SIX

THALIA

I woke up to someone knocking on my door. Soft but persistent, and I knew the person wasn't going away until I answered.

Sunlight was streaming through the windows. I'd finally fallen asleep around four and apparently slept straight through to nine. My body felt heavy, like I'd been awake for days instead of just getting rest.

"Thalia?" Rosa's voice came through the door. "Are you awake?"

I dragged myself out of bed, unlocked the door, and opened it. Rosa stood there with a breakfast tray, already dressed perfectly in slacks and a cream-colored blouse. She looked me over, taking in my wrinkled pajamas and the braid that had mostly fallen apart during the night.

"I thought you might want to eat in your room this morning," she said, which was probably code for 'I think it will be better for you to eat in your room.'

"Thank you." I stepped back to let her in.

She set the tray on the small table by the window. Coffee, toast, fruit, eggs. More food than I could possibly eat but I appreciated the thought. Rosa lingered, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from the tablecloth.

"Dante asked me to let you know that your things should be moved to his wing today," she said carefully. "He's arranged a room for you there."

Of course he had. Arranged a room. Not invited me to share his space, not that I wanted to of course, just assigned me a location like I was furniture that needed storing.

"When?" I asked.

"This afternoon, if that works for you. I can help you pack."

I looked around at the room I'd barely spent six hours in. "There's not much to pack. Someone already did most of it."

Rosa nodded. "I'll have the staff move everything over after lunch then. Dante's wing is more secure. Salvatore thinks it's better."

Better for who, I wanted to ask, but didn't. "Okay."

Rosa headed for the door, then paused with her hand on the handle. "He's not trying to be cruel. He's just processing things the only way he knows how."

"By pretending I don't exist?"

She didn't answer that. Just gave me a sad smile and left.

I ate what I could of the breakfast, which wasn't much. My stomach was still in knots from yesterday, from the wedding that wasn't really a wedding, from watching Dante walk away from me like I was nothing.

Around noon, Rosa came back and helped me gather the few personal items I'd unpacked. We walked through the compound together, taking different hallways than I'd seen before. The place was massive, easy to get lost in. Every corridor looked similar, expensive artwork on the walls and thick carpets that muffled footsteps.

"This is Dante's wing," Rosa said as we turned down a hallway that somehow felt different from the rest of the house. More private. The doors were spaced farther apart, the ceilings slightly higher. "His room is at that end. Yours is here."

She opened a door near the opposite end of the hall and I stepped inside.

The room was nice. Bigger than the one I'd spent last night in, with floor to ceiling windows and a bathroom that was almost obscene in its size. The furniture was dark wood, expensive and well made. Everything was perfectly arranged, perfectly clean, perfectly impersonal.

It felt like a hotel. A really nice hotel where nobody actually lived.

"I know it's not very warm," Rosa said, reading my thoughts. "But you can decorate however you like. Make it yours."

Make it mine. Right. Like hanging a few pictures would make me feel less like a prisoner in a very nice cell.

"It's fine," I lied. "Thank you for helping."

Rosa squeezed my shoulder and left me alone to unpack.

I spent the next hour hanging clothes in the enormous closet and arranging toiletries in the bathroom. My things looked lost in all that space, like they knew they didn't belong here either. When I was done, the room still felt empty. Cold.

I walked down the hallway, taking in my new surroundings. There were only four doors on this corridor. Mine, Dante's, and two others that were closed. The walls were decorated with family photos, mostly older ones. Salvatore and Rosa on their wedding day. The boys as children, two identical faces grinning at the camera. As I walked, I watched Rafael and Dante grow up in still frames. Birthday parties, graduations, family dinners.

Then I found one that stopped me cold.

It was recent, maybe a year old. Rafael stood in a garden somewhere, sunlight catching his hair, smiling at whoever was taking the photo. He looked happy. Relaxed in a way I'd never gotten to see in person. This was Rafael before the engagement, before the alliance, before any of this nightmare started.

"He was always the one who smiled for pictures."

I jumped. Turned around. Rosa had come back down the hallway so quietly I hadn't heard her.

She moved to stand beside me, looking at the photo with an expression I couldn't quite read. Sadness, definitely. But something else underneath it. Something that looked almost like guilt.

"Dante hated having his picture taken," Rosa continued. "But Rafael would just smile and make it easy. That was always the difference between them. Rafael wanted to make things easy."

I didn't know what to say to that. We stood there in silence, both staring at a dead man's face.

"I should have known," Rosa said softly. "I should have seen that he was unhappy with this life. Should have realized he was planning to leave."

"He told you?"

"No. But a mother should know her child." She reached up like she was going to touch the photo, then dropped her hand. "I failed him."

The raw pain in her voice made my chest tight. "You didn't kill him. Someone else did that."

Rosa turned to look at me, studying my face like she was searching for something. "You really don't know who, do you?"

"No. But I'm going to find out."

She nodded slowly. "Be careful, Thalia. This family has many secrets. Some of them are dangerous to uncover."

Before I could ask what she meant, she walked away, leaving me alone in the hallway with Rafael's smiling face.

I went back to my room and tried to make myself busy. Rearranged things that didn't need rearranging. Stared out the window at the grounds below.

Around six in the evening, I heard a door open and close. Footsteps in the hallway, heavy and deliberate. Dante was back.

I stood frozen in my room, listening to him walk past my door without pausing, without slowing down. His door opened and slammed shut hard enough that I felt it through the walls.

Silence for maybe ten minutes.

Then the sound of something breaking. Glass shattering, sharp and violent. Another crash, something heavier hitting the floor or maybe a wall.

I moved to my door, pressed my ear against it. More sounds of destruction. Something else breaking, a dull thud that vibrated through the floor.

I should go check on him. That's what a normal person would do, right? Your husband is clearly losing it, you go make sure he's okay.

But I didn't move. Just stood there with my hand on the door handle, listening to Dante tear his room apart.

The sounds went on for maybe five minutes. Then they stopped as abruptly as they'd started. I heard him moving around, footsteps that sounded unsteady. A door opened and closed, probably the bathroom.

I waited but there was nothing else. Just silence.

Slowly, I backed away from my door and sat on the edge of my bed. My hands were shaking slightly, adrenaline or nerves or both.

That was grief. I knew what it sounded like. I'd done my own version after my father had the man I loved killed, after they'd forced me to terminate my pregnancy. I'd screamed and broken things and fallen apart until there was nothing left to break.

Dante was breaking now. For Rafael. For his twin who'd died trying to save me.

I should feel something. Sympathy, maybe. Compassion. The man just lost his brother.

But sitting there in my cold, impersonal room at the far end of a hallway that felt like it went on forever, all I felt was tired. Tired of being blamed for something I didn't do. Tired of being treated like I was the enemy. Tired of this entire situation.

Yes, Dante was grieving. Yes, he'd lost someone he loved. But so had I, in a way. I'd lost the chance at a different life. Lost Rafael before I'd even gotten to know him. Lost any illusion that this world could be anything other than violent and cruel.

I didn't go check on him. Didn't knock on his door or ask if he was okay.

He'd made it clear he didn't want me around. So I'd stay in my room, in my assigned space at the far end of the hall, and let him destroy whatever he needed to destroy.

His grief wasn't my responsibility. I had enough of my own to deal with.

This was my marriage. My life now.

God, what a mess.

I must have dozed off at some point because when I opened my eyes again, the room was dark. I fumbled for my phone. Almost midnight.

I got up to use the bathroom and that's when I heard it. Footsteps in the hallway. Slow and deliberate, coming from the direction of Dante's room.

They stopped right outside my door.

I held my breath, waiting. Was he going to knock? Come in?

The footsteps started again, moving past my door and continuing down the hallway. I heard stairs creaking as he descended them, headed somewhere else in the house.

I walked to my door, opened it carefully, and looked out into the empty corridor. The hallway was dark except for dim security lights at each end. Rafael's portrait was barely visible in the shadows.

My door was the only one open. Dante's was closed. The whole wing felt abandoned.

I was about to go back inside when I noticed something. My door handle was warm, like someone had been holding it and I knew it was Dante.

I went to sleep thinking about the fact that he didn’t open my door, small mercies, I don’t think I would have liked to deal with him especially considering his mood.