Matt’s jaw ticks, a tiny flicker of violence barely contained.
“I think she looks fine,” he says, voice flat but lethal.
Jen’s hand freezes mid-air. She turns to him slowly, eyes cool and appraising. “I don’t recall asking your opinion.”
Matt smiles, sharp as a blade. “You didn’t.”
The tension slices clean between them. It’s not the first time they’ve clashed, but this feels different, more personal. Like something’s being staked right here, in the pause between my mother’s scowl and Matt’s unapologetic stare.
I don’t speak. I hardly breathe, suspended in the silence stretching like a wire between them.
Jen recovers fast, as she always does. “Lily, go and do something about your face. You look washed out. And be quick about it.”
I nod. Again. Like a good little doll. Because what choice do I really have? The words I want to spit back curdle in my throat, bitter and burning, but I swallow them down. I want to scream, to tear at the silk-thin mask we’re all forced to wear, to tell Jen exactly what I think of her and this game she plays. But I don’t. Ican’t. At the end of the day, I’m trapped here, and survival means silence. Survival means not giving anyone another reason to make my life more unbearable than it already is.
But as I turn away, I feel Matt watching me. Not just my back—me. The tight clench of my fists, the shallow rise and fall of my breath, the desperate catch in my throat as if I can hold my heart in place by force alone.
He sees it all, strips me bare with nothing more than a look. And in that single, shattering look, I know he’s not just angry at her. He’s angryforme. For the way I’m caged, for the silence I’m forced to wear like a collar.
And that knowledge… it’s dangerous. Because hope blooms fastest when someone else finally bleeds on your behalf.
Later, when Jen drifts off to charm one of the wives, Matt finds me at the windows overlooking the garden. He doesn’t announce himself, just slips into the space beside me until our shoulders nearly touch.
“You shouldn’t let her talk to you like that,” he says, voice low and rough.
“And say what?” My mouth twists, bitter. “That her disappointment’s mutual?”
He huffs out a laugh, frayed at the edges, and it hits me like a spark. The closest thing to warmth I’ve felt all night.
“One day you’re going to leave all this bullshit behind,” he declares, his voice meant only for my ears. Every word feels pressed against me, a secret folded between us. “Disappear somewhere she can’t touch you. Somewhere you’re free to discover who you really are without her controlling every step you take.”
I turn to him, and he’s closer than I realised. Too close, considering where we are,whowe are. The noise of the party dulls—the chandeliers, the secret deals, the clink of glass—all of it fading until there’s nothing left but the weight of his eyes.
Come with me, I want to say. The words claw at my throat, begging to be freed, but I swallow them down.
Instead, I move past him, slow and deliberate, letting my hand graze his fingers, slipping the blank onyx skull ring I’d found second-hand in a charity shop into his hand. A fleeting brush of skin, but enough to press it into his palm. And in thesilence that follows, I swear I hear him inhale like I’ve stolen the breath straight from his lungs.
By the time dinner is served, I’m practically choking on the tension.
I’m seated between two of Don Salvatore’s men, who spend more time staring at my chest than attempting polite conversation. Jen doesn’t notice or pretends not to. She’s too busy dazzling the Don himself across the table, her Italian smooth as silk, her smile brittle at the edges.
Ciaran sits near the head of the table, calm and commanding, his glass of red wine untouched. He isn’t the head of the Four Points—he’s Jonathan’s enforcer and part of his inner circle—but with the Cosa Nostra here to cement the coming alliance, heisthe senior Points presence at the table. Even so, he seems elsewhere, lost in his thoughts, only half-seeing the dinner unfold. And yet, even distracted, his silence presses down on the room; approval from him is currency everyone here is desperate to earn. Even Jen.EspeciallyJen.
I reach for my water, and my hand trembles enough to knock my fork off the table. It clatters against the tiles, loud as a gunshot in the hush.
Jen leans in, her whisper a blade slipping between my ribs. “You’re making a scene. For once in your life, could you not be a fucking disaster?”
Heat scorches my cheeks and I blink hard against the sting in my eyes, my head dropping as shame curls cold and heavy in my stomach.
“That’s enough,” Matt growls. His voice cuts through the room, silencing laughter and the clink of silver. The table stills like prey scenting a predator. Even Ciaran’s gaze sharpens, the faintest flicker of warning beneath his carefully neutral mask.
Jen straightens flashing him a warning smile. “Excuse me?”
Matt doesn’t flinch. “She didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe if you stopped treating her like a liability, she wouldn’t be so on edge all the time.”
My chest goes tight. A strange heat flushes through me, not shame this time, but something fierce, defiant, terrifying in its intensity.
Jen’s eyes narrow, cold as cut glass. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
