My chest hurts. Not in the way it did earlier. This is a different ache. A brutal one. Shame prickles up my spine, my cheeks hot with something akin to humiliation. I don’t cry. I don’t move. I just stand there, surrounded by sunlight and roses and strangers.
I let her words settle. Let them rot. Let them mingle with the cruel voice that has replaced the quiet in my head.
9
GIOVANNI
Liliana has been avoiding me.
Not overtly. We share meals. She nods politely when I ask about her day. She responds in that graceful, economical way of hers, hands rising in small, fluid movements I’ve come to recognize even when I’m not looking. But she won’t meet my eyes. Not once in a week. Not when I pull out her chair. Not when our fingers brush as she hands me the salt. Not even when I speak her name.
Liliana.
God help me, her name is a curse I whisper into my pillow every night. It's funny how I can miss her when she's only just enteredmy life. Yet, I can't remember what life has been like without her in it.
I miss her. And I hate how much I miss her. Because somewhere between her silence and her fiery, yet unsure defiance, I’ve grown addicted to her presence. Her eyes. Her hands. The way she looks at the world like it never offered her softness and she’s bracing for another blow.
I tell myself it's her silence that's bothering me. That it's frustrating to be shut out. That it’s the rejection of what happened that night, the way she’s pretending it didn’t mean anything. And frankly, I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
I told her I loved her the night she gave herself to me. I know what she thinks. She thinks it meant nothing. That I took her because she was there. Because she was a willing, convenient body. But I meant it. I didn’t say it to make the moment anything other than it was, or to coax her into trusting me. I said it because it was true.
It still is.
I love her implicitly. I’ve been in love with her from the moment I saw her in Renato’s study. The world paused the moment I saw her, and that's when I knew—that she was meant to be mine. That I’d been living my life walking toward that moment, even if I didn’t realize it. Like every loss I’ve ever suffered was leading me to her.
I'd known because no woman had ever elicited such a visceral emotion in me.
Logic had nothing to do with it. I live my life by a set of rules. I don’t believe in fate. Not after Alessio. Not after burying my baby brother and watching my mother fold in on herself like a dying star. Fate is for men who need to believe their pain has meaning.
I know she believes I married her out of pity. But that can't be farthest from the truth. Yes, I offered her father the bargain. Yes, I’d used the debt as leverage. Yes, I knew what I was doing. But if I'm being honest, if I strip it down to the barest truth, I married her because I loved her from that very first moment.
And I want her to know. Dio, I want her to see herself through my eyes. I want to say the words over and over again till they're burned into her memory… and her body.
But she won't even meet my eyes. I know it's going to take a lot of patience. All her life, she's seen the world through a wounded lens. I need to take it slow. But dammit, I'm frustrated.
Every morning, she walks out of her room and disappears into the garden. I watch her from my study window. She’s always barefoot. Her hair, unpinned, whips around her shoulders like it’s part of the wind itself. She kneels in the soil, hands wrist-deep in dirt, her face lit up like I’ve never seen it anywhere else.
The garden makes her come alive. I see her smile there. Not the polite curve of lips she gives the staff, or the small one she offers Maria when she signs thank you. No. It’s the kind of smile thatbreaks something open in a man’s chest. The kind that makes you believe there’s good in the world simply because she exists in it.
I’ve never wanted to be a patch of soil more in my entire life.
Three days ago, I went to her. I simply couldn’t stay away. Watching her wasn’t enough. I needed to be near her. To hear the quiet sound she makes when she breathes. To see her eyes up close, the way they go wary, yet warm when they land on me. I needed her to look at me.
She didn’t.
When she saw me, that light in her dimmed. Her shoulders curled inward, her hands stilled in the dirt. No smile. Just a quiet and wounded look. Like my presence had infringed on something sacred. Like I'd invaded her sanctuary. She'd left without a word, without an acknowledgement.
I stood there, rooted, like an idiot, feeling hugely bereft. And still, I’d do it again.
God, she's magnificent.
I want her. Not just her body. I want every inch of her. Her quiet thoughts. Her fears. Her mornings. Her smile. I want to bury my face in her neck and breathe her in. I want to run my hands through the tresses of her gorgeous hair. I want to get lost in her big blue eyes. I want to kiss that mouth until she forgets every cruel word her father ever spat at her.
But she won’t look at me.
Now, I sit in my study, pretending to read over trade papers. The Marseilles shipment arrived early. Customs needs signatures. There’s a discrepancy in one of the invoices from Morocco because someone padded the numbers. And there’s still the Belgian deal Tomasso is overseeing, which I should be presiding over.
But I can’t concentrate. She's the constant thing that dominates my thoughts. I glance at my watch. It's almost noon.
