Dante sees. His expression changes. “Protective.”
The word is mild, but I want to break his teeth. Instead, I smile. “Maternal instincts. Terribly inconvenient. You wouldn’t understand anything instinctive that didn’t involve self-pity.”
He laughs once. “You really think you won.”
The sentence is absurd enough that for a second, I can only stare.Won.My father is dead. I’m trapped in the house of the man who covered for him. I’m pregnant with twins whose future is already being measured by men in council rooms.
And Dante Vitale thinks this is a game I’ve won because he has lost something he never owned.
A laugh rises in me. “Won?”
His face shifts. “Look at you. In his house. In his wing. Carrying his children.”
My grip on the fabric tightens until my fingers hurt. Good. Pain is grounding.
“You were supposed to marryme.”
“No,” I say. “I was contracted to survive you.”
His eyes flash. “My father took what was mine.”
I go very still. This man killed my father, and somehow he’s still the wronged party in his mind. The purity of his idiocy is almost impressive.
“You were never owed me,” I say.
His smile is gone entirely now. “Your father disagreed.”
For one impossible second, I’m not in the portrait gallery. I’m in the rain. I’m hearing my father’s voice in his study. I’m seeing his thumb beside my signature. I’m smelling peat smoke and ink and damp wool. I’m saying,Be right.
He wasn’t.
He wasn’t.
He wasn’t.
The fabric drops from my arm, scatters across the polished floor. Blue. Ivory. Gray. Useless little flags of surrender.
I don’t bend to pick them up. Neither does Dante. He watches me as if he has finally touched something tender enough to prove he still matters.
That’s the moment I know I could kill him. The want is physical. It terrifies me, because it feels clean. After months of strategy, ambiguity, surveillance, silence, the rage feels honest enough to mistake for salvation.
I take one step toward him. Only one. His eyes brighten.
That stops me.
He wants the reaction. Of course he does. Men like Dante are most alive when they make someone else lose control. It proves, if only for a second, that the chaos belongs to everyone.
No. Not mine.
He doesn’t get mine.
I inhale slowly. Door. Music room. Service panel. Main stair. Window alcove.
Five.
The crack holds. Barely.
Dante’s gaze narrows. “I’m sorry about your father,” he says. “Terrible accident.”
