I finish half the toast and push the plate away with enough force to be normal. Not enough to be questioned. I sit back slightly, one hand resting lightly against the edge of the table, grounding myself against the faint, persistent unease still threading through my body.
Across the room, Teresa replaces the coffee pot. She doesn’t look at me when she says, “You should eat more.”
“I will,” I grunt.
Later. When my body remembers how to cooperate.
She nods once, as if I’ve confirmed something she already suspected.
Chapter 21
Isolation
POV:Evie
The garden has eight exits. I know because I count them every time. French doors to the east hall. Service gate by the herb wall. Narrow path toward the old greenhouse. Iron gate leading to the drive. Terrace steps. Kitchen passage. Low stone wall near the cypress trees. Drainage arch beneath the west hedge if one is desperate, soaked, and willing to emerge somewhere undignified.
Eight. None usable. This is the part no one explains about exits. A door is only an exit if you’re allowed to survive what waits on the other side.
The night is cold enough to make the stone bench beneath me feel personal. It seeps through the coat, through the dress, settling somewhere along my spine like a decision I haven’t agreed to but can’t undo. Above, the sky is clear and indifferent, scattered with stars that have never had to negotiate with armed men or Italian patriarchs.
Lucky stars.
I sit with my coat wrapped around me and one hand pressed flat to my stomach. I’ve stopped moving my hand away, though that feels like defeat. Or maybe just adaptation. The difference depends on whether one’s feeling poetic, and I’m absolutely not.
I breathe in through my mouth because the garden smells too alive tonight. Damp soil. Rosemary. Stone. Something blooming out of season, because apparently even the plants in this house enjoy poor boundaries.
My stomach turns, but only mildly. Progress.
I close my eyes. Immediately regret it. The dark behind my eyelids isn’t empty. It’s full.
My father’s study. Rain against the glass. His hand beside my name on the contract.
I’m sorry.
Don’t be. Be right.
I open my eyes, and the garden replaces him. Clean lines. Controlled growth. A space that pretends at freedom while remaining entirely owned.
My father is dead, and the man who killed him is still breathing.
Dante Vitale. The untouchable son. Exiled but not destroyed. Managed but not punished. A man treated like a bad habit belonging to someone important. I had been building toward him one thread at a time. A receipt. A timing gap. A witness sighting. A partial confession spoken by silence.
And every thread ran through Alessandro’s hand before it reached mine.
Which still pisses me off.
In fact, when I really think about him, everything about Alessandro pisses me off. He knew his son was unstable. Knew the alliance was a correction. Knew the marriage wasn’t protection but containment dressed in ceremonial fabric.
And after my father died, he chose silence. Maybe not forever. Maybe not without cost. But he chose it long enough that I’m here now, sitting in his garden with his children inside me, trying to decide whether survival and complicity have begun sleeping in the same bed.
That thought lingers longer than it should. I don’t dismiss it. I catalogue it. Then I push it aside before it grows teeth.
I open my eyes. Eight exits. Still eight.
The crack settles under my ribs. Not sharp tonight. Wider. Quieter. Which is worse.
I sit up straighter. Cataloguing helps.
