Gemma stood at the counter in silk pajamas, bare feet pale against the dark tile. Her hair was loose around her shoulders—the first time I'd seen it down since the wedding—and it changed everything about her face. Softened it. Made her look younger, more real, less like the composed performance she'd been maintaining.
She looked up when I entered. Something flickered across her expression—surprise, maybe, or the automatic wariness of a woman caught vulnerable—before settling into something more neutral.
"Couldn't sleep either?" she asked.
Her voice was different too. Quieter. Less careful. The voice of a person rather than a role.
"The numbers won't stop," I admitted. Half a truth was better than no truth at all.
She nodded like she understood. Maybe she did.
We made tea together in companionable silence. She reached for the kettle while I pulled down the cups—a coordination that felt strangely natural, like we'd done it a hundred times before.She took her tea with honey, I discovered. She made a small, satisfied sound when she took the first sip.
I filed both details away. Added them to the archive.
We sat at the kitchen island, the darkness pressing against the windows, the house settling around us with its familiar creaks and sighs. For a while, neither of us spoke. The silence wasn't uncomfortable. It was the kind of quiet that happens when two people stop trying to fill space with words that don't matter.
"You look tired," she said finally. "Not just physically." She wrapped both hands around her cup, studying me over the rim with those honey eyes. "Like you're holding up something heavy."
The observation landed too close to the bone.
I should deflect. Should give her the don's answer—I'm fine, just busy, nothing you need to worry about. That was what a smart man would do. A careful man. A man who understood that vulnerability was a weapon others could use against you.
Instead, I heard myself say: "I'm afraid I'm not ready."
The words hung in the air between us. Dangerous. True.
"For what?"
"Any of it." I set down my tea. Stared at the dark liquid rather than her face. "My father spent thirty years building something. Protecting something. His father before him. And now it's mine, and I don't—" I stopped. Breathed. Started again. "I haven't had time to grieve. Haven't had time to think. One day I was the heir, and the next I was the don, and everyone's looking at me to hold it all together."
Silence. Then, softly:
"The loneliness must be unbearable."
I looked up. Found her watching me with something that might have been understanding. Might have been recognition.
"Being the one everyone looks to," she continued. "The one who has to have the answers. The one who can't afford to fallapart, even when—" She paused. "Even when falling apart would be the most human response."
My throat tightened. "You sound like you know something about that."
"I know something about performing." A sad, small smile crossed her face. "About being what people need you to be, even when there's nothing left underneath."
The confession landed between us like something fragile.
"Tell me about Columbia," I said.
Her eyes widened slightly. Surprised that I knew. That I'd paid attention.
"Art history," she said slowly, testing the words like she wasn't sure she was allowed to speak them. "I was writing a thesis on Caravaggio. His use of light and shadow. The way he painted darkness as something physical—not just the absence of light, but a presence of its own."
I watched her come alive as she spoke. The exhaustion lifting. The careful composure dissolving into something animated and real.
"He was a murderer, you know. Caravaggio. Killed a man in a brawl, fled Rome, spent the rest of his life running." She took a sip of tea, her eyes going distant. "But the paintings he made while he was running—they're some of the most beautiful things humans have ever created. All that guilt and fear and desperation, turned into light."
"You never finished."
"No." The animation faded slightly. "Life got in the way."
