Before the Council Named Me Donna

The moment the De Luca security notification appeared on my tablet, I stopped waiting for Matteo.

Vanessa Ashford had entered the Donna wing with a clearance level that should have belonged only to me, and Matteo had stood beside her without the De Luca signet he always wore before the family. That was not an accident. That was a choice.

I closed the archive window and looked back at the mourning locket under my lamp. Pregnancy had made my hands unsteady lately, but pride kept me from breaking anything in my studio, including myself.

Vanessa, Matteo, and I had grown up in the same private-school circle. Everyone knew Matteo once worshipped her. He missed council training for her riding competitions, bought a horse because she said it looked lonely, and fought anyone who laughed when she rejected him. I watched it all with the composure expected of a Rossi daughter, while quietly loving him.

Years later, when his father’s health failed and the De Luca captains started circling, Matteo needed a wife in name. An alliance with the Rossi family would steady his succession.

He found me at a Manhattan auction house and said, “Marry me on paper, Elena. Six months. Long enough to quiet my council.”

I should have refused, but I only asked, “And when your men start calling me Donna?”

His mouth curved. “Then answer like one.”

We signed the contract, issued the family statement, and agreed to complete the civil registration once his succession stabilized. It was supposed to be temporary. Then he gave me the east studio in his penthouse because the light was better there, left coffee outside my door before dawn, and kissed me one night after ordering me to stop working through dinner.

After that, I forgot how temporary was supposed to feel.

For a year, I believed in his hand at my waist during family dinners, in the low voice he used only in our bedroom, in the way De Luca soldiers lowered their eyes when I passed.

Then Vanessa returned.

The ceremony was postponed, her access was approved, and his signet disappeared.

My phone lit up with Matteo’s message.

Still handling council business. Don’t wait up.

I placed it facedown beside the prenatal report.

Council business apparently lived in the Donna wing now.

I had wanted him to choose us publicly before I told him about the baby. Now there was nothing to tell. I folded the report into my passport, opened the email from Florence, and accepted the restoration position.

Matteo came home after midnight.

I lay awake while he showered. When he entered the room, the scent on his skin was not smoke, cedar, or his soap. It was amber.

Vanessa had always worn amber.

He slipped into bed and reached for me with the ease of a man who believed home would stay where he left it. I moved away before he could pull me close.

“You’re awake,” he murmured. “Were you waiting for me?”

I could have asked about the elevator footage, the Donna access, the missing signet, or the ceremony he had abandoned. But there was no dignity in begging for a place that should never have been offered to another woman.

So I closed my eyes.

“No. I was working.”

Matteo was quiet for a moment, then kissed my hair.

“Sleep, Elena.”

I lay still in the dark, my passport hidden in the studio drawer, and understood that this penthouse was no longer my home.