I wander into the sitting room off our bedroom, touching expensive things that belong to someone else's life. A crystal decanter reflecting rainbow light. Silk curtains that whisper wealth with every movement. Each object reminds me how farI've fallen from Emma's world. Or risen, depending on whose perspective matters.
Two weeks since I walked down that aisle as someone else. Two weeks of designer clothes, supervised freedom, and a husband who watches me like I'm both precious and breakable. The servant girl who scrubbed floors feels like a ghost, someone I dreamed about once.
I catch my reflection in the floor-length mirror and freeze.
The woman staring back wears a designer dress in deep blue silk. Diamond earrings catch the light, the wedding ring weighs down my hand, a pearl bracelet circles my wrist. Every piece marks me as his, as Mrs.Rosetti, as anything but Emma the servant.
The woman staring back could be any mafia wife. Expensive, empty, existing only as an extension of her husband's power. How many others have stood where I stand, watching themselves disappear into their husband's empire?
"I don't recognize you," I whisper to the stranger in designer clothes.
My hands shake as I remove the jewelry, each piece heavier than the last. The earrings first, then the bracelet, each removal like shedding skin that never quite fit. The wedding ring sticks, of course it does, and I have to twist it past my knuckle. Even my body is betraying Emma, swelling to keep Mrs.Rosetti's chains in place.
The designer dress whispers against my skin as I sink onto the velvet sofa, expensive fabric that would have taken me months to afford on my servant's salary. Even the way I sit has changed. Spine straight, ankles crossed, the posture of someone who belongs in places like this.
Until I sag.
Alessandro finds me crying on the sofa, my carefully applied makeup running in black streams down cheeks that no longerfeel like mine. He kneels beside me, movements careful and controlled, like approaching a wounded animal.
"Tell me," he says simply.
"I don't know who I am." The words come out broken. "Sarah heard a stranger on the phone. You married someone who doesn't exist. And I'm changing into something I don't recognize."
His thumb brushes away a tear with devastating gentleness. "You're wet," he observes, and we both know he doesn't just mean the tears. My thighs clench involuntarily, my body responding to his proximity even through my breakdown. This is what he's done to me, made me crave him even when I'm falling apart.
"You're my wife."
"You say that like it solves everything."
"Doesn't it?"
"You've had two weeks to make me yours. I've had two weeks to forget who I was. Neither of us is finished yet."
He studies my face like he's memorizing every tear track. "You're becoming who you were meant to be. Not the servant, not the fake heiress. Something new."
"Something you're creating." It's not quite an accusation.
"Something we're creating." His hands frame my face, forcing me to meet his eyes. "You think I haven't changed since that chapel? You think claiming you hasn't altered me in ways I never expected?"
The admission surprises us both. Alessandro Rosetti doesn't admit to change, to being affected. But here he is, kneeling on an expensive rug, offering comfort to the servant girl he married by accident.
"I'm accepting it," I whisper. "This life, these clothes, you. I'm accepting becoming yours even though I know it means losing everything I was."
"Not losing. Transforming." He pulls me against his chest, and I let him, needing the anchor even if it's the very thing drowning me. "You're still the girl who loves stars. Still the woman who would sacrifice everything for family. Those parts don't disappear just because you wear silk instead of cotton."
His cologne mingles with something underneath, gunpowder, maybe, or just the metallic scent of violence that clings to men like him. I breathe it in like an addict, hating how it makes me feel safe.
His arms around me feel like safety and danger combined, like home and exile all at once.
"You know I'm yours as much as you're mine,” he says. “That's enough truth for now."
The word 'enough' keeps echoing between us. His possession is enough for him. But the question that burns in my chest, that I can't voice, is whether being his will ever be enough for me.
"But is it enough for me?" The question slips out before I can stop it, whispered against his shoulder where he might not hear it.
He does, of course. Alessandro hears everything, especially the things I don't want to say.
His arms tighten around me, and for a moment I think he'll push for an answer. Instead, he just holds me while I fragment into pieces. Emma, Frances, Mrs.Rosetti, none of them quite fitting anymore.
