Jackson nuzzles into my neck. “We’re going to keep you safe and loved and well fucked forever, sweetheart.”
I lie between them, surrounded by warmth and strength and love, feeling completely cherished. Their hands continue to stroke my skin in slow, soothing passes, their voices murmuring soft words of devotion until my eyes grow heavy.
The last thing I register before everything else fades away is the feeling of them around me.
Solid.
Steady.
Certain.
And for the first time, not as something fragile.
Not as something I might lose.
But as something that is finally, completely, mine.
seventy-two
Lucian
Celebrations are useful because people always tell the truth at them.
Not with words. Most people are too disciplined for that, especially around my family, especially in a room like this where power sits in every corner and smiles are rarely just smiles.
But they tell the truth in other ways.
In who they stand beside. In who they keep looking at when they think no one notices. In who they touch too casually, and who they don’t touch enough.
That kind of truth has always interested me more.
I stand near the edge of the terrace with a glass in my hand I haven’t touched in the last ten minutes, watching the party settle into itself now that the main moment has passed. The ceremony is done. The congratulations have softened into clusters of conversation. People are eating, drinking, relaxing into the afterglow of a private celebration wrapped in money, family, and the kind of quiet power that doesn’t need to announce itself.
Christian is off to one side with our uncle, both of them in conversation that looks casual from a distance and absolutely is not.
Uncle Vittorio never wastes words, and Christian never wastes expression, so between the two of them there’s an entire negotiation happening behind faces calm enough to fool anyone who doesn’t know better.
I know better. I also know that if I walked over there right now, neither of them would need to say it aloud for me to understand I wasn’t needed in that particular discussion. That’s the shape of my life more often than not.
Useful. Respected. Trusted when things need moving, fixing, negotiating, smoothing over, threatening quietly, or finishing cleanly. But rarely central. Rarely the one people instinctively turn toward first when the room shifts.
Christian is the strategist they rely on. Elijah is the man they’ve finally realized they can put weight behind. Even tonight, with all this celebration wrapped around family and vows and champagne and property transfers dressed up as wedding gifts, the axis of the room keeps settling around other people.
I don’t resent it.
Resentment is for men who need to be seen to feel important. I’ve never needed that. But I notice it. I notice everything. And right now, what I notice is Evelyn.
She’s standing across the room beside Mark, who has one hand resting at her waist in that absent, proprietary way men use when they think they’ve already earned a place.
He’s speaking to someone from sponsorship, smiling, nodding, looking every bit the polished public-facing executive he’s supposed to be, and she’s turned toward him just enough to look like part of the picture without ever fully becoming part of it.
That’s what catches me every time. She never disappears into the role other people expect her to occupy. Even when she’s standing beside someone else. Even when she’s smiling. Even when she’s being agreeable.
There’s always something held back. A line. A blade. A refusal.
It’s in the way she carries herself, in the set of her shoulders, in the intelligence in her eyes that makes most men underestimate her because they’re too distracted by the rest of her to realize what they’re actually looking at.
And God, she is beautiful.
