My fingers.
I compare my own hand to the drawing. The proportions match. The knuckle scar from a chisel slip from a few years ago.
It’s infuriating that he’s good.
That the man who kidnapped me can also make something beautiful with his hands.
I frame studying his work as tactical. Understanding my captor. Learning his pressure points like I learn the stress fractures in old stone.
But I catch myself tracing one of his pencil lines with my gaze the way I used to trace craquelure in frescoes. Following the path of his hand. Wondering what he was thinking when he made this mark, and this one, and this one.
Stop it.
I shove the canvas back against the wall and leave.
He’s in the hallway when I exit, leaning against the doorframe like he’s been waiting.
“Did you see anything you liked?”
“You’re good.” I hate admitting it. “Doesn’t make you less of a monster.”
“No,” he agrees easily. “But it makes me human, and that’s what scares you.”
The next day,I’m crossing from the library to my room when movement in the courtyard catches my eye.
A truck, pulling through the main gate. Black, military-looking. Men stepping out with weapons I recognize from action movies and nightmares. Machine guns, matte black, carried withthe casual efficiency of people who use them regularly. One of them laughs at something another says. Relaxed. Unbothered. Like this is a normal Tuesday.
They move in practiced formation, disappearing under an overhang before I can count them.
My stomach knots with confirmation.
This can’t be security for some nervous billionaire. This is an operation. A machine with moving parts, and I’m trapped somewhere inside it.
Later, at lunch in the solarium, I try to needle him about it.
“Most art foundations don’t need paramilitary cosplay.”
His expression cools, and the temperature drops ten degrees in the space between us.
“Sicily is unpredictable.”
“That’s your answer for everything.”
“Because it’s true.” He lifts his water glass, takes a slow sip. “The foundations here are never as solid as they look.”
Double meaning. Always double meanings with him.
The more he avoids, the more I know. Whatever he is, it isn’t clean.
That night I walk into the dining room. See him seated. See the single setting, the candles, the crystal.
And I just... sit down.
No question. No defiance. No “where do I sit?” thrown at him like a tiny grenade.
I lower myself onto his lap as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, and I don’t realize what I’ve done until I’m already there. Until his arm is around me and his chest is warm against my back and my body has arranged itself against him like water finding its level.
Horror floods through me.
