Page 21 of Ruthless Vow
Frost on glass, spreading.
“The staff will show you to our room,” Dante says. “Maria will bring your belongings when they arrive.”
Our room.
Our.
“Where are you going?”
He’s already moving toward the door. “I have business to attend to. I’ll be up later.”
And then he’s gone, and I’m standing alone in his father’s study with a ring on my finger and my mother’s sobs ringing in my ears.
The bedroom is larger than my old bedroom at home.
That’s the first thing I notice. The obscene amount of space, the massive four-poster bed, the windows overlooking gardens Ican see only as darkness. Dark wood and deep colors, masculine and imposing and foreign.
His things are everywhere. A watch on the nightstand. Cufflinks in a small dish by the mirror. A half-empty glass of water from this morning that no one has cleared away yet. Dress shirts visible through the open closet door. A pair of shoes lined up by the wall.
I’m surrounded by evidence of him, and he’s nowhere to be found.
This is where he sleeps. Where he dreams. Where he has nightmares, if the sounds I used to hear through walls during those late-night audits were real.
Now it’s where I’ll sleep too.
A woman named Maria brought me here. Kind eyes, efficient movements, calling me signora like it was the most natural thing in the world. She showed me the bathroom, the closet where my clothes will be hung, the bell I can ring if I need anything.
I thanked her. She left.
Now I’m sitting on the edge of the bed in borrowed nightclothes, staring at the door, trying to remember how to breathe.
He’ll be here soon. We’ll share this bed. That’s how it works, apparently. Tradition. Expectation. A married couple sleeps together, and word travels fast in a household full of staff with nothing better to do than gossip.
This is fine. This is the arrangement. Don’t hope for more.
The mantra loops through my head like a prayer I don’t believe.
The books on his nightstand aren’t alphabetized. Five of them, stacked without order, spines facing different directions. A history of the Ottoman Empire. A thriller I recognize from airport bookstores. A slim volume of Italian poetry with a cracked spine.
It bothers me more than it should. I could fix it in thirty seconds. Organize by height, or author’s last name, or subject matter.
Stop it. You’re being ridiculous.
I hear the door before I see it open.
He enters with his tie already loosened. His eyes find me on the bed, and his jaw sets. A muscle shifts near his temple. Then it’s gone, smoothed over, unreadable.
“You should sleep.”
“So should you.”
He pauses. Holds my gaze one second too long. Two. The air between us thickens, and I’m the one who looks away first.
Then he disappears into the bathroom without another word.
I lie down. Pull the covers up. Face the wall, away from his side of the bed.
The sheets smell like him. Clean and expensive, cedar and smoke, and underneath it the warm salt of his skin that makes my blood rush faster than it should. The pillow holds the indent of his head from last night. From all the nights before.
