But straight into Ciro Castellani’s study, too?
* * *
After lunch, I spend the rest of the day in the library. Once the sun is setting, I run up to shower, and then—after staring at the formal dinner suit for a while—I pull on my old jeans and tee, the ones I arrived in. Jack and Miller won’t expect me to dress up for dinner, after all.
I think they’ve been re-laundered, because they smell a lot better now. Or maybe I’ve finally been able to push the odor of the cells out of my sense-memory.
When I go back through to living area, there’s Alessandro, seated on the couch, looking effortlessly cool in charcoal dress pants and an open-throated dove-gray shirt.
Despite his reminder earlier that Iam, technically, a prisoner here, I can’t help the flutter in my gut when I see him.
“Hi,” I say with a shy smile.
Alessandro is flicking through his phone with a frown. He glances up and does a double take. “No.”
“No?”
He leans back in the sofa, his finger flicking at me, head to toe. “No.”
I look down at my outfit. “What’s wrong?”
Alessandro sighs. “Come with me.”
I follow him through to my bedroom, into the dressing room, where he stands staring at the clothes hanging up. They seem to have multiplied. Again. Alessandro picks out a pair of light blue chinos and a chevron-patterned shirt in pale salmon, the kind of things I would never choose for myself in a million years.
“Wear these tonight,” he tells me, separating them into their own space on the racks. “Tuck the shirt in,” he adds, with a mock-severe glance over his shoulder at me. “With the Ferragamo loafers.”
My shoes have also bred like bunnies. There must be ten pairs of them now. “Alright,” I tell him, and pull off my tee. Alessandro watches me strip down to my underwear, although he tries to pretend he’snotlooking.
I re-dress slowly and carefully, feeling his gaze on me the entire time. When I’m done, I straighten my clothes, then give a little shrug. “How’s this?”
He walks around me in a slow circle, taking in every inch, until he’s back in front of me again. “Almost,” he says, and then he unbuttons my cuffs and rolls the sleeves a little way up my forearms. He seems satisfied until his eyes fall on my neck, and he frowns. He reaches out to readjust my collar, and runs a fingertip gently under the mark across my throat. “Is it still painful?”
“Only a little.”
The hand slides up behind my ear and he tips my head back to look into my face. “He will pay for it,” he murmurs. “I promise you that,topolino.”
My lips part as I begin to tell him not to worry about it—I’m alive, after all, aren’t I?—but he’s so close, all I can do is stare into his deep, dark eyes. I sway into him, hoping for more, wanting his mouth on mine—
But he pulls away.
“Add one of these.” He moves to the chest in the middle of the room and opens the top drawer. Inside, there are row after row of accessories: ties and handkerchiefs and scarves. Alessandro runs his hand down a row of silky-looking things, larger than the handkerchiefs, each rolled up individually and immaculately. “This one.” He pulls out one, patterned with an icy blue paisley, and shakes it out. “Do you know how to wear these?”
I stare at it, then at him. “I don’t even know what it is.”
For the first time, he smiles. “As long as you know how to wear it, that’s the most important thing.” He drapes it gently around my neck, then knots it at the front loosely, gently, and tucks it into my open collar, being very careful around the raw brand of Julian’s attack.
“It suits you.” He takes me by the shoulders and looks me over critically. His hands thread through my hair and muss it up, then pat it down. He gives a nod. “Yes.” He turns me toward the full-length mirror set between two of the inset racks, and my eyes widen as I take myself in.
I know I’m cute. I’ve heard it often enough. But the man looking back at me with my own eyes is notcute. He looks coldly, untouchably beautiful, an ice sculpture come to life. My eyes have never seemed such a glacial blue, reflecting the cravat around my throat. My hair, bright gold in the lights of the dressing room, is artfully messy, utterly stylish.
“Oh…” I reach up to touch my own face, wondering if the person in the mirror is reallyme. It is. The man in the mirror raises a tentative hand just as I do.
“Do you see now why I like to look at you so much?” Alessandro murmurs, watching me in the mirror as I look myself over. “Perhaps tonight your beauty will make up for my lack of it.”
“What? You’re gorgeous.” I turn halfway, looking up at him in confusion. I reach up to cup his face, the scarred side, the side that he tries so carefully to keep turned away from me.
And he lets me.
