He goes quiet, and that fury I love so much drains out of him. I’ve seen him sit in silence with insults like knives cutting into his skin, but this is different. This is him staring at a future where his father is dead, his sister is free, and realizing he’s never allowed himself to imagine beyond that point.
That realization hits him so slowly, I can see it. Finally, and more softly, he says, “I don’t know.”
That honesty drains the fight out of me.
We don’t speak of futures again and leave the terrace when we finish our coffees because staying in one place for too long makes both of us twitch.
Inside, the villa is cooler, and we move through rooms without hurry. I have him in every room, and he claims me back, whispering things in Italian he thinks I won’t understand while I respond in Russian.
The day drifts, full of fights, fucking, and me annoying him whenever I can. It’s only while I’m cooking dinner and he’s washing dishes in the sink that he speaks of this morning again.
“You’ve really been thinking about killing him?” he asks.
“Yes,” I answer, and he searches my face for any lie in my treasonous thoughts.
“Would you tell me when you do it?”
Probably not, I think,because loving you doesn’t mean I trust fate enough not to use silence when it matters.
But I don’t say that. Instead, I cup the back of his neck and draw him close until his forehead rests against mine. “You already know more than you should,lyubimiy.”
Then I kiss him slowly and without thought, because he doesn’t understand why I started planning to kill my father in the first place.
He doesn’t realize it’s because of him.
Salvatore is dozing with his head in my lap while I read. I card my fingers through his hair because I can, and there’s no one here to see how disastrously gentle I become with him.
“I could get used to this,” he says without opening his eyes.
The words hit me somewhere stupid. “Dangerous thing to say.”
He hums. “A lot of things with you are dangerous,amore. And yet…”
“And yet,” I echo.
He finally opens his eyes and looks up at me. “If our worlds weren’t built the way they are,” he murmurs, “would you live here?”
“With you,” I say without hesitation, and we both look at each other. There’s heartbreak reflected in his eyes, heartbreak and hope, and fuck, I can’t look away. “Salv—”
The private line in my study rings—the one only Viktor knows about.
Every inch of softness dies in me at once. Salvatore feels it happen, and all that lazy warmth is gone from his face immediately. “Don’t answer it.”
I untangle myself from him and stand, then I look at him. Whatever he sees on my face must confirm something for him, because the set of his mouth changes and becomes more Vieri.
I leave the room and answer it on the fourth ring. There’s a crackle on the line when Viktor says, “Father wants you in the city before midnight.”
“I’m hours away,” I answer back in Russian.
“Midnight, Ruslan.”
I look toward the door and hear Salvatore in the kitchen. “What happened?”
“Not over the phone.”
That tells me everything and nothing. “This line is clean. I checked before coming.”
“Still.”
