Sera’s POV
Two weeks of waking up in this bed and I still open my eyes before he does just to listen to him breathe.
His arm across my waist. His hand splayed on my hip, fingers spread wide like even in sleep he's holding me to the earth.
The weight of him has become familiar and that's the part that keeps me staring at the ceiling at five in the morning — because familiar means something to lose, and I have learned what losing feels like, and my body is already bracing for the blow even while the rest of me is pressing closer to his chest, greedy for warmth, terrified of how much I need it.
Two weeks. Two weeks and I am already the kind of woman who lies awake cataloging the sound of a man's breathing. I don't know when that happened. I don't know how to make it stop. I'm not sure I want to.
He wakes the way he always does — one breath asleep, the next alert, his arm tightening around me before his eyes open. His lips press against the back of my neck. Slow. Deliberate.
"Morning."
Rough. Low. The voice that hasn't stopped doing things to my stomach since Nico's dining room. I turn in his arms. His face this close is devastating — unguarded, the mask not yet assembled. I trace the scar on his left knuckles because he lets me and because touching him first thing in the morning still feels like stealing something I haven't paid for.
His eyes follow my finger and something moves behind them — something warm and uncontrolled — and my chest aches with the intimacy of it. This man who gives nothing to anyone gives me this. Every morning. This one unguarded minute before the phone rings and takes him away.
Then his phone rings. And he's gone. Standing by the window, shirt half-buttoned, jaw set, voice clipped. Territory disputes. Loyalty fractures. The husband from thirty seconds ago replaced entirely by the boss.
He glances at me once. Something softens. Hardens. A door opening and closing in the same breath. I pull the sheets tighter around myself and the warmth he left behind is already fading and I hate how much that bothers me.
I find him in the study that afternoon. Men file in and out — Luca with documents and permanent distrust aimed my way, others with lowered voices. Dante handles each with terrifying patience — never raises his voice, never repeats himself.
I watch from the hallway as a man twice his age nods and says yes sir and backs out like he's leaving something holy or lethal. My husband. This is my husband. The word still catches in my throat like something I swallowed wrong — too large, too new, too terrifying in what it means when I realize I don't want to give it back.
He catches me watching. His eyes stay on me a beat too long and the look lands in my stomach like warm liquid.
I wait until evening. Until the house quiets and he's alone with a glass and a stack of papers. I stand in the doorway. The old habit. Half in, half out. My heart is pounding because I've been building toward this question for days and the answer could mean my father lives or my father dies and I don't know which one this man will choose.
"My father's surgery. It's been two weeks. The hospital said a month, and I need to know if…"
"Yes."
I blink. "You haven't even heard the…"
"A hundred thousand. I had already made inquiries and wanted to address this issue."
The relief hits me so hard my knees soften. I grip the doorframe. A hundred thousand dollars and he says it like it's already handled and my father — my father might actually survive this.
My eyes are stinging and I'm so tired of crying in this house but these tears are different. These aren't the ones Nico pulled out of me with his fists.
"Why?"
He sets the glass down. "Because he's yours and you're mine. But I need time, Sera. Becoming head of this family didn't come with a clean ledger. There are people who need settling before your father's hospital becomes a target. Give me days. Not weeks. You have my word."
I search his face for the lie. Two years of Nico sharpened that blade until it could split air. I can't find one.
"Come here."
I cross to him. He pulls me onto his lap, one hand in my hair, and presses his lips to my forehead. So gentle it makes something behind my ribs ache worse than any hit. "Stop standing in doorways," he murmurs against my skin. "You live here."
I leave with his words still warm on me and my chest doing something close to hope — which in my experience is the most dangerous feeling a woman in this world can afford.
I'm halfway down the stairs when the edges of my vision go white. My hand shoots for the railing and misses and Marta is there, hand firm on my elbow.
"Mrs. Morrante. Are you alright?"
"Fine. Just stood up too fast."
She brings soup anyway. I eat it because arguing with Marta is pointless. The nausea has been creeping in for days. I keep blaming stress, sleepless nights, the fact that my life has been rearranged in three weeks.
But underneath the excuses, in a place I'm not ready to look at yet, a different explanation is assembling itself. Tomorrow. I'll think about it tomorrow.
The phone rings at midnight.
I untangle myself from Dante's arm and answer in the hallway, voice barely a whisper. A nurse — fast, apologetic. My father regained consciousness. He was agitated, pulling at his IV, saying my name. He told them he needed to warn me.
"Warn me?" The floor drops out from under me. "Warn me about what?"
"He didn't say. His condition deteriorated. He seized. He's in intensive care." The pause. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Morrante. The surgery can't wait. If it doesn't happen within days, we can't guarantee anything."
I press the phone to my chest and slide down the wall. My hands are shaking again — the old shake, the one from Nico's house, the one I thought I'd left behind — and my father is in intensive care and he tried to warn me and he couldn't finish and the not-knowing is eating me alive.
Warn me about what. What could be so urgent that a man who can barely breathe spent his first conscious moments trying to reach me. What does he know. What has he done.
Because my father has never warned me about anything he wasn't already part of. He warned me about Nico's temper — because he chose Nico. He warned me about this world — because he built it. Every warning he's ever given me was a confession dressed in concern.
I stare at the dark bedroom door where Dante sleeps. The man who promised my father's surgery. The man whose father died in the same explosion mine survived.
Something cold wraps around the base of my spine and doesn't let go.
What were you trying to tell me, Papa?