Tonight.As if this was only the first wave.Elia tried to pull her hands free, not to run, but because she didn’t know what else to do with all the energy trapped inside her.Magnus didn’t let her.He stepped in closer until the back of her legs met the edge of the bed and she had nowhere to go but intohim.
“Look at me,” hesaid.
Elia lifted her chin.
His gaze pinned her.“You offered yourself like a weapon,” he said. “Like something you could spend so the rest of you doesn’t have to be touched.”
Everything he said was true.That was how she had survived.Make herself useful.Make herself manageable.Make herself something that could be traded instead of someone who couldbe shattered.
Magnus’s hands slid from her wrists to her waist, firm and warm.“Not with me,” he said.The words weren’t gentle.They were final.
Elia opened her mouth to argue.Instead she broke.A sound escaped her that she didn’t recognize.Magnus pulled her into his arms.Not a hug.A hold.His chest pressed against her front, his hand spanning the back of her head, guiding her face into the hollow between his shoulder and throat.
Elia’s hands fisted at his sides.She tried to steady herself.She failed.Tears slipped free, hot and humiliating.Magnus didn’t speak.He didn’t tell her to be strong.He didn’t tell her it would be fine.He just heldher.
Time passed in slow, heavy beats.Eventually her trembling eased.She lifted her head a fraction.“They said that if you didn’t return me, I’d be a liability. Iknow what that means. What if they try to kill me?”
His expression hardened. Not with drama. Not with boasting. Just with fact. “Then they’ll die.”
Chapter 9
ELIA STARED UP AT HIM,the words striking somewhere deep in her chest where everything was already bruised and rearranged. Part of her wanted to believe him, to lean into the certainty in his voice. The other part couldn’t forget the world she’d just discovered she belongedto.
“You say that like it’s nothing,” shesaid.
“It’s not nothing,” Magnus informed her. “It’s necessary.”
Necessary.
She believed him. She shouldn’t have, after everything she’d learned tonight about men and blood and power. But Magnus didn’t speak like Vittorio. He would have said it with detachment.
Magnus said it with purpose.
“I don’t want to be a reason for war,” shesaid.
“You already are,” Magnus said. “You just didn’t know it.”
The words hit like ablow.
Elia’s shoulders sagged.
“My mother knew,” she said. “She knew enough to make me promise not to ask.”
“Your mother protected you the only way she could,” Magnus replied.
Elia nodded. “And then she died.”
Magnus didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The truth sat betweenthem.
“He let Bianca bind me.”The words opened something she hadn’t allowed herself to examine before.
Memories rearranged themselves with brutal clarity. Bianca placing the ledger in front of her the day after her mother’s funeral. The careful explanation of what she owed. The way the staff had gone still in the doorway as if they already understood something Elia didn’t.
The numbers had never truly mattered. Not the interest. Not the years she’d spent working the debt down one careful payment at a time. It had never been about repayment. It had been about containment.
Her mother’s refusal to name her father suddenly took on a new shape. Silence hadn’t just been protection. It had been strategy. Away to keep Elia small enough to pass unnoticed in a house that would have devoured her if the truth had surfaced.
She thought of Vittorio in the hallway sometimes, watching without speaking. Of the rare moments his gaze lingered a fraction too long before sliding away as if he’d remembered something inconvenient.
