The mansion had fallen into its usual midnight rhythm—quiet, calculated, suffocating. Aria had been pacing her room, unable to sleep, her mind haunted by the echo of Isabella's mocking laughter from earlier days and the maid's warning still lodged deep inside her chest. The silence here wasn't peace; it was the stillness of a predator waiting in the shadows, and she could feel it pressing against her ribs with every breath.
She had tried lying in bed, staring up at the ornate ceiling where the moonlight spilled through the tall windows, but the sheets felt suffocating, and her thoughts churned restlessly. She had tried reading one of the heavy books stacked neatly on the shelves of her room, but the words blurred together, unable to compete with the noise in her mind. In the end, she drifted to the window seat, pulling her knees to her chest as she watched the gardens below, where the guards patrolled with unwavering precision.
That was when she heard it: the distant grind of tires against gravel, the low purr of an engine cutting through the night. Her body tensed, her pulse quickening. Cars came and went from the mansion at all hours, but there was something about this one—slow, heavy, deliberate—that made her skin prickle. She slipped from the window seat and crept to the door, pressing her ear against the wood.
The sound of the front doors opening echoed faintly through the marble halls. Then—footsteps. Not the measured tread of guards, not the hurried clip of servants. These steps were slower, heavier, as though weighed down by something invisible. And then she heard a voice—faint, curt, issuing orders in Italian she couldn't fully catch. Lorenzo.
Her hand twisted the handle before her mind could catch up, and she slipped into the corridor, the silk hem of her nightdress whispering against the floor. She moved quietly, following the sound until she reached the landing above the foyer. She froze when she saw him.
Lorenzo was striding across the marble, his jacket hanging from one hand, his shirt disheveled and—her breath caught—stained with blood. Dark streaks splattered across the crisp white fabric, clinging to the folds like shadows that refused to let go. His tie was gone, his collar open, and his usually immaculate composure seemed frayed at the edges. His jaw was tight, his eyes darker than she had ever seen them, his entire body radiating a tension that made the air crackle.
Aria's first instinct was fear. Not of him, but of the sight itself—the stark reminder of the world he moved in, the violence that clung to him like a second skin. For a heartbeat, she thought about turning back, about fleeing to her room and pretending she hadn't seen. But the sight of him—so sharp, so human in his disarray—rooted her in place.
He looked up suddenly, his eyes locking with hers on the landing. For a long moment, neither spoke. The silence between them stretched, heavy, suffocating, charged with something raw and unspoken. Finally, she descended the steps, each one deliberate, her heart pounding louder than her footsteps.
"What happened?" she asked softly when she reached the bottom, her voice steadier than she felt.
Lorenzo's gaze flickered over her, sharp and assessing, as though measuring how much truth she could bear. "Go back to bed, Aria."
The dismissal stung, but she refused to back down. "You're bleeding."
His jaw clenched. "It's nothing."
"It doesn't look like nothing." She stepped closer, her eyes searching his face. His usual mask of control was there, but cracks glimmered beneath the surface—weariness in the set of his shoulders, shadows in his eyes. For the first time, she saw not the untouchable prince of fire but a man carrying weight so heavy it threatened to break him.
Her hand lifted before she could stop it, hovering just above his chest, above the bloodstains. "Is it yours?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
For a moment, the air between them seemed to freeze. His eyes locked onto hers, sharp and unyielding, but beneath the steel there was something else—something that flickered like a flame in the wind. Slowly, he shook his head.
"No," he said finally, his voice low, roughened at the edges. "Not tonight."
The words hit her like a blow, sharp with implication. Not tonight. Which meant there had been nights when it was his. Which meant this was not an exception but part of a pattern, a truth woven into the fabric of who he was.
Aria swallowed hard, her chest tight. She wanted to recoil, to push him away, to demand what kind of man returned home in bloodstained shirts and spoke of it with such calm. But at the same time, a strange ache tugged at her, a pull she didn't understand. He wasn't cruel in this moment, not mocking, not commanding. He was raw. And that terrified her more than his cruelty ever had.
"Whose blood is it?" she asked, though part of her didn't want the answer.
Lorenzo's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile, wasn't quite a grimace. "Does it matter?"
"Yes," she whispered fiercely, surprising herself with the strength of her voice. "Because if I'm supposed to be your wife, if I'm supposed to sit at your table and wear your name, then I deserve to know what it is I'm chained to. I deserve to know whether the man I'm bound to is a monster or…" Her words faltered, her throat tightening.
"Or what?" he pressed, his voice low, dangerous, but there was no true bite in it.
"Or a man carrying more than anyone should."
For a long moment, they stood in silence, the weight of her words hanging between them. His eyes softened, almost imperceptibly, as though she had touched a wound he kept buried deep. And though he said nothing, that silence was answer enough.
Aria exhaled shakily, stepping back though her eyes never left his. She felt the walls shifting inside her, the certainties she had clung to unraveling thread by thread. He was cruel, yes. Dangerous, yes. But he was also this—bloodstained, weary, human. And that made everything infinitely more complicated.
Lorenzo finally turned away, his shoulders stiff as he started toward the stairs. "Go to bed, Aria."
But this time, his voice carried not dismissal, but something heavier. A plea.
She stood rooted in the foyer long after he disappeared from sight, her gaze lingering on the droplets of blood darkening the marble floor. The echo of his words rang in her ears, a refrain that refused to fade.
This blood isn't mine. Not tonight.
And though she wanted to deny it, to shove it down and build her walls higher, she knew the truth: that refrain would haunt her. And it would bind her to him in ways chains never could.