The mansion was a place of rituals, Aria had begun to realize. The same meals delivered at the same hours. The same guards stationed at the same corners. The same heavy silence broken only by the sound of footsteps echoing through marble halls. It was a rhythm designed to smother, to grind down resistance with repetition until even rebellion grew weary. And yet, as the days blurred together, she clung to the small cracks in the pattern—the shifting glances, the faint slips of conversation, the rare flickers of humanity in a house built on control.
It was in one of those cracks that the warning found her.
The afternoon sun slanted through her room, spilling across the floor in golden lines that stretched toward the untouched tea service laid neatly on the low table. Aria sat by the window, her gaze locked on the gardens beyond the glass, where guards patrolled with their practiced indifference. She had begun to memorize their steps, the angles of their shadows as the light shifted, the way they carried their weapons with casual readiness. It should have been a comfort, a reassurance of safety. Instead, it was a constant reminder that safety here was an illusion, a leash disguised as a shield.
The door opened softly behind her, the familiar clink of porcelain accompanying the sound of footsteps. The maid who entered was one of the quieter ones—a woman in her thirties with tired eyes and a braid wound tightly at the nape of her neck. Aria had seen her before, always precise, always polite, but never daring to speak beyond what was necessary. She placed the tray down, her movements careful, her gaze lowered as always.
"Your tea, signora," she murmured.
Aria nodded absently, not bothering to turn from the window. But something in the silence that followed made her glance back. The maid hadn't moved to leave. She stood rigid by the table, her hands clasped too tightly, her eyes darting to the door before flicking to Aria.
"Do you ever tire of pretending this is normal?" Aria asked suddenly, her voice flat, more to fill the silence than out of expectation. She didn't anticipate an answer. None of them ever answered.
But this time, the woman's lips parted. Her voice was barely above a whisper, trembling like a thread on the edge of breaking.
"Wives don't last long in this family."
The words fell into the room like a blade, sharp and final. Aria froze, her breath catching in her throat as she turned fully toward the woman. For a moment, she thought she had misheard, thought her mind had twisted the quiet into something more sinister. But the maid's eyes—haunted, urgent, defiant in their fleeting courage—told her she had not.
"What did you say?" Aria demanded, her voice sharper now, though her heart pounded with sudden, icy dread.
The maid stepped closer, her movements small, furtive, as though she were walking a tightrope above a pit of knives. "You think you're different. You're not. They bring in wives, and the wives vanish. Sometimes it's quiet. Sometimes it's blood. But it's always the same. None of them last."
Aria's fingers gripped the edge of the window frame until her knuckles whitened. The room seemed to tilt, her breath growing shallow. She wanted to laugh, to scoff, to accuse the woman of spinning ghost stories in a house already saturated with shadows. But the tremor in the maid's voice was too real, the urgency too sharp.
"Why are you telling me this?" Aria whispered, her words trembling with equal parts fear and fury.
The woman's eyes darted to the door again, her voice dropping further, so soft Aria had to lean forward to catch it. "Because you still think he'll protect you. You still think the name you wear makes you untouchable. It doesn't. Not even he can save you."
Aria's pulse hammered, her skin prickling cold. The woman's words slithered through her like poison, lodging deep where doubt already lived.
Not even he can save you.
The maid straightened abruptly, her face smoothing into practiced neutrality as footsteps echoed faintly down the hall. She gave a stiff nod, lifted the tray with unnecessary precision, and slipped out of the room without another glance. The door closed softly behind her, leaving Aria in silence once more.
But it was no longer the silence of marble halls and muffled drapes. This silence pressed against her chest, sharp with the weight of unspoken truths.
She sat back heavily, her hands trembling in her lap. Her mind raced, looping back over every encounter she had witnessed, every flicker of control, every shadow of threat. Wives don't last long. She thought of the women at the gala, their smiles stretched thin, their compliments barbed. Had some of them once stood where she stood now? Had they whispered warnings to themselves in gilded rooms, only to vanish before anyone noticed they were gone?
And Lorenzo. Her mind clung to him like a drowning hand to driftwood. Protector or executioner? Which was he? She had seen him bend men with a glance, command loyalty with a whisper, wield power with a calm that froze her marrow. She had seen the smirk of respect when she refused to break, the flicker of something more than dominance in his gaze. But she had also seen the cruelty, the mocking kiss, the chains disguised as vows.
Could a man like that save her from the storm of his own world? Or was he the storm itself?
The thought twisted tighter, darker. What if saving her had never been the plan? What if his fascination with her fire was just that—a fascination, fleeting, destined to burn out the moment she ceased to entertain him? What if she was just another name in a long line of wives who had thought they mattered, only to be swallowed by silence and blood?
Her eyes burned as she stared at her reflection in the window glass. The woman staring back at her wore silk and diamonds, but her eyes were fierce, defiant, terrified. A girl trapped in a cage of glass, waiting for it to shatter.
"Not even he can save you," she whispered to herself, testing the words on her tongue. They tasted like ashes.
The footsteps passed, the house settled back into its suffocating rhythm, but the echo of the warning clung to her, refusing to loosen its grip.
By the time night fell, the words had burrowed so deep into her chest that she could no longer tell where they ended and her own doubts began.
And as she lay awake in the dark, the mansion silent around her, one truth pressed harder than the rest:
If wives didn't last long in this family, then survival would not come from Lorenzo's name, nor his protection, nor the illusion of safety his power provided.
It would come from her.
And only her.