"Tell me," I said the moment his car door shut and his black sedan pulled away from the lobby of his penthouse building. "What changed?"
Dario didn't even look at me. His gaze remained fixed on the road ahead, his hands steady on the wheel. His posture relaxed in a way that was anything but casual.
"Hasn't it always been the Famiglia's way?" he asked. "The man rules the house. Not the woman."
I let out a quiet breath, almost a laugh, though there was no humor in it. "Interesting," I said evenly. "Because that isn't what was promised before I left. My family did not just thrive on tradition. It thrived on bloodline. And I am his sole, direct descendant."
He finally glanced at me then, his expression unreadable.
"I am still going to be your husband," he said, as if he was stating an unchangeable fact. "You will still be my wife. Any children we have will still carry the Ricci blood."
Children. The word tightened somewhere in my chest, sharp and unwelcome. I pushed the reaction away, sealing it before it could show.
I held his gaze. "Blood alone has never been enough," I said calmly. "If it were, my grandfather wouldn't have needed to raise me the way he did."
A beat of silence followed, measured and deliberate.
"Then maybe he just couldn't refuse the deal I offered," he said at last. "What does he truly have to lose? Marriage consolidates power. I even agreed that any offspring of ours would carry our combined surname."
He spoke as if the matter was already settled, as if consent were implied simply because the terms had been spoken out loud. Without me present. Something wasn't right.
Grandpa wouldn't have done this, knowing how much our name mean to him.
I watched as the city pass through the tinted glass, my reflection fractured across it. Too composed and still.
"You mistake legacy for leverage," he said at last. "Marriage consolidates power. Not divide it."
"And you," I said softly, "mistake my cooperation for surrender."
The car continued forward, smooth and relentless. As if nothing had been said that had fracture the future. I couldn't help but feel the regret, starting to settle in my bones. I shouldn't have decided to marry him so quickly, shouldn't have voiced out my cooperation too eagerly.
What was I thinking?
No. I had thought I could cooperate with him. That some form of understanding could be forged between us. That we could exist, at the very least, as allies. Friends. I was wrong.
By the time we entered the restaurant, flashes from waiting cameras followed us inside, only to be cut short when the staff ushered us directly to a table at the center of the room. The only one left empty. We were surrounded by couples leaning toward one another, families mid-laughter and lives, simply unfolding in soft, ordinary ways.
A jazz singer occupied the small stage, her voice rich and unhurried, wrapping itself seductively around the glow of the candlelight as we placed our orders. In another, with another man, this might've been romantic, considering how hard it must've been to get a table in this restaurant.
But Dario hadn't brought me here for romance. He had brought me here for something else entirely. Something more sinister.
"The next song," she announced, smiling toward the room, "is a special request from one of our most esteemed guests, Mr. Voss. Here's for you, Alaric."
The name tightened something in my chest.
I turned slowly toward the stage, my movements careful, measured. Just as Dario remained absorbed in his phone. Then the first notes drifted through the air, soft and unmistakable. A jazz rendition of that song, stripped down and intimate, as if it had been waiting for me.
I felt it before I saw him.
That subtle prickle along my spine, the unmistakable awareness of being watched. Not casually, not hungrily, but with a familiarity that made my breath hitch. As if the song itself had weight and found its way to me on purpose.
My fingers curled slightly against the stem of the glass, once the waiter walked off after filling it halfway with the red wine.
I drifted my gaze slowly towards the darkened corner, past the candlelight and the crystal glasses. The murmured conversations and soft laughter, until it caught on the far end of the table. Those familiar green eyes staring down at me.
He's alive.
The sight of him struck me with brutal clarity, knocking the air out of my lungs. I couldn't have killed Alexandre, because he was sitting there, watching me like he always had.
He sat in shadow, with a blond-haired woman sitting right across from him. A dark hat brim cut across his face, glasses catching just enough light to obscure his eyes. Anyone else might have dismissed him as another man enjoying the evening.
Because even hidden like that, I would have known him anywhere.
"Are you alright?" Dario asked, his voice cutting through the haze, bringing me back to our table.
I blinked once, forcing my attention back to him. "I'm fine."
I reached for my glass, fingers steady despite the faint tremor beneath my skin and took a small sip. The taste wasn't my favorite, but I wasn't going to complain.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," he murmured, his eyes still fixed on his phone as his thumbs moved across the screen.
The words landed heavier than he knew. He had said the same thing once before, back at my grandfather's New Year's party, when I caught Alexandre watching me with that quiet intensity.
Maybe that was all Alexandre was meant to be now. A ghost. One that refused to stay buried.
"In a way," I replied.
The waiter arrived just then. The song onstage drifted to its final note, the applause rising softly before the singer slipped into another melody.
I picked up my knife, cut into the steak, and watching the blood bleeding out into the porcelain.
"You've been busy," I said lightly, without looking up. "Is something wrong?"
"There was an explosion at one of our New York warehouses," he said, jaw tightening. "It's being handled. Nothing for you to worry about."
But something in his tone told me it hadn't.