Page 13 of The Mafia Husband's Loveless Marriage

She thought about how he had never been allowed to be a child in the first place.

She thought about the inscription on the Shakespeare:Read the histories first.Not the comedies. Not the romances. The histories. Because in Diogenes Ravensworth's world, a ten-year-old boy needed to learn about power before he learned about love.

And Maika thought to herself,Not Ghostbuster then, but therapy.

It seemed like he had married her to have round-the-clock therapy without having the need to set an appointment.

DAYS PASSED, AND MAIKAfell into a routine, which was a strange thing to call a life that involved being driven to campus by a man who could dismantle most people without standing up, studying in a library that had its own nameplate with her name on it, and eating dinners alone more often than not, because Mykos worked late.

She had asked Mykos, somewhat nervously, if it was okay for her to continue attending classes.

He had looked at her as if the question confused him. "Why would it not be?"

"Because...I don't know...some husbands don't want their wives to..." She trailed off, aware of how ridiculous she sounded. Shewas talking about normal-husband things to a man who had a boxing ring in his basement and a deal with law enforcement.

"Finish your degree, Maika."

It wasn't a suggestion. It was an order, delivered in the same tone he used for everything else, and somehow that made it the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her. She had wanted to kiss him. She had settled for nodding very fast and then fleeing the room before he could see her face, which she was sure had turned the color of a tomato.

On the third night alone, she wandered the house in one of his shirts, running her fingers along the spines on the library shelves, pulling out books and putting them back, reading inscriptions. His were the most worn. The ones with cracked spines and dog-eared pages, the ones someone had actually lived inside.

She was learning him from the things he left behind.

The staff spoke about him with respect, not fear. She found photos in a hallway she hadn't explored yet: him as a boy, dark-eyed, serious, standing next to a larger man with the same golden eyes but harder. His father. Diogenes.

In one photo, Mykos was maybe twelve. He wasn't smiling, but his hand was on a dog's head, a big mutt with its tongue out. It was the only photo where he looked like a kid.

Maika stood in front of that photo for a long time.

He came home late. Always late. But he always found her.

He always kissed her forehead first. Then her mouth. Then the rest.

They didn't talk much. The silence wasn't uncomfortable; it was just...his way. He held her like she might disappear if he let go. He learned her body the way he seemed to learn everything, with focus, with patience, like it was a project he intended to complete thoroughly.

But the nights were becoming something she counted the hours toward, and that terrified her.

Because she was starting to want him in a way that had nothing to do with the deal. Nothing to do with the debt, the protection, the house. She wanted the sound he made against her neck. She wanted the weight of his arm across her waist at three in the morning. She wanted the way he whispered her name,Maika,like it was a word he'd invented, not learned.

She was in so much trouble.

SHE COULDN'T SLEEP.

It was past midnight. She'd tried reading (couldn't focus), tried studying (couldn't focus on that either), tried lying in the dark counting her breaths (made it to fourteen before she started thinking about his hands again, which was the opposite of helpful).

She got up. Wandered the hall in bare feet, his shirt hanging past her thighs. The house was different at night. Smaller, somehow. The marble floors were cold under her toes, the hallways dim, the photos she passed every day now just shapes in the dark. She could hear the fountain outside, faint through the walls.

She didn't get lost this time. She was learning the house the way she was learning him: by feel, by instinct, by the things thatdidn't change. Left at the stairs. Past the Monet. Through the hall with the photos.

She paused in front of twelve-year-old Mykos with the dog. Even in the dark, she could make out his hand on the dog's head. That hand. The same hand that traced her collarbone at three in the morning, that signed documents that made people's lives change, that had held her face while he kissed her in a judge's chambers.

What had happened to the dog? She'd never asked. She was afraid of the answer.

She found him in his study.

He was sitting at his desk, jacket off, sleeves rolled, a glass of something dark at his elbow. He looked up when she opened the door. Not startled. Just...aware. Like he'd known she was coming before she did.

"Can't sleep?" Mykos asked.