I clench my jaw. The bastard doesn’t even hesitate.
It disgusts me. I don’t show it. I don’t say a word about how easily he gives her away, how cheap his silence makes her seem.I just nod once and tell myself, again, that he’ll never come near her once she’s mine. Not for anything. Not for breath or blood or penance. He’ll be dust beneath her feet.
He turns to a servant that had been hovering. “Fetch Liliana.”
Footsteps echo down the corridor. I don’t move. I don’t breathe. My body stirs in recognition as the sound of her feet approaches.
And then she’s there.
She steps into the room in a soft blue dress, the hem just brushing her ankles. Her hair—those damn, lustrous strands, enough to make my fingers twitch—is pulled back today, loose curls spilling down her back, and there’s something about the simplicity of her that knocks the air from my lungs. She’s not even trying to be beautiful. She just is. I doubt that she knows how much power her beauty holds.
She stops when she sees me. Her eyes widen for the briefest second, and I catch it before a shutter comes down over her face, closing off her expression.
She wasn’t expecting me. She doesn’t know why I’m here. But she feels it. I see the question rise behind her eyes, the tension that coils into her shoulders. I see that damn wrist rub that's a dead giveaway that she's nervous.
Her father doesn’t look at her when he speaks. “You’re going to marry Don Giovanni Renzetti,” he says like he’s announcing the weather.
Her mouth parts, and for a second, she just stands there. Frozen. Then she looks at me again, and I see it. The fire. The fight.
And I wonder, for a heartbeat, if I’ve just made the smartest decision of my life. Or the most dangerous.
She doesn’t speak.
Her mouth parts again, but no sound comes out, just raw and trembling silence. Her blue eyes flash to her father, then back to me, and the disbelief in them is staggering. She looks like she’s just been struck.
Renato is still talking, oblivious to the weight of what he’s done. “He says he’ll forgive the debt,” he mutters, waving a fat hand like it’s a generous deal. “I suggest you make yourself agreeable.”
My eyes cut to him. “You’ll speak of her with respect. She’s not some pawn you toss to the highest bidder. She’s my fiancée now. And you will treat her as such.”
The words feel strange in my mouth, and yet, they’re right.
Liliana stiffens. Her fists clench at her sides. That’s when it happens. She moves. Her hands lift as they move, quick and abrupt. And I understand every word of it.
You did this?
You?
Why?
It hits harder than if she’d screamed. Her signing is jerky and uneven. Her anger makes her tremble. Her fingers falter, her breathing quickens. She’s trying to form a sentence, but her body is ahead of her, furious and frantic. Then her voice joins in. A stammered breath. Not a word, but a broken, gasping syllable. And then another. And another.
“Y-you…” she tries, but the single word is heavily slurred and sounds more like “j-jou—”
It hits me all at once—that voice of hers, locked away somewhere deep, is clawing its way out. She’s trying to make sense of this, trying to scream through the silence. And it’s fury she leads with. Not fear. Not grief. Rage.
The rest of her words are lost to air and trembling lips. She shakes her head, swallows, then signs again. You can't do this. I didn't agree to this.
And I should tell her she’s right.
I should tell her that I barged into her life with power and blood and an arrogant offer she never got the chance to refuse. But I don't. I can’t. Because I’m too busy watching her rage. Watching the fire crackle through her veins like she’s about to detonate right in front of me.
Good Lord. She’s magnificent in that fury.
“I can,” I say quietly, and when her eyes snap to mine, I sign the words again, slow and sure, so she knows I’m not hiding behind my voice. I can. I did.
Why me?
It’s the only question she mouths, not signs. She just breathes it out.
