My grip on her tightens reflexively. Tomorrow, I'll make her say it while she's awake. Make her scream it while I'm buried inside her. Make her understand that every mark she leaves on me demands payment, and I always collect what I'm owed.
The scratches pulse with fresh pain as I smile.
Let them scar. They're proof that my delicate wife has claws, even if she only shows them in sleep. And tomorrow, when she traces them with trembling fingers, trying to heal what she's done, I'll show her exactly what kind of monster she married.
One who gets harder from her violence than her submission.
One who wants to own every nightmare, every scream, every desperate plea that falls from her lips.
One who's going to make her grateful for it.
9 - Emma
Alessandro’s shirt is still laced with his scent when I steal it in the middle of the night, and I know he’s awake—no one sleeps that still without practice.
My fingers tremble as I lift the white cotton from the chair where he tossed it hours ago. The fabric holds his essence like a living thing, releasing that musky floral cologne that makes my treacherous body respond even in the darkness. I freeze, watching the shadow of his form in our bed, waiting for him to move, to stop me.
But he remains perfectly still. Too still. The kind of stillness that comes from conscious effort, not unconscious rest.
He's letting me take it.
The realization should stop me, should send me scurrying back to the silk sheets or back to the bathroom to dress in my own clothes. Instead, it makes something rebellious flare in my chest. If he wants to play games, pretending to sleep while I steal his clothes, then I'll play too. I'll take what I need—this armor of cotton and his scent—and escape to the only place in this mansion where I can breathe.
The midnight shower was supposed to tire me out, help me sleep, but it just fired me up. I slip the shirt over my naked skin, each button a small act of defiance. The hem barely covers my thighs, leaving my legs bare to the cool air.
The marble floor is ice under my bare feet as I ghost toward the door. Each step feels like a held breath, waiting for his voice to stop me, for his hand to catch my wrist and drag me backto bed. But nothing comes except the steady rhythm of his fake sleep.
The service stairwell beckons—my secret discovered while seeking escape routes that don't exist. My heart pounds as I climb toward the roof, toward the stars, toward the only thing that still remembers who Emma really is beneath this performance of Frances Hewson.
The Perseids are peaking tonight, and I'd rather die than miss them because of him. After almost a week as his captive bride, I need something real, something that existed before Alessandro Rosetti claimed me.
The rooftop door opens onto a garden that takes my breath away. I discovered it two nights ago, this secret oasis above the cage. Roses and jasmine tangle across trellises, their perfume mixing with the Chicago night air—exhaust and rain and danger. But I barely notice the carefully cultivated beauty. Above me, the sky blazes with falling stars, the Perseids at their peak.
I sink onto a stone bench, cold granite biting through the thin shirt, a welcome respite after the hot day, and I tilt my face toward infinity. The familiar constellations greet me like old friends—Perseus hanging in the northeast, Andromeda forever chained across the horizon. The irony makes my chest ache.
"There you are," I whisper to Cassiopeia, finding her distinctive W shape. "Still on your throne while the rest of us scramble below."
A meteor streaks across the darkness, then another. I pull my knees to my chest, Alessandro's shirt riding up my thighs, goosebumps rising on exposed skin. For the first time since the wedding, I remember what it feels like to be myself. Not the terrified girl playing Frances Hewson. Not the trembling wife learning to crave her captor's touch. Just Emma, small and insignificant under an infinite sky.
Tommy would laugh if he saw me now—his sister who taught him constellations from our fire escape, now trapped on a different kind of rooftop, wearing nothing but my captor's shirt. The thought of him locked in his own cage makes my eyes burn with tears.
Another meteor burns across the heavens, and I close my eyes to make a wish I know won't come true. I wish I could disappear into that darkness and finally, truly be free.
"Making wishes without me, cara?"
I leap to my feet at Alessandro's voice, my stolen moment shattering like glass. My whole body starts trembling—actual, visible shaking that I hate myself for. He emerges from the shadows by the stairwell door, and I realize with cold dread that he's been watching me this entire time.
Of course he followed me.
He wears nothing but boxer shorts, his chest vast and bare, starlight rippling over it.
"I couldn't sleep," I manage, pulling his shirt tighter around my body as if the thin cotton could protect me from his gaze. The ground is cold beneath my feet.
"So you stole my shirt." He moves closer, each step deliberate, predatory. "Again."
The way he says 'again' makes my pulse race so hard I feel dizzy. This game we've been playing—him pretending not to notice, me pretending I'm getting away with something—suddenly feels dangerous in a different way.
"I was cold," I lie.
