go tomorrow to the townhouse. Take Catrina and a guard though. If not, I’ll go insane.”
He lifted my fingers to his mouth. A kiss on the knuckles like a vow. He didn’t have to say mine. It lived in the way he observed me.
“Let’s take you to your room so you can get some rest.”
When we reached my door, he didn’t cross the threshold.
He peered into the room like it might bite him.
He stepped back. I closed the door and leaned my forehead against the wood for a long breath.
The red dress whispered when I moved, silk catching skin.
I changed slowly—hung the dress like an apology, washed my face and then slid between sheets that still smelled like jasmine from another lifetime.
Silence returned, but it wasn’t empty. It held space for what we’d said and what we hadn’t. I gazed at the ceiling and thought about the keys in a velvet box to the townhouse.
Sometime later, the door opened. I didn’t turn.
The mattress dipped; the room adjusted around the shape of him.
He didn’t speak. His arm slid along the sheet until his palm found my hip and settled there—not gripping, not claiming.
Just resting. A weight that said, I’m here.
It was the most intimate thing he’d done since our wedding night.