But he’s right, I’ve been locked inside these stone walls for almost a month now, surrounded by silk and surveillance, breathing recycled air that never quite feels real. The courtyard wasn’t outside, not truly, just another room with a ceiling removed. And I’m starving for the sky without glass or stone framing it, for air that moves freely instead of pressing in. I want to see the full scope of the place that’s holding me, map its edges in my mind, understand exactly how vast the cage really is.
“Fine.” I set down my fork. “But if this is some elaborate setup to fuck me against a tree?—”
His mouth curves. Dark amusement flickering in those endless eyes. “If I wanted to fuck you against a tree,tesoro, I wouldn’t need elaborate setups.” He holds my gaze. “You’d let me.”
The Mediterranean nightswallows me whole.
I step through the balcony doors and stop dead, overwhelmed. The scent of jasmine hits first, heavy and intoxicating, threading through air that’s warm and soft against my bare arms, wrapping around me like it’s been waiting. Then I look up and see stars. Thousands of them, sharp and bright, no city glow to dull their edges or steal the depth. Just endless black pierced with light, the kind of sky I haven’t seen since before the café, before any of this.
Real air.
Not filtered. Not recycled. Not the climate-controlled atmosphere I’ve been breathing for weeks.
I stand just past the threshold, chest expanding like it’s remembering what lungs are for. My eyes sting, and I blink rapidly, refusing to cry over something as stupid as stars.
Elio hangs back, giving me space, watching me react without touching or crowding.
This quiet and careful version of him is harder to hate.
That’s the point,I remind myself.This is strategy too.
We move down stone paths that wind through the estate. Fountains and sculptures emerge from the shadows as we pass. Ancient olive trees twisted with age. A hedge maze rising dark against the backdrop of night sky. And everywhere, the scent of growing things, jasmine and lemon and something earthier underneath.
The scale of it takes my breath away.
I knew he was powerful. Knew it in the abstract. But this—acres of manicured grounds, hidden security details, high fortified walls framing everything—this makes itconcrete. Not a house. A fortress. A kingdom.
In the distance, Palermo’s lights glitter like scattered diamonds. Beyond them, darkness. The Mediterranean, invisible but present, a vast emptiness that could swallow me whole.
Even if I ran, where would I go?
“The maze was planted in 1642.” Elio walks beside me, not behind. Almost equal. “There’s a secret garden at its center. I found this place after my mother died. Bought it. Restored it.” His gaze drifts over the grounds. “Built something that was only mine.”
His mother.
The dead woman who loved him. Who never saw this place he built to escape whatever his father’s world was.
“What was she like?” The question slips out before I can stop it.
He’s quiet as we pass a fountain—sixteenth century, my restorer’s eye supplies, Florentine influence in the carved dolphins—and he gestures toward an orange grove to our left.
“She loved blood oranges. I added this grove because of her.” His voice is soft. “She said they were too intense for most people. That’s why she liked them.”
Blood oranges.
I love blood oranges too. Have loved them since before I can remember. The tart-sweet bite the way the juice stains your fingers dark red.
The coincidence unsettles me. Of all the things to share with his dead mother.
The cognitive dissonance is dizzying. Kidnapper walking me through a garden talking about grief. About a woman who loved what I love, purely by chance. He kidnapped me. He’s also a man grieving his murdered mother. My stomach can’t decide whether to clench or unclench, so it does both at once.
We walk in silence for a while. Through a rose garden, down terraced steps toward a lower level of the grounds. He points out things as we pass. A sculpture he commissioned when he bought the place, a wall that survived an earthquake in 1908, the fountain he had restored stone by stone.
I map everything. Exits. Sight lines. Distance to the walls.
But I also notice the way his voice softens when he talks about history, about what he’s built here. The way his hands move when he describes architecture. The care with which he touches a trailing vine, checking its attachment to the trellis.
Contradictions.
