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“Where do you want to go?” he asks.
I blink at him stupidly.
“What?”
“Number 3,” he says, as if reading from a court document, “you want to go out at least once a month. You have a few days left in this month. Where do you want to go?”
My brain short-circuits.
“I…I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“Let me know when you do.”
“And Kay…?”
“If she can behave, I’ll allow it.”
My heart does frantic somersaults, head spinning. I’ve forgotten about my dinner entirely, sitting there staring at Salvatore as if I’ve never seen him before.
“Why?” I breathe, manners evaporating in my shock. If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
“Because my wife gets what she wants.”
“But…that doesn’t really answer the question.”
“Doesn’t it?” he asks, folding the paper up again and setting it aside, giving away nothing.
No matter how I press him, Salvatore never gives me an answer that offers any clarity. He acts as though he is compelled to please me when there’s no benefit to him, no motive. The more I try to wrap my head around it, the more I feel like we’re staring at each other through a funhouse mirror, our perceptions warped and mismatched.
All this time, I thought I had him figured out. He’s a don, a patriarch, a crime lord, and I was just another object he could use to reach his goals, no different than a gun in his armory or a car in his garage. He wants me to be his wife. What I never stopped to consider at all is that Salvatore Mori, in equal measure, might also want to be my husband. A provider. A partner?
Though neither of us have ever said it aloud, we both know the end game.
Eventually, Salvatore will want me to have his baby.
The thought should bring dread, worry, fear—but it hits with a deep, instinctual surge of longing.
Not just for him, but for being filled up by him. If I let the fantasy spin too long, my ovaries ache with unrepentant baby fever. I can’t help but fantasize what it would be like to carry his baby.
Would he be like this all the time, showering me with everything I want and need? Would that dark, possessive part of him I am so drawn to grow even wilder? My thighs clench softly at the thought, my belly suddenly empty in a way the food on our plates can’t fill.
I stare into my dinner plate, realizing that a dark, taboo part of me longs to carry his child.
13
Contessa
I am locked away in my room again for the next couple of days, but rainy weather makes confinement more bearable. Salvatore is out of the house again, though this time, he gives me notice. When I am alone, I fill up canvases and sketch books. In these four walls, there isn’t much for reference or inspiration, so I work from imagination as best I can. I put together the sketchy impression of a few outfits, thinking I might send Ava to shop for close-enough pieces to bring them to life, but the novelty of it wears thin. I’m tired of new things and missing old ones.
I draw what I can remember of my old bedroom, how it must still be frozen even now, trying to commit what it looked like to paper. Did I make my bed that morning, or are the sheets all messy, spilling onto the floor? Did I leave a coffee cup sitting on my desk? I can’t remember now.
I sketch Kay—the way she looked that last night, all dressed to kill, frozen in the moment with a laugh on her lips. The last moment we were having fun together.
The view from my favorite hiking spot. The exterior of the café where I was a regular.
Little scenes that I don’t want to lose by being here, that I want to hold onto. I put them to paper until I have a makeshift memorial of my old life.
But every so often, between the pages of my sketch book, silhouettes and rough sketches darken the page. Unfinished profiles, their features lost in obscurity. Dark, intense eyes.
