The Council wants briefing on the Sartore situation. Mikhail is asking whether Diana’s protection remains sustainable given current pressures. Need your position before Friday.
I type a response without hesitation.
Position unchanged. Protection continues regardless of external pressure. I’ll brief the council personally.
Pavel’s reply comes within seconds.
You’re prioritizing her over operational stability. People are noticing.
Let them notice.
I close the message thread before he can push further. Pavel has been questioning my decisions regarding Diana since the night I pulled her from that van. His concerns are strategically valid—I am prioritizing her survival over organizational convenience; I am spending resources that could be allocated elsewhere; and I am drawing lines against Sartore that complicate alliances we’ve maintained for years.
None of that changes the fundamental reality: losing Diana is unacceptable. Everything else becomes negotiable when weighed against her continued existence.
***
Breakfast happens at seven thirty. Diana appears in the dining room wearing one of the new dresses I had sent up—deep blue fabric fitted to her curves in ways that make focusing on morning briefings difficult. Her hair is pulled back loosely, revealing the bruise on her throat I left deliberately.
She notices me looking and touches it briefly, color rising in her cheeks, but she doesn’t comment.
“Coffee?” I gesture toward the carafe on the sideboard.
“Please.”
I pour for both of us, aware of the shift in dynamics since last night. She accepts the cup with steady hands, settling into the chair beside mine rather than across the table where she usually sits.
We eat in silence broken only by the sound of silverware against porcelain. I review messages on my phone; she reads something on her tablet. The domesticity of it—shared breakfast, quiet companionship, the assumption of continuity—settles with unexpected weight.
This is what married life looks like when stripped of hostility and resistance. This is what I’ve wanted since I watchedher dismantle Gerald Whitmore at that gala and decided she was worth protecting regardless of cost.
“Sartore contractors were watching the estate last night,” I say without looking up from my phone. “They’ve been neutralized.”
Diana sets down her fork carefully. “Neutralized how?”
“Detained and relocated. They won’t be returning.” I meet her gaze directly. “Lorenzo is escalating surveillance. I’m ensuring it doesn’t succeed.”
She studies me with an expression I can’t fully read. “You’re tightening security because of me.”
“I’m tightening security because threats exist that require response.” The distinction feels meaningful even if the result is the same. “Your protection is part of that, but Sartore pressure extends beyond you personally.”
“I’m the catalyst.” She picks up her coffee, hands wrapped around the cup for warmth. “If you’d let them take me that night, none of this escalation would be happening.”
“If I’d let them take you, you’d be dead.” I reach across the table and catch her wrist gently, thumb brushing against her pulse point. “That outcome was never acceptable.”
The touch is deliberate—not restraint, but connection. Proof that she’s here, breathing, safe within walls I’ve fortified specifically to keep her that way.
Diana doesn’t pull away. Her pulse jumps beneath my fingers, but she holds my gaze steadily. “You’re spending everything to protect me. Resources, political capital, organizational stability. At what point does the cost become too high?”
“It doesn’t.” The certainty in my voice surprises even me. “There’s no price point where your death becomes acceptable.”
Something shifts in her expression.
Maybe it never was strategy. Maybe from the moment she collided into me in that hallway, I was calculating how to keep her rather than how to contain the threat she represented.
“You’re different this morning,” she observes quietly.
“How so?”
