“No.” He doesn’t look away from me. “She stays here. End of discussion.”
“You don’t own me.”
“No.” He swallows hard. “But I’m trying to keep you alive. If that requires you hating me, fine. Hate me. But you’re not going.”
No one moves. Rosa has stilled over her serving spoon. Cassia is staring at her plate. My fingers curl around the edge of the table until my knuckles ache.
I push back from the chair. “Excuse me.” Steady. Cold. Every door inside me slamming shut. “I’ve lost my appetite.”
“Isabella.” Gia starts to rise.
“It’s fine. Rosa, thank you.”
I walk out. My heels echo on the marble.
He wants me. I saw it all through dinner. Every time Nico complimented me, every time Rosa called me beautiful, his whole body tightened, every muscle pulling taut like he was holding something back by force.
But wanting isn’t choosing.
I make it to my room before the tears come. I sink onto the bed, the dress pooling around me like a bruise. The sounds of the family drift up from below. Rosa’s voice. Nico’s laugh. The scrape of chairs. Ordinary. Warm. Everything I’ve been surviving without for three years. I press the back of my hand to my mouth and wait for it to pass.
It doesn’t pass.
The house goes quiet by degrees. The voices fade. Footsteps on the stairs, then nothing. Then just the hum of the air conditioning and the distant sound of the city outside the window.
I’m still sitting there when the door opens.
His footsteps are unmistakable by now. Light for a man his size. Deliberate.
“Don’t.” My voice is wet. Scraped raw. “Not now.”
He doesn’t leave. The door closes. The click of the lock.
“What are you doing?”
Silence. Then, rough. “I don’t know.”
Honest. Raw. The first honest thing he’s said since what happened in the office.
I turn. He’s standing just inside the room, arms at his sides. He takes in the blue fabric, and his Adam’s apple bobs.
“You wore that for me. To make me look.”
Not a question.
“Did it work?”
A sound leaves him. Hollow and broken. “You walked in and I stopped breathing.”
“Then tell me. Because from where I’m standing, you’ve spent two days pretending I don’t exist. And now you’re telling me I can’t be there when you find my sister. So forgive me if I don’t understand.”
He moves. Three steps, closing the distance, stopping just short of touching me. Sandalwood and something darker filling the space between us. The heat of his body seeping through the silk.
“You want to know what it did to me?” His voice is rough. “Watching you walk in wearing that. My brothers’ heads turning. Nico flirting and Marco staring and knowing every single one of them was thinking about what’s under that silk.”
My throat tightens.
“Sitting across from you for an hour, not allowed to touch, not allowed to take you, not allowed to do anything but sit there while you looked at me like I’d betrayed you.” He reaches toward my face, doesn’t quite make contact. “That hurt. This hurts. You hurt.”
