I wait for her in my study.
The room is lit low, the lamps casting long shadows across the bookshelves lining the walls. The decanter on my desk is half empty, the amber liquid catching the light from the fire across the way, trapping it behind glass. The crystal tumbler in my hand remains untouched, though, my grip around it tight enough that I can feel the faint give of it beneath my fingers.
Anger simmers low beneath my skin the longer I sit here and wait. It takes everything in me to not throw this glass at the wall like the last one.
She was never supposed to leave this place. Not without my knowledge or without my permission. The moment I returned to the villa and was informed she’d been taken into town without clearance, something snapped inside me. I don’t tolerate disobedience. I don’t tolerate weakness in my chain ofcommand. Those who work for me understand that orders exist for a reason and that improvisation is not a privilege granted lightly.
And I absolutely donottolerate anyone taking liberties where my wife and son are concerned.
That is not a mistake. That is a death wish, signed and notarized.
Whoever signed off on that decision and thought themselves clever enough to bend my rules will answer for it. The consequences will be memorable enough that no one else will ever consider repeating the error twice.
But first I need to deal withher.
I lean back in the chair, jaw tightening. The only reason I didn’t send out a goddamn cavalry unit to tear through the entire countryside looking for her is because she left Luca behind.
A calculated move I recognized immediately upon seeing him playing in the gardens with one of the maids. Elena doesn’t do anything without reason. Leaving our son here wasn’t trust, it was meant to be a message, a silent assurance that she would come back and that she wasn’t running from me this time around.
The thought doesn’t soothe me as much as it should have, though. If anything, it sharpens the edge of my fury. Whatever she went looking for and whatever she thought was worth crossing me for had better be monumental. Something that justifies the risk she took and the line she decided to bend to her convenience.
Footsteps shuffle faintly in the hallway outside the study. Then there’s a knock at the door, hesitant enough to make my jawtighten again. I lift my gaze from the glass in my hand, every muscle in my body going taut.
“Enter.”
The door swings inward.
She steps inside slowly, closing it behind her quietly. Her cheeks are flushed, either from the cool night air or something else entirely. Her eyes stay fixed on the floor for several seconds too long, lashes casting shadows against her skin. I wait for her to look at me, my breath held without realizing it, irritation and another emotion I refuse to name coiling tightly in my chest.
When she finally raises her head, it’s not defiance I see. It’s resolve. That catches me off guard immediately.
“Where did you go?” I ask, my voice low.
She doesn’t answer right away. The silence stretches between us until she finally speaks, and not with the answer I want. Instead, she answers with her own question.
“How is Luca?”
I lift the glass to my mouth and drain it in one go. The liquor burns all the way down, sharp and punishing, but the pain grounds me, pulls me back from the edge I’ve been teetering on since the moment I was told she was gone.
When I rise slowly from the couch, her shoulders tense immediately.
It should satisfy me to see how easily I can still affect her, how instinctive her reaction is to my movement. A more egotistical man might take pleasure in that kind of power. Instead, a hollow pit opens up in my stomach.
“Alive,” I say flatly.
Her brows knit together. “What the hell does that mean?”
I set the empty glass down on the edge of my desk hard enough that the sound cracks through the room. She flinches but she doesn’t look away. Brave, I’ll give her that. She always has been.
I lift a shoulder before lifting a leg and settling back onto my desk. “It means exactly what it sounds like. That’s all you’re getting. Perhaps you should have thought more carefully before directly defying my orders by leaving this estate. Something I explicitly told you not to do.”
Her frown deepens, lips pressing into a thin line. “I went to my family’s villa.”
That pauses my anger mid-surge, rearranging itself to be sharper and more focused. My gaze searches her face, looking for a lie or a crack in whatever façade she’s trying to pull off, anything that suggests this is another half-truth meant to placate me while she does something else behind my back.
“Why would you do that?” I ask slowly.
Whatever she found there, whatever compelled her to risk my wrath has already changed her if that look in her eyes is anything to go by. And I have the sinking feeling I’m about to learn exactly how.
