Chapter 1
Lucia
The first thingI notice is his pupils. They’re too wide, swallowing the brown until his eyes look almost black. My stomach tightens before I can stop it because I’ve learned, slowly and painfully, what that means. Even though part of me always wants to pretend I don’t.
Cocaine.
The second thing I notice is that he doesn’t look at me when he comes in. That scares me more than if he had, because Marco only ignores me when he’s deciding where to put his anger. Like it’s some physicalthinghe has to set down somewhere before it burns him alive.
The door slams hard enough to rattle the art on the wall. The painting he bought because the gallery girl laughed a little too hard at his jokes. Rainwater streaks off his coat onto the marble floor in a thin arc that looks almost graceful.
My chest tightens, anyway, like the apartment itself has learned to brace itself.
He tosses his keys onto the counter. They bounce, clatter too loud, skitter across the stone, and one slides close to my foot. I stare at them and don’t move, because moving draws attention, and attention turns into questions, and questions turninto tension, and tension is the thing I’m always trying to outrun even when I’m standing still.
I remain sitting on the couch with my knees pressed together and my hands folded in my lap, posture neat, contained. Like I’m waiting for someone to tell me what’s expected of me so I can do it right this time.
Like this is a meeting.
Like my heart isn’t already racing while my brain runs through exits the way it always does now, even when I tell myself I’m overreacting, that I’m dramatic, that nothing has happened… yet.
Front door. Hallway. Bedroom. Balcony. No fire escape.
The windows only open a few inches because Marco likes control even when he’s not in the room, likes knowing the limits exist whether he’s enforcing them or not. I learned that the first time I tried to open one all the way.
Marco starts pacing, fast and sharp, one end of the apartment to the other and back again, like his body can’t decide where to put the energy buzzing under his skin. He drags a hand through his hair and leaves it sticking up in uneven spikes, and I think, absurdly, that he looks like one of those men in expensive magazines who are supposed to look dangerous and desirable. Except there’s nothing aspirational about this kind of danger when you’re standing too close to it.
“Where were you?” he snaps.
My pulse jumps. I blink slowly, the way I’ve taught myself to, forcing my face into something neutral and uninteresting. Reactions make things worse, and I’ve learned that the hard way.
“Here,” I say.
He stops so abruptly, it feels like a noise even though it isn’t. His head snaps toward me, and when his eyes finally land on my face, it feels like being caught in a spotlight I didn’t agreeto stand under. His gaze moves fast, over my wrists, my throat, the line of my collarbone. He’s checking something off a list I’ve never been allowed to see.
“What’s that?” he asks, jerking his chin toward the coffee table.
There’s a mug there, forgotten. Tea gone cold. Ginger and lemon because my stomach always turns after nights like this. After shouting. After slamming doors. My body doesn’t know how to calm down anymore. I tell myself it’s stress. Adrenaline. Nothing more.
“It’s just tea,” I say, too quickly, and then I wish I hadn’t added thejust, because minimizing sounds like hiding, and hiding sounds like guilt.
He laughs once, an unpleasant sound that makes my shoulders tense before I can stop them.
“Tea,” he repeats, like the word itself is suspicious.
His eyes drop to my hand. I hadn’t realized it drifted to my stomach until I see it there, resting lightly, unconsciously. My body is trying to steady itself without asking permission.
I move it immediately.
My chest tightens because I already know it’s too late.
Marco’s jaw works as if he’s chewing something invisible, his nostrils flaring. My mind starts racing ahead, trying to predict where this is going, what version of him this is, what he needs from me to make it stop.
“What did you do today?” His question sounds casual, but it isn’t. It never is.
“I worked,” I say evenly. “Emails. Calls. Confirmed vendors for next week.”
He crosses the space between us so fast, I barely register it until he’s there, heat and cologne and the chemical edge of something sharp filling the air. I’m on my feet before I consciously decide to be. It’s automatic. Some old, ingrainedinstinct that says sitting makes me smaller, more cornered, easier to pin. Standing gives me options. Or at least the illusion of them.
