I don’t give her time to settle. I slide the stack of documents across the desk toward her. “Sign these.”
She doesn’t even bother glancing down at them. “Do you think I’m stupid? I’m not signing anything.”
“Elena.”
“I’m not.”
“Do you want to see your son again?”
She freezes, her defiance faltering.
Her eyes flicker, just once, toward the door. It’s only for a heartbeat but it's enough to know that I’ve broken through that stubborn wall she’s tucked herself behind. She hates that I’ve cornered her like this. Hates that I’ve made it clear that what I hold and what she stands to lose are one in the same, that this is not a time to be defiant.
She finally glances down. I watch her eyes move across the page as she reads. It doesn’t take long for realization to bloom acrossher face and for her head to snap up, her gaze meeting mine again.
“A marriage license,” she says, disbelief bleeding into outrage. “You can’t be serious.”
I lean back in my chair, steepling my fingers, letting the Don within me rise fully to the surface. It’s the only way I’ll survive this conversation. Whatever guilt gnaws at me or shame whispers that I’m doing this wrong, I crush it down before it can take root and convince me to take back the papers and throw them away.
“You want to protect your future? Your son’s?” I ask calmly.
Her lips thin.
I continue. “Then you’ll do it as my wife.Publicly. If word of your return and that you brought a child with you spreads, the scandal will destroy what I’ve managed to rebuild in the time your cowardly father decided to flee. You will become a liability I cannot afford to have if you aren’t under my protection.”
“What exactly are you trying to suggest?” she chokes out.
“You and the boy will live under my roof and under my family’s name. As long as you are a wife, no one in their right mind will touch you. Not unless they are planning on starting a war they cannot finish.”
The color drains from her skin slowly as the words settle over her. Her eyes grow glassy and unfocused as if she’s staring at something far beyond the walls of my study.
I see it clearly, then. To her, this isn’t a marriage. It’s a life sentence handed down without appeal. A future stripped of choice and dressed up to look respectable. A prison wrappedin silk and vows and my family’s name where the cell bars are invisible but nonetheless real.
She isn’t imagining a wedding. She’s imagining locked doors, guards, and a gilded cage where every step she takes is monitored. She sees years stretching out in front of her trapped beneath a surname she once tried to escape, bound to the man she once loved and feared in equal measure.
Her fingers tighten, the knuckles whitening. There’s no anger left in her now, it’s just the quiet, crushing realization that she’s been cornered in a way she can’t fight her way free from.
I tell myself this is necessary. It’s the only realistic way to protect our child and her from the people who I know will stop at nothing to wipe us out and protect everything I’ve rebuilt from the ruins of her father almost destroying my family. But the guilt still sits heavily in my chest, unwelcome yet undeniable.
I’m not offering her a choice, but what I am offering her is survival.
She must realize that too, because only another minute passes before she finally raises her head and meets my eyes again.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
6
ELENA
The ceremony is over before I can fully comprehend it even happened in the first place.
One moment, I’m standing in front of a set of doors leading into an old stone chapel perched on the coast of Dante’s villa, listening to the sound of the sea’s waves crashing just beyond its walls, and the next, I’m standing up at an altar as a priest is clearing his throat and opening a leather-bound book that looks older than my father.
Time feels warped here, distorted in a way that feels dizzying.
My hand trembles at my side, fingers curling and uncurling around nothing while my other is wrapped tightly around Luca’s. I’m terrified if I let go of him, Dante will find some way to snatch him from me again. His grip is warm, his fingers clammy as he shifts his weight from foot to foot.
The chapel smells faintly of incense, the lingering remnants of mass that must have let out only an hour or so before we arrived. Wax and smoke and old stone cling to the air, mixing with the salty breeze that slips in through the open doors behind us. Thesound of the sea is a distant reminder of freedom just beyond reach.
