A man humiliated by jealousy is a man capable of anything, and Nico Serratore holds my fiancé's life in his wounded hands.
I move through the estate with purpose I do not feel, checking the rooms where I have found him before—the east wing study, the terrace overlooking the garden, the library where he pretends not to read poetry. Each empty space tightens the knot beneath my ribs.
I cannot afford his wounded pride. So I swallow mine and search, rehearsing words that taste like ash on my tongue.
Sorry. I shouldn't have said what I said. I didn't mean it.
Each phrase is a small death of dignity I catalogue and file under the cost of keeping Ethan alive.
The wine cellar is one of Nico's haunts—a place I have found him drinking alone on more than one occasion, working through bottles that cost more than my monthly rent used to be. I descend the stone steps into the dim, vaulted space, cool air carrying the mineral scent of aged stone and oak barrels.
I round a row of racked bottles and stop.
Vittoria Santoro is pressed against the far wall, silk blouse undone to the waist, and the man pressing into her is not Dante. He is tall, uniformed—one of the estate's security guards, a man I have seen posted at the east wing entrance.
His name is Marco or Matteo, one of the guards whose face I recognize from the morning shift rotations. Vittoria's hands are tangled in his hair. His mouth works at her throat with an urgency that speaks of practice rather than novelty.
The intimacy is not tentative. It is choreographed—two people who have done this before and have the movements memorized like a dance they perform in secret.
My mind processes in rapid succession: Vittoria, who curates her image with surgical precision. Vittoria, who warned me about knowing my place, who mentioned my parents' restaurant in Brooklyn with the casual menace of a woman who keeps files on everyone.
Vittoria, who plays the role of Dante's wife with the conviction of a woman for whom the role is exactly that—a performance she can step out of when the audience looks away.
And beneath the shock, recognition settles into my chest like a stone finding water. Because isn't that what I have been doing inside these walls? Playing roles, wearing masks, pretending the woman in Nico's bed is separate from the woman who promised herself to Ethan?
We are not so different, Vittoria and I. Both of us are surviving inside a machine that was never built for women, both of us are finding pleasure where we can steal it, both of us are keeping secrets that would burn everything down if they ever found the light.
I retreat before I am seen, backing silently through the cellar with the skill of a woman trained in houses where being caught observing the wrong thing carried consequences. My feet find the stairs without looking, muscle memory from a life I spent two years trying to forget.
I turn the corner at the top of the cellar stairs and collide directly with Nico.
He is standing in the corridor as if he had been heading downstairs himself, and the impact is physical—my shoulder against his chest, his hands catching my arms to steady us both. The contact sends electricity racing through my body before my mind catches up.
"Nico, I was looking for you," I say, the words tumbling out before I have fully regained my balance.
The rehearsed phrases tangle with genuine desperation, lies stacking up with the efficiency of a woman who has learned that men inside these walls respond to contrition faster than truth.
"I'm sorry. About what I said this morning, about comparing you to Dante. It came out wrong, all of it, and I know I hurt you."
He says nothing. His hands remain on my arms, steadying, restraining.
"I made a mistake, and it won't happen again." The words taste like copper in my mouth. "I swear to you, Nico, it won't happen again."
Still nothing. His dark eyes watch me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle with awareness and dread in equal measure.
"Please say something." My voice drops to a whisper I barely recognize as my own. "Please tell me I haven't ruined everything between us."
He shuts me up with a kiss.
His hands cradle my jaw, tilting my face to his, and the kiss is hard and claiming and tastes like the anger he has not finished processing. I kiss him back—partly because this is what I came to do, partly because the relief of his mouth on mine means Ethan is still a card he is willing to play rather than one he has already discarded.
He pulls me toward the nearest door, pushes it open, guides me through. The room is dim—curtains drawn, afternoon light filtered to amber—and I do not care what room it is because his hands are on my waist, my back, pulling my shirt over my head with an urgency that matches the desperation still pounding through my veins.
"I thought you were done with me," I breathe against his mouth when he lets me surface for air. "I thought you were going to punish me by taking Ethan away forever."
I reach for his collar, fingers working the buttons with hands that tremble from relief and adrenaline and the particular hunger that has grown inside me over these strange weeks. My fingertips find fabric that is not right—finer, stiffer, a shirt cut with a precision that Nico's wardrobe does not possess.
My hands freeze on the buttons.
I look up.
The light catches his face, and the features are identical—same sharp jaw, same dark eyes, same mouth that was just claiming mine. But the stillness behind those eyes is absolute. No restless energy. No manic charm. No coiled wildness waiting to break free.
The man who kissed me is coiled, controlled, patient in a way that has nothing to do with restraint and everything to do with ownership.
The fire between us is not Nico's wildfire, chaotic and consuming.
It is Dante's.