Page 45 of The Butcher
Not the kind of normal I had known before, but something that settled in slowly until I stopped thinking about it so much.
Days turned into weeks, and at some point, I realized I wasn’t waking up tense anymore. I wasn’t listening for every sound in the house or wondering what was happening behind closed doors.
I wasn’t trying to figure out where I fit every second I was here. I just lived here.
The house didn’t feel strange anymore. I knew where everything was without thinking about it. I knew which doors stayed closed and which ones didn’t, which men came and went at certain hours,and how the day moved from morning into night without anyone needing to explain the routine to me.
Conversations didn’t stop when I walked into a room anymore, and no one looked at me like I didn’t belong there. Things got handled the way they always did, clean and quiet, and I stopped paying attention to it like it was something separate from me.
It was just how life worked here now. That was the part that surprised me the most.
At my father’s house, I had always felt like I was just outside of everything. I knew things were happening, but I wasn’t meant to see them. My mother lived like that too. She stayed composed, kept to herself, and didn’t ask questions. She existed in that house without ever really stepping into the parts of it that mattered. My sister followed her lead. She stayed close to what was safe and didn’t push past it.
I had done the same for a long time. I just hadn’t realized it. But now was different. My husband didn’t see me as an accessory. He saw me as his equal.
My father kept things from us because it made it easier to control everything around him. The less we knew, the easier it was to place us where he wanted us. The easier it was to use us when it mattered.
That wasn’t how things worked here.
Nothing was hidden from me. No one tried to move me out of the way or keep me in the dark. I wasn’t pushed aside when decisions were being made, and I wasn’t expected to pretend I didn’t understand what was happening.
I wasn’t standing on the outside anymore. I was part of it.
When I walked into a room, everyone knew exactly who I was. Alexei’s wife. And that held a power I’d never known before.
I stood near the window in the sitting room, looking out over the front of the property as the morning settled in. Staff were already tending to the landscaping, mowing the lawn, and watering the flowers.
Guards were already outside, moving through their routines, checking positions, and giving reports to each other in low voices. Nothing about it had changed since the day I arrived.
Alessio had been gone for weeks, and even though I hadn’t known he even existed until it was too late, I assumed I’d feel some kind of kinship toward him. But I didn’t. For all I knew, he would have taken me down right along with him.
I didn’t feel pulled back by it. I didn’t feel tied toit just because of blood or a name. My father had his world. My mother had chosen how she lived inside it, and my sister would stay where she felt safest.
That wasn’t where I was anymore.
I took a sip of my coffee and stepped a little closer to the window, my fingers brushing the glass as I looked out. This was Alexei’s world. It always had been. Everything here ran the way he wanted it to, and nothing slipped without him knowing.
But I didn’t feel like I was standing inside something dangerous anymore. I felt like I understood it. Cause I was a protected part of it.
“You’ve been standing there a while.”
His voice came from behind me, low and steady.
I turned to face him, my gaze finding his immediately as he stepped into the room. Nothing about him had changed. He still carried himself the same way, and still looked at me the same way… like he’d never get enough.
I rested my free hand low on my stomach. I hadn’t told him yet, but the words had circled in my head more times than I could count. I tried to find the right way to say it, something that felt big and momentous.
He was in front of me a second later, his focus onwhere my hand lay on my flat belly. My fingers pressed a little more firmly before my palm flattened there like I could already feel something that wasn’t visible yet.
The thought should have scared me… growing a baby inside of me. It should have made me question everything and wonder what kind of world I was bringing a child into. But it didn’t. I already knew the answer. It would be a world that was dangerous, but this little baby would forever be protected.
His attention sharpened when he noticed where my hand rested. “Lucia,” he said, his voice low and husky.
“I have something to tell you,” I whispered, keeping my hand where it was.
He watched me for a second longer, and then something in his expression shifted. A slow, deliberate smile formed, something possessive and certain settling into place like he was… happy.
He closed the distance between us, his hand coming to my waist, his thumb brushing just beneath where my palm rested like he was claiming it the same way he had claimed me.
