“Who are you?” I ask.
He swallows. “I’m here for Liliana.”
Wrong answer.
My gaze sharpens. I take a step closer. He takes one back. “Why?”
“I—”
“Who the hell are you?”
He glances down at his shoes like they’ll offer him strength. Then, quietly, he says, “My name is Dario Marchelli. I’m… Liliana’s cousin.”
Well, I'll be damned.
10
LILIANA
The yarn keeps slipping between my fingers. I loop, then twist, then undo. Again and again. My eyes blur slightly, not from strain but because I’ve been at this for hours.
Maria just left. We’d spent the better part of the morning together, sitting by the open window while she guided my hands over and over again with her patient voice and soft, calloused fingers. She'd talked while at it, too—well, her talking, me signing and occasionally scribbling in the little blue notebook she insists on calling “our chat journal.”
She’s teaching me to knit. We started when this week began. It's Friday now, and I’m slowly learning, stitch by patient stitch.
It's a scarf. A simple one. Grey wool that mirrors Giovanni's storm-gray eyes. Not too long. I don’t even know if he’ll like it. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to give it to him. Maybe I’ll leave it folded on his desk one morning. Maybe I’ll never finish it.
But it's coming along slowly, and I’m proud of it in a quiet way.
The needles move in my lap again. Knit. Purl. Tug. Rinse. Repeat. I’m not good at it yet, but it feels good to try. It gives my hands something to do, something soft to hold.
The silence in my room now feels odd, considering how lively Maria is. She fills a space like spring wind, fluttering through everything, lifting the dullness from my days. What began as simple instruction has become something else. Our time together is no longer madam and maid. That line has blurred so subtly I don’t even remember when it began.
I find myself looking forward to her visits. She calls me “Signora” still—even though I've told her she can call me Liliana—but there’s affection behind it, teasing even. She brushes my hair, tucks chocolates into the folds of my books, and berates me for not eating properly.
She treats me like a friend. Not a duty. Not a girl defined by her defect.
And they all do, here. The staff. Tomasso, with his roguish grin and habit of greeting me with a wink. Even the guards nod when they pass. None of them flinch when I sign. None of them lookat me with pity or discomfort. It makes something ache in me. Something I didn’t realize I’d buried deep.
I’d lived my whole life thinking I wasn’t someone people could like. I let my defect shape everything I believed about myself. I let it become who I was. Let it dictate the limits of what I believed I deserved.
But things are… different now. It started the day I became Giovanni’s wife.
He doesn’t force himself into my space. Not since that night. That one night when everything shifted.
I close my eyes, and the memory stirs something deep in me. He’s my husband, but not. He’s close, yet far. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that night. He'd touched me like I was precious and ruined me in the same breath. I still feel his hands on my skin. His breath on my throat. His mouth claiming mine with such hunger I forgot who I was. I still carry his marks. They are fading now. The small bruise on my hip. The faint pressure along my inner thigh.
I shouldn’t miss them. But I do…
I want him again.
God help me, I do.
I want his mouth, his hands, the way he looked at me like I was worth worshipping. The thought strikes me with a force I don’t expect. It coils low in my belly, hot and unwelcome.
I curl my toes in my slippers and knit another row just to have something to do. I hate this part of me, the one that hungers. The one that dreams of his mouth and hands. I’ve never let anyone close enough to love. Not really. I survived because I believed I wasn’t meant to be loved. It made the loneliness easier. It made everything easier.
I hate how easily he broke through the walls I built. How little effort it took for him to reach the parts of me I didn’t know still existed. I hate how he’s shifting everything, how he makes me feel seen. Whole. Desired.
