Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Aric
Nikos’s house hasn’t changed. It’s the same as I remember it from years ago, when I was here on business last. Black everywhere.
Walls, banisters, columns. Polished stone that drinks light rather than reflecting it.
Crystal chandeliers overhead. Marble floors so flawless I can see the shape of us moving across them, distorted faintly, like something glimpsed underwater.
Priceless art lines the corridors. Antique furniture. Regal, like his personal castle.
Serena moves ahead of us, heels clicking against the marble. She glances back at us, and her gaze passes over Ayanna, lingers a beat too long, then flicks to me, then to the dining room.
“Everything is prepared,” she informs us. “We notified the staff on the way.”
She offers us rooms to freshen up before dinner. The guest suite is enormous and in the same tone as the rest of the house. Two en suite bathrooms on opposite sides of the bed. Ayanna disappears into one without looking at me. I take the other.
I take a quick shower and change into fresh clothes. Experience has taught me to keep a packed bag wherever I travel.
I’d had Ingrid prepare one for Ayanna as well.
I sit on the edge of the bed to wait, forearms braced against my knees, and try not to listen for the sound of her on the other side of the wall.
The bathroom door opens, and I look up before I tell myself not to.
She steps out, and everything in me stills. A black lace dress slips off her shoulders, skimming her body before falling in a soft line to the floor.
My gaze lingers. One second too long.
Her hair is down in dark waves, brushing her shoulders. Small diamonds decorate her ears. Nothing else.
She doesn’t need anything else.
Fuck.
My pulse betrays me, so I count my breaths instead. We’re in another Don’s house. I have a meeting in fifteen minutes… and my wife stands in front of me looking like she chose the dress on purpose.
Did she?
I rise slowly and close the distance between us until the scent of her perfume reaches me. Now I’m certain. Licorice. Jasmine. Vanilla. Coffee.
“Ready?” My voice gives nothing away. I wish the rest of me were as disciplined.
She looks up at me and nods. “Ready.” Her hand slips into the crook of my arm.
Serena and Nikos are already in the dining room when we arrive. He’s at the head of the table, black shirt, sleeves rolled, glass of wine in hand. Serena sits to his right with her own glass cradled loosely in her fingers. Her high-necked dress is black as well.
All of us are dressed like we’re attending a funeral. Maybe we are. Domenico’s, certainly. But not only his. Some things died today that don’t get graves.
We take our seats. Ayanna takes the one beside me.
Nikos swirls his wine before lifting it to his lips. “Monsera.” His gaze lands on Ayanna. “I hear it’s beautiful this time of year.”
Ayanna’s fingers rest lightly on the edge of the table. “It is.”
The conversation drifts from there. Climate.
Travel. Business that no one names but everyone understands.
Serena drinks her wine in slow, measured sips, listening more than she speaks.
Nikos controls the rhythm of the room without trying, a question here, an observation there, long silences he doesn’t rush to fill.
Ayanna answers when spoken to. She doesn’t overreach, but doesn’t shrink either, and I catch myself watching her more than I should.
Eventually, we move to the living area.
Nikos walks to the bar, then reaches for a crystal decanter and two glasses. He pours whiskey, then slides one toward me before taking a seat on a couch across from us. Serena refills the wine and sets two glasses on the table between the couches, then settles next to her husband.
“Thank you.” Serena breaks the silence.
I look at her, and she meets my gaze without flinching. Though I notice her fingers are wrapped around the stem of her glass so tight her knuckles are pale.
“I know why you did it,” she states. “You did it so I wouldn’t have to blame my husband for executing my cousin.”
My thumb traces the edge of the whiskey glass. “I did it because he tried to kill my wife.”
Serena nods as though accepting. “I wish Chiara had someone who would protect her like that.” Her gaze shifts to Ayanna. “Like we do.”
She lifts her wine and forces a smile, but it comes out tight.
“We’re lucky women, Princess Ayanna. Cheers to us.” She downs the wine and sets the glass on the table with a soft click. “But now, all that’s waiting for my cousin is death.”
The silence that follows is deafening. Serena looks calm the way a cracked glass looks whole. One tap and it all shatters.
I know the feeling. The composure by force. And I know what that costs.
I set the whiskey aside with more care than necessary. Even the faint clink against the table sounds too loud.
“What if there’s a way to prevent that?”
Nikos’s eyelids twitch almost imperceptibly. Serena turns toward me, her whole body shifting, hope flickering behind the exhaustion in her eyes. Ayanna swallows beside me, and I can feel the tension radiating off her.
“What are you saying?” Serena’s voice is careful.
I shift forward, my weight settling onto my thighs. “There may be a way to save Chiara. But it requires making her untouchable.”
Nikos takes a sip of his whiskey. When he sets it down, his eyes are fixed on me. “You’re suggesting she joins us.”
I nod. “If she marries one of us.”
Ayanna’s wineglass stops halfway to her mouth. The pause is so brief that no one else would catch it, but I clock it. She lowers the glass without taking a sip.
The fire that isn’t lit might as well be burning for how still the room goes. Serena’s fingers curl against her thigh. Nikos tilts his head, the way he does when he’s calculating odds.
“Who,” he asks, “would marry a woman marked by betrayal? A liability with no leverage. No standing.”
I hold his gaze, contemplating whether I want to say it aloud. “Park Hyun-seok.”
Serena’s eyes widen as though she sees the light at the end of the tunnel. Nikos’s brow lifts, just a fraction.
“He owes me.” A debt he hasn’t repaid.
Nikos leans back in his seat, head angling. “And you believe he would agree?”
“It wouldn’t be real.” I answer without hesitation, even if the decision doesn’t sit well with me.
I never intended to collect on Hyun-seok’s debt.
But I owe Chiara this much, and he’s the only option I have left.
“Wouldn’t need to be. Only symbolic. Temporary, if we can make it so.
Long enough to place her under the society’s protection. ”
“And you expect the Council to accept this?”
“I expect you to support it.” My gaze doesn’t waver. “As the society’s leader. Without that, it won’t matter.”
Chiara is lucky. Lucky that her cousin married the man at the top.
Without Serena, without Nikos’s backing, there wouldn’t be a single way to save her.
My history with her, whatever it was, wouldn’t have been enough.
Not for the Council. Not for the laws we all agreed to uphold.
But Nikos’s word carries weight. The kind even the Council can’t ignore.
He takes another slow sip of whiskey before he sets it down and nods.
Serena understands immediately, because at that moment her hand lifts to her mouth, her breath stutters, and her eyes shine with tears.
“Thank you.” Her voice breaks on the second word. She doesn’t try to hide it this time.
I simply nod, and my gaze drifts to Ayanna.
She’s watching me. The mask is still in place, the one she’s been wearing all evening, but there’s something in her eyes I haven’t seen before. Something that settles unwelcome in my chest.
I know what this looks like. Saving the woman I once planned a future with while my wife sits beside me, bound to me by vows neither of us chose. It isn’t comfortable. But some debts don’t disappear because your life changes. And this one’s mine.
The room is dark when we return from dinner. Only the bedside lamp on Ayanna’s side casts a soft glow across the black walls.
And there’s only one bed.
We undress in silence, each keeping to our own side of the room. Neither of us looks at the other. By the time I slide beneath the sheets, she’s already there, her back to me, dark hair fanned across the pillow.
I settle onto my back, the wound pulling in quiet protest. My hands come to rest over my stomach.
For a while, there’s only silence. I think she’s asleep, or pretending to be, until she speaks.
“You saved Chiara.” She clears her throat. “You pulled strings to save her.”
She turns. The sheet rustles softly. I hear her settle onto her side, facing me, though I keep my eyes on the ceiling because looking at her now would be a mistake.
“Will you do the same for Luca?”
There it is.
I knew this question would come the moment I decided to help Chiara. But the situations aren’t the same, and I know it even as the comparison sits in the air between us.
Chiara was collateral. She didn’t plan. Didn’t scheme. She didn’t betray the society. She didn’t conspire. She didn’t put a bullet in motion and call it love.
Luca did.
And that’s where this fractures. Because once The Gods are involved, mercy stops being a personal decision. It becomes a liability. A weakness that echoes far beyond our marriage.
“Luca isn’t Chiara.” I keep my eyes on the ceiling.
“I know.”
“He tried to have me killed. In your name. You know what the Council does to men who do that.”
“I know that too.”
I turn my head. She’s propped on one elbow, dark eyes on me, yet there’s nothing pleading in them. She doesn’t beg. She never does. She’s already calculated the cost of asking and decided she’ll pay it if she has to.
That steadiness is what undoes me. The fact that she would absorb whatever answer I gave without flinching. The fact that she’s looking at me like a queen would look at a king, not a princess at a man holding the keys to her cage.
I turn fully toward her, propped on the elbow the way she does, close enough now that I can see the hope kindle in her eyes.
“I won’t make promises I can’t keep,” I say. “But if there’s a way to keep him breathing without bringing the Council down on your head, I’ll find it. And if there isn’t, I’ll exhaust every option before I let this world decide for you.”
Her breath falters for a fraction of a second. It doesn’t escape me.
“For you,” I add, quieter. “I’ll do it because you asked.”
Even though every instinct I have wants that bastard dead. Even though every Council law I helped write would call this weakness. Even though, if anyone else had made this request, I’d already be deciding how to carry out the sentence.
But it isn’t weakness. Nor is it mercy. Certainly not forgiveness.
It’s a choice.
If I was willing to move mountains to save the woman who belonged to my past, then I can’t offer my wife, the woman who’s meant to be my future, anything less. Even if the man she wants me to save is the one I should hate most.
So I make that choice on my own accord, fully aware it may cost me dearly. And I make it anyway.
For her.
Because somehow, the woman who was supposed to mean nothing has become the only person capable of making me rewrite the rules I’ve lived by.
Her eyes flick between mine a moment longer. Then she lies back down, slow, careful, like she’s afraid of breaking whatever just passed between us.
“Thank you, Aric.”
The way my name leaves her mouth, maddeningly soft, does something dangerous to the part of me that still believes in self-control. I close my eyes against it. Then I lie back too, gaze returning to the ceiling because I don’t trust myself to keep looking at her.