The grand living room of the Salvatore estate feels colder by the hour.
I sit in silence, spine straight against the velvet upholstery of a gilt-trimmed chair, watching the sunlight stretch across the marble floors and fade into shadow.
At first, I imagine Enzo will return soon.
That he has been pulled away briefly, as men like him often are, by duty or danger. But as the hours pass, the stillness around me begins to feel deliberate.
Like a curtain slowly drawing between us.
Eventually, I stop pretending I am simply waiting.
I am lingering.
My phone rests on the armrest beside me, buzzing faintly every few minutes.
The screen lights up with missed calls.
Four from Luciana.
Two from Mama.
One more from Papa.
Another follows seconds later, his name appearing like a flare in the dark.
I don’t answer it.
I can’t—not yet.
I know exactly what that call will contain.
Not words.
Not questions.
Just rage, wrapped in silence too sharp to soothe.
I rise and slip out of the room with the grace expected of a Lombardi daughter.
I move like someone with a purpose, even if I no longer know what it is.
The corridors of the Salvatore estate stretch out before me like veins of stone and shadow, cold and endless.
I descend the staircase without thought, past staff who do not meet my eyes, past portraits of men with the same calculating gaze as Enzo, down into the shaded interior courtyards where fountains murmur secrets and citrus trees bloom in polished urns.
The garden paths are warmer, touched by the fading gold of late afternoon.
I follow them without direction, the gravel crunching beneath my heels.
The hedges rise around me in perfect symmetry, walls of green that hide and shelter in equal measure.
I move past iron benches and marble statues, through the clipped perfection of hedgerows and out toward the vineyard that sprawls behind the estate like a forgotten promise.
My thoughts spiral.
What should I tell my parents?
That I spent the night at the home of our family’s greatest rival?
That I slept in the arms of the man who once served as a blade in the dark for their enemies?
That my body now remembers the shape of his hands more clearly than it remembers fear?
I close my eyes, pressing my fingers to my temples.
I don’t know how to go back.
Not really. Not after this.
The girl who left last night, dressed in borrowed elegance and trembling with secrets, is not the same one who now walks through enemy grounds wearing a man’s shirt and the memory of his mouth on her skin.
A breeze moves through the trees, and I pause beneath one of the gnarled olive branches, letting the hush of it cool the heat behind my ribs.
My legs ache.
My body is heavy with exhaustion.
And still he does not come.
I lower myself onto the edge of a stone wall, folding my arms around my knees.
It is the first time I have sat without pretense, without posture, without fear of how I look.
My phone buzzes again.
I ignore it.
My heart is too tired to care what waits beyond the screen.
And then I hear his voice.
‘Are you planning to hide out here forever?’
I lift my head.
Enzo stands several paces away, hands in his pockets, his black shirt rolled at the sleeves.
His hair is tousled, like he’s run his hands through it one too many times.
There is something, something lighter than his usual gravity, but still anchored in that quiet, calculating stillness he wears like a second skin.
‘I wasn’t hiding,’ I murmur. ‘I was waiting.’
He studies me for a moment, then tilts his head. ‘Would you like to go out? There’s a place I go to when the city feels too loud.’
I stare at him, caught off guard by the simplicity of the question. ‘You want to take me out?’
He shrugs one shoulder, almost casual.
‘Unless you prefer the estate kitchen again. They make decent sandwiches.’
I rise slowly, brushing dust from the borrowed jeans.
‘I think I’d rather go where the city can’t find us.’
He nods, a ghost of a smile touching the corner of his mouth.
‘Then come with me.’
We take the coast road, the one that curves high above the cliffs, where the sea glimmers like black glass below.
The sky turns to rose and indigo around us, the scent of salt and wind drifting through the windows.
Neither of us speaks much.
But the silence is not awkward.
It is the kind that settles between people who are still deciding what parts of themselves they can bear to reveal.
He takes me to a restaurant carved into the cliffs above the old harbor.
There is no sign.
No valet.
Just a narrow staircase down to a terrace where candlelight dances across worn stone and linen-draped tables.
The view is obscene.
Waves crash against the rocks far below, their spray catching the last light as it fades behind the horizon.
Vines twist around iron railings, and a violin plays somewhere out of sight.
We do not speak of our families.
We do not speak of what happens next.
We eat grilled fish and lemon pasta and watch the sea turn dark as onyx.
I laugh once.
He reaches across the table and wipes a drop of oil from my chin.
For a heartbeat, everything feels almost normal.
When we return to the car, his hand lingers at the small of my back.
I lean into it.
Not because I need the support, but because I no longer want to pretend I don’t want him close.
Back at the estate, I hesitate.
The light above the front entrance glows like an eye that has never closed.
My phone buzzes again.
‘I need to go home,’ I say quietly.
Enzo does not argue.
But he watches me carefully, and before I can lose my nerve, I speak. ‘Can I ask you something?’
His brow lifts. ‘Of course.’
I look at him then, fully, searching for whatever truth lives behind the quiet discipline of his face.
‘If you had to choose,’ I begin, my voice steady but low, ‘between the Salvatores and someone you cared about deeply…someone you could love, even…if their life depended on it, would you stay loyal? Even if it meant risking that person’s safety?’
The question hangs there.
For a moment, he does not move.
Then I see the truth settle into his spine like something forged long ago.
‘I have made my choice already,’ he says. ‘And it is the Salvatores. My life was built on that loyalty. It is not something I can undo just because it becomes inconvenient.’
His words do not sting.
Not in the way I thought they would.
But they brand something inside me.
They remind me that love, in his world, does not undo the past.
It must learn to live beside it.
‘I see,’ I murmur.
His voice comes from a very remote place, as if he is speaking from miles away. ‘It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t fight for her. But the line has already been drawn.’
My eyes begin burning, and I know full well that it is moments before I will burst into tears.
I don’t want to do that, not in front of him.
If this is the end, it would serve me well to go out with a shred of dignity to my name.
‘Enzo.’ I stand, my head lowered, eyes to the ground so he cannot see them. ‘Thank you for dinner. But I have overstayed my welcome and must go home.’
‘Aria—’
Before he can give me a speech on loyalties or remind me how lucky I am to live such a privileged life, I leave.
I step out into the foyer and call Mama, knowing full well that I’ve handed my family a live grenade that they’re going to toss back at me.
At first, the call goes to voicemail.
I hang up, frustrated, when, moments later, she calls back.
The second I answer, she begins screaming at me. I take it as well as I can, with a simple, ‘I’m going to explain when I get home, please send the car.’
Once I’ve said my bit, I hang up and pace the grounds, waiting for the family car to arrive.
I need a plan, something that’ll help me get out of this city altogether, maybe even the continent.
As I’m knee-deep in thought, I notice a slim figure climbing down a pipe.
For a breath, I’m stunned, more so when I see who it is.
She lands with a soft thud, running for the servant’s quarters, and I see an out.
I walk quickly, tailing her until she’s close enough to the back gate. ‘Well, well,’ I chuckle despite myself. She stops in her tracks.
‘Escaping, are we?’ I say, my voice dry with amusement.
My arms cross slowly, a silent signal that I am not here to raise the alarm.
She stares at me like I’m a puzzle she does not have time to solve. ‘Aria,’ she says, her voice edged in suspicion.
‘You don’t have much time,’ I reply. ‘You’re heading straight into a trap. There are three guards at the east gate, and Luca’s personal driver has not left his post in hours. If you step outside, you’ll be caught within minutes.’
‘Then why are you stopping me?’ she asks, breathless, wild-eyed.
I take a step closer, deliberate, controlled.
‘Because I understand what it means to want out.’
She doesn’t respond.
Just watches me with a mix of caution and disbelief.
‘Follow me,’ I say at last. ‘If you’re serious about leaving him, you’ll need a way out that doesn’t end with a bullet to the spine.’
She hesitates for the span of a heartbeat, then nods.
We move fast, ducking through the narrowest halls, the ones built for invisible staff and quiet exits.
My heels click too loudly, but there is no time to change.
We slip through the undercroft and out a side gate only my family knows about, one that used to be used by vineyard workers long before this city belonged to monsters.
The night outside is cold and damp, salt clinging to the wind.
A car is waiting.
She falters when she sees it. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To my family’s estate,’ I say. ‘It will buy you time. And it will buy me a way out of a disaster of my own making.’
She doesn’t ask questions after that.
The driver does not speak as we glide through the sleeping city.
Valentina sits beside me, hands folded tightly in her lap, her wedding ring conspicuously absent.
Her skin is pale beneath the streetlamps, her eyes glittering with something that looks too much like fear.
By the time we pull through the gates of the Lombardi estate, the mood has changed.
The guards greet me as they always do.
I lead her inside without explanation, through the side entrance and into one of the older wings of the house, far from the ballroom and my parents’ surveillance.
The house looms like a judge, stern and waiting.
But to the woman beside me, it must look like salvation.
She glances once toward the balconies overhead, where carved balustrades catch the light like teeth, and I watch something shift in her posture.
She is holding herself together with borrowed strength.
The echo of our heels on the marble draws attention.
The silence snaps.
A door swings open at the far end of the corridor, and Mama appears.
Her voice starts rising before she even fully sees me.
‘Aria Maria Lombardi, do you know what time it is? Two nights—two full nights, and no word? Your father is ready to send men to the Salvatores, thinking you’ve been buried under their estate.’
I step forward, blocking her line of sight for just a second too long.
Then Valentina moves.
A single step out from behind me.
That is all it takes.
Mama goes utterly still.
The fight drains from her body with astonishing speed.
She blinks once.
Then again.
The silence that follows is full of unspoken calculation.
Her eyes rake over Valentina from head to toe, and what I see in them is not outrage.
It is understanding.
And then, barely concealed approval.
I speak before she can find her voice again.
‘She needs to rest,’ I say softly. ‘Somewhere no one will think to look.’
Mama nods, slowly.
‘Put her in the east wing. Third-floor guest room. I’ll send up food and warm towels.’
Her voice is cool now, composed.
The heat from before is gone entirely.
Valentina follows the maid without a word.
I do not know what she is thinking, only that she trusts me enough not to look back.
The moment she disappears down the corridor, Mama turns to me, eyes sharp as glass.
‘You brought her here,’ she says, not as a question.
I do not lie.
‘She was trying to run. I found her in the halls. Luca is losing control of her, and she was ready to jump from the walls if she had to. I gave her the other option.’
Mama says nothing at first.
She folds her arms across her chest, lips tight in a way that means her mind is already moving ten steps ahead.
‘Does anyone know?’ she asks.
‘No. Not yet. We were careful.’
‘Then let’s stay that way.’
She turns on her heel and walks toward Papa’s study, her voice trailing behind her like a command.
‘I’ll speak to him. You sit.’
But I do not sit.
I stand in the cold entryway with the portraits watching me, feeling the storm I’ve brought to our threshold gathering force with every second.
I wonder what it will cost.
I wonder how long I can keep playing both sides without being crushed between them.
The doors to the study open half an hour later.
Papa steps out in his robe, cigarette in hand, hair slightly mussed from sleep, but his eyes clear and already full of fire.
‘Well, well,’ he murmurs as he approaches. ‘You’ve brought home quite the prize.’
I lift my chin.
‘She needed help.’
He laughs once.
‘Help. Yes, of course. And here I thought you had no instinct for strategy.’
He walks past me, still speaking.
‘She’s not just any bride. She is the jewel Luca paraded through every ballroom this past year. And now she is asleep under our roof.’
He exhales a long breath of smoke.
Then he stops, and his voice drops.
‘If no one saw you leave with her, this could be beautiful. No one will suspect us. Not if we manage it well.’
‘But if someone did?’
I ask, already knowing the answer.
His expression sharpens.
‘Then we’re complicit. And the wrath of a Salvatore is not something I intend to invite. Especially not Luca’s.’ He says my name, quietly this time. ‘Aria.’
I meet his gaze, waiting.
‘We will help her disappear. But you, figlia mia, must do the same. Until the flames settle. Until someone else takes the fall.’
I do not react.
I expected this.
Still, it stings when he adds, ‘Once this business is behind us, we will speak again of your future. There are still men who would pay handsomely to marry a Lombardi girl. Especially one so loyal to her family.’
I nod once. There is nothing else to say.
By morning, the whispers begin to bloom across the city like fire in dry brush.
The Don’s wife is missing.
The Salvatores are spinning into panic.
By noon, the word on the street is that Luca is not merely searching.
He is hunting.
That no favor is safe, no alliance sacred, not until he finds the one who dared to help her escape.
And though I have known fear before, this is something different.
The knowledge that if my name is spoken, if even one servant at that estate remembers the shadow of my coat disappearing into the garden, I will not live to explain myself.
We book Valentina’s passage before sunset. Sicily. A quiet villa. An untraceable name.
The moment she leaves, Mama hugs me tighter than she ever has, then presses two cell phones into my palm.
One is clean, the other already rigged to burn.
‘Call only Luciana,’ she says, her voice low. ‘And never the same number twice.’
That night, I sleep in my childhood bed one last time.
I hold the edge of the windowsill with both hands and stare out at the city skyline that has raised me, haunted me, crowned me, and now intends to bury me if I am not careful.
In the morning, Papa waits at the main door.
He hands me a passport under another name, and a train ticket to the coast.
‘Do not speak to anyone,’ he says. ‘Do not come back until I say you can. The second Luca forgets, we will begin again.’
I hesitate.
He tilts his head. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Papa.’
But when he kisses my forehead, he adds one last thing. ‘This is not a choice, Aria. When the time comes, you will marry the man I select for you. That has not changed.’
I look at him, the man who taught me how to read a face before I could spell my own name.
The man who calls his love duty.
My heart wants to let him know I’ll always love him, even though I was less of a daughter, and more of a chess piece.
The plan with Luciana is in motion, prepared over messages, and it is all I can cling to for a complete exit from this world.
I press a light hand over my belly, my eyes welling up as I step outside the main estate.
Papa does not follow.
It only strikes me now, how much I wanted Enzo and I to work out, even though the odds were always stacked against us.
It didn’t help that he did most of the stacking himself.
