I let out a low laugh. “So youwerepaying attention. And you said you didn’t like the movie.”
He chuckles. “Of course I was. But please, have pity on a man and let me choose the next one,amore mio.”
I don’t know if it’s the wine lowering my inhibitions, but suddenly I feel more at ease with him.
This feels like a normal conversation.I’m not pretending to listen; I’m fully engaged. And the banter feels real.
“Okay, you get one movie choice this month. But for the next two weeks, we’re going through the entire Harry Potter franchise. I still can’t believe you haven’t watched them.”
“Kids running around with little sticks yelling ‘hocus pocus?’ Yeah, not really my thing, Bea.”
I roll my eyes and laugh lightly. “You’ll love them, I promise. And if I had to guess… you look like a Slytherin.”
His eyebrows pull together in a frown. “And what on God’s green earth is a Slytherin?”
“Yep,” I sip my wine, “definitely a Slytherin.”
He looks at me, eyes sharp and dangerous—and somehow impossible to look away from. It’s an invisible force tapping at the protective barriers I’ve kept wrapped around myself for weeks now.
“I like you like this,” I say, gesturing to him. “You’re less… serious. And it feels like I can be normal with you like this.”
The words slip right past my lips.
He shakes his head, lips parting into a solemn smile. “You make no secret of fearing me,cara mia.”
“I don’t fear you.”
I sayit far too quickly for him to believe my lie. “Well, I used to… but I don’t fear you now.”
“That’s a half-truth, and we both know it. If you don’t completely fear me, then there are parts of you that hate me—loathe me, even.”
I take a long sip of wine. I don’t want to answer, because we both know the truth, and there’s no need to reaffirm something already understood.
“I’m trying not to.” And there it is—my first truth.
“Good.”
His eyes hold mine for a long moment. He studies me, drinking me in cell by cell.
I fillthe silence with the question that has gnawed at me for a while now.
“Why do you never speak about your mother?”
The moment the question leaves my lips, something shifts in him.
It’s subtle, barely more than the faint recoil of a man who has been struck in a place no one is supposed to reach, but I feel it like a cold wind threading between my ribs. Giacomo goes completely still, the kind of stillness that only comes from a lifetime of learning how to lock emotion behind stone walls.
When he finally sets his glass down, the motion is almost reverent, like he’s placing something fragile between us.
“My mother…” he begins, the words scraped raw, “is a chapter I keep closed for a reason.”
I don’t speak. Something in his voice tells me not to.
He exhales, long and slow, his gaze drifting to a distant corner of the room—as if he’s looking through the years to a place he rarely allows himself to return to.
“She was beautiful,” he says softly. “Not in the way people like to say to comfort the grieving. She was truly beautiful. But she was born with a softness the world had no mercy for. My father married her because she made him look human, and then spent the rest of their marriage proving to her she should never have trusted him with her heart.”
My throat tightens.
