VIOLET
It’s been three days since the restaurant. Since Elio’s mouth was between my thighs, showing me pleasure I didn’t realize existed. Since I followed a guard back to the villa instead of running when I had the chance.
Three days of tension thick enough to choke on.
We still eat meals together. Sit across from each other at the dining table like civilized people while everything unspoken crackles in the air between us. He watches me. I watch him back. Neither of us mentions what happened. Neither of us acknowledges the twelve red dresses hanging in my closet or the way my body hums whenever he’s in the room.
It’s unbearable.
So I hide.
The studio becomes my refuge. North-facing windows casting perfect light across the wooden worktables. The German graphite pencils ranked by hardness. Acid-free paper stacked by weight. Everything arranged exactly how I like it. The studio has become the only space in this fortress that feels genuinely mine, which was probably Elio’s intent all along.
I’m sketching architectural details. The rose window from the cathedral. Arches and columns and tracery patterns.Anything that doesn’t require thinking abouthim. My hand moves across the paper. Crosshatching shadow into the carved molding. The repetitive motion soothes me.
This is what I know. This is who I am. A restorer. Someone who fixes broken things.
Is Elio a broken thing?
I shake the thought away. The fortress feels different today. I noticed it at breakfast. There’s a tension in the air I can’t name. Something’s wrong. Something’s coming.
I sigh and focus back on my sketch when the door opens.
“I thought I made it clear I needed space?—”
The voice that responds is not Elio’s.
“My son has always had difficulty respecting boundaries.” Older. Smoother. Colder. A thick Italian accent wrapping around each word like silk over a blade.
I look up.
The man standing in the doorway is silver-haired and impeccably dressed. Mid-sixties, maybe. Handsome. He’s got Elio’s features. The same slope of the nose. The same eyebrow shape. His suit is tailored and expensive. His eyes…
His eyes are dead.
That’s the only word for it. Dark and flat andempty. Like looking into a well and finding no water at the bottom. Just stone. Just void.
He doesn’t ask permission. Just walks in, appraising the space. Tracing his fingers over the worktables, the supplies, the scattered sketches he passes, like he owns all of it. Like he owns me too.
The temperature in the room drops.
I’m on my feet before I make a conscious decision, instinct screaming that I should not be seated when this man is in the room. My spine straightens. Chin lifts.
“Who are you?” I try for steady. Almost manage it.
He smiles, but the expression doesn’t reach his eyes. A smile with nothing behind it.
“Cicero Marchetti.” He lets the name settle. “Elio’s father.”
Father.
I almost stumble in shock. This is the man who murdered Elio’s mother. Who raised his son in the shadow of that violence. Who shaped the monster I’ve been?—
No. I can examine my changing feelings for Elio later.
I study him with new eyes. The silver hair. The controlled posture. The absolute stillness. This is what Elio could become. What he’s fighting not to be.
Or maybe what he’ll inevitably become anyway.
