"And now you have." I let a beat pass. "Safe drive back."
The muscle in his jaw moves.
He takes another step forward into my space, into the territory I haven't offered, bringing with him the smell of expensive cologne and the particular energy of a man who has been told yes so consistently that the concept of a boundary has become genuinely theoretical to him.
"You've had your little adventure out here," he says, dropping his voice lower, for me, like Enzo isn't six feet away absorbing every syllable. "And now it's almost over. A week, Isabella. Then everything goes back to the way it should be. The way it was always going to be."
The way it should be.
Is it though? Is that really the way it should be. Because, in that water, I felt something that I don't think I'm supposed to feel when it is not with the man I'm about to marry, and I'm standing here in a towel in a cabin in the middle of nowhereand I genuinely do not know what “the way it should be” even means anymore.
I open my mouth.
Enzo moves.
He crosses the room and stands closer to me, his shoulder nearly touching mine, his body angling between me and Vittorio with the quiet implacability of a man who has decided where he stands and is completely unbothered by whatever comes next. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to. He just exists in that space, solid and immovable, and lets Vittorio understand what that means.
Vittorio's eyes drop to the distance between Enzo and me, and his face does something that briefly strips away the pleasantness and shows what's underneath.
"Move," he says.
Enzo doesn't. He doesn't shift his weight, doesn't acknowledge the word, doesn't look away from Vittorio with anything other than that flat patient attention he gives to things he's already decided how to handle.
He is not going to move. We both know it, Vittorio knows it, and the look on Vittorio's face right now is the best thing I've seen all day.
Vittorio's jaw tightens. He looks at Enzo and then he steps forward, puts both hands flat on Enzo's chest and shoves with the full weight of his considerable frustration behind it.
Enzo doesn't move.
Not an inch. Not a fraction of one. He absorbs the shove like Vittorio pushed a wall, his feet planted, his expression not shifting by a single degree.
Vittorio breathes through his nose.
The silence in the room is the kind that happens when everyone present understands exactly what's happening and nobody wants to be the one who names it out loud.
I watch Vittorio calculate. Watch him weigh Enzo's stillness against what he can actually afford to do right now in this room, in this situation, with Matteo involved and the alliance still fragile and a wedding next week that he needs to go smoothly.
I watch the moment he decides.
He straightens, smooths his jacket for the last time, and looks at me with an expression that carries a very specific message about how temporary this evening's arrangement is.
"I'll see you at the wedding, Isabella."
Will you?
He walks to the door and opens it himself, steps through, and closes it behind him with a click that's almost polite, which is somehow worse than if he'd slammed it.
The cabin goes quiet.
I'm standing in my towel with water still tracing slow lines down my legs and my heart beating in my ears and Enzo a foot away from me, still facing the closed door, his breathing even and his hands loose at his sides.
I'm not going to think about the wedding right now. I'm not going to think about next week or alliances or Salvatore De Luca or any of it. Right now I'm just going to breathe.
"Enzo," I say before I can stop myself. Before I remember what happened before stupid Vittorio came.
He turns.
His face is controlled, but his eyes are doing something dark and complicated and too layered for me to read all of it, and he doesn't try to name it and I don't try to name it either, because I think if we named it something would have to happen about it.
