I keep not telling him. At first because I could barely form sentences that weren'tpleaseandwaterandMatt.Then, because I was healing, and healing takes everything you have leaving nothing for hard conversations. Then, because there was never a right time, and when is the right time to tell the man you love that the woman his family wants him to marry is the reason you spent three weeks on concrete learning what your own blood tastes like?
And now the not-telling has calcified into its own problem. Its own secret. Hardening into the wrong shape, the way mortar does when you leave it too long—you can't reshape it, can't smooth it out, can only chip it away and start over or build around the mistake and hope the structure holds.
Tell him. Today. Right now. Just say the words.
But today is a good day. And good days are new. And I'm not ready to break one yet.
Valente ends his call, turning around and catching me standing there like an idiot.
A slight inclination of his head. "Signora."
I've been noticing him. Not the way I notice Elio—not even in the same galaxy—but the way you notice a supporting wall in a building you're assessing. You don't admire it. You just need to know it's there.
His hands rest at his sides, loose and ready. There are old scars on his knuckles, splits that healed white and smooth the way skin does when it's been broken too many times.
Valente doesn't smile. He doesn't need to. His presence is its own communication, simple and structural.I am here. He is safe. You are safe because I am here.
I want to ask about Gabriella, I want to ask about Rossi's and if the marriage contract is back on.
I don't. I nod and turn toward the kitchen where I can hear Elio.
He's leaning against the counter with a cup of espresso in one hand, and a phone he isn't looking at in the other. The second I walk in his eyes find me with that locked-on focus that used to make my skin crawl and now makes my heart flip.
"Tell me about Valente," I say, pulling myself up onto the counter and pressing my thigh against his side, needing the contact. "How long have you known him?"
his eyebrow lifts in question, but he indulges me anyway.
"Since we were boys. He's the one who pulled me out of—" He stops. His jaw works as the unfinished sentence hangs between us.
"Out of what?"
"It doesn't matter."
It does. I know it does. His hands have gone still on the countertop, perfectly flat, like a man pressing down on something that wants to rise. His eyes find a fixed point somewhere past my shoulder and hold there, bracing against a wall he built himself.
But I don't push. Because deep down I know whatever he was about to say has something to do with Cicero, and I know how Cicero stories end already.
I take his hand and walk him to his study, settling myself in the chair that used to be by his bed for ten nights.
It's our routine now. Elio running his empire from behind his desk, and me in the leather chair with my legs tucked under me, watching him.
It's almost domestic.
"What happens to Matt?"
His pen moves across the page. Doesn't look up. "He can stay as long as he needs."
I wait for thebut. It doesn't come. Not in words. But his pen pauses for half a second too long before it moves again.
"You don't trust him."
"I don't trust anyone."
"Do you trust me?"
He looks up then. Dark eyes on mine. That bottomless brown that used to terrify me and now feels like the only solid ground in a world that keeps tilting.
"With everything I've got, Violet."
