chapter 5

Serafina folded another invitation. "See that you do not. The press will be present outside the cathedral, whether invited or not. I will not have photographs of a weak-looking bride circulated through the city."

Weak-looking bride.

Elena almost laughed at the absurd precision of the insult.

Instead she stepped down when permitted, careful not to disturb the pinned fabric, and allowed the assistants to guide her behind the screen for the gown to be removed.

She stood in her chemise while hands unfastened pearl buttons and peeled lace from her skin.

One of the younger assistants, perhaps no older than seventeen, whispered as she loosened a sleeve, "You look lovely, signorina."

Elena turned her head. The girl was avoiding her eyes, speaking into the fragile privacy of service, where kindness had to be quiet to survive.

"Thank you," Elena whispered back.

The girl flushed and said nothing more.

That afternoon, Vittorio summoned Elena to the study again.

By then she had begun to dread the room itself - the leather smell, the dark wood, the relentless implication that every conversation held a price. She entered to find him not alone but with two men seated across from the desk, both senior figures from his organization. One she knew by name, Arturo Bellini. The other she recognized only by face.

They did not rise for her.

Her father did not ask her to sit.

"Close the door," Vittorio said.

She did.

He regarded her for a long moment, then gestured toward the chair opposite his desk. "Sit."

Elena obeyed.

Arturo Bellini watched her with the faint discomfort of a man present for a discussion he considered distasteful but necessary.

Vittorio laced his fingers together. "You will go to De Santis's house after the wedding and you will listen carefully to what I tell you now."

Something cold moved down Elena's spine.

He was not speaking as a father sending off a daughter. He was speaking as a man briefing an asset.

She kept her face composed. "Yes, Father."

"You will observe. You will learn the routines of the household. You will note who comes and goes. Which captains are closest to him. Which men he trusts. Which ports he favors. Which nights he entertains business privately."

Elena stared.

For one stunned heartbeat, the room went soundless.

Then she said, "You want me to spy on my husband."

No one corrected the word.

Vittorio's expression hardened by a degree. "I want my daughter to remember where her loyalties belong."

The answer might have cowed another woman. It only hollowed Elena out further.

Her voice came quieter than before. "And if I refuse?"

Arturo shifted slightly in his chair.

Vittorio's eyes sharpened, almost with interest, as though he had not expected even that much resistance.

"You will not."

"Because you command it?"

"Because," he said, each word cool and precise, "the position you are being given in that house is not one you earned. It is one this family purchased at considerable cost. You will make yourself useful."

There it was again.

Useful.

Always useful. Never beloved.

Elena folded her hands in her lap so tightly the knuckles ached. "If he discovers it, he will hate me."

One of the men gave a short exhale through his nose, a sound too close to pity.

Vittorio looked almost bored. "Whether De Santis likes you is irrelevant."

Elena held his gaze then, and perhaps it was the accumulated strain of the past days, perhaps the exhaustion of fear, but something in her gave way.

"Is there any part of this," she asked softly, "that is about me at all?"

The question altered the room.

Not because it was loud. Because it was honest.

Arturo looked away.

Vittorio's face emptied of all pretense.

"Do not mistake sentiment for importance," he said. "You were chosen because Bianca cannot be spared and because De Santis agreed to take you. That is the reality. You may cry over it in private if you like, but you will not waste my time pretending reality should have arranged itself around your feelings."

Elena did not feel the first tear when it slid down her cheek. She only felt the sudden heat of it, humiliating and impossible to stop.

She turned her face away at once.

A daughter raised in a gentler house might have expected comfort. An apology. Even silence.

Vittorio only waited.

Elena wiped the tear quickly, hating herself for the weakness, hating him more for making weakness feel shameful.

"I understand," she said.

Her father studied her for another moment, then nodded once as though the matter were concluded.

"Good. You may go."

She stood, somehow steady, and crossed the room without looking at either of the men seated there. Neither spoke. Neither stopped her. By the time she reached the corridor, her vision had blurred so badly she could barely see.

She did not go to her room.

She did not want Rosa's gentle questions or the risk of being seen by Bianca or Serafina in this state.

Instead she walked blindly through the lesser-used eastern corridor, past portrait galleries and shuttered guest rooms, until she reached the old music room no one had touched since her mother died.

The door stuck as always before giving way.

Dust floated in pale bars of light. Sheets covered most of the furniture. The grand piano remained uncovered, though slightly out of tune. Elena stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and at last let herself break.

She sank onto the piano bench, one hand pressed to her mouth as the tears came harder.

Not graceful tears. Not poetic ones.

The kind that shook her shoulders and made her chest ache and left her gasping in the middle of a room no one entered anymore.

She cried for the wedding dress.

For the life she had not wanted and the love she had never had.

For the mother who was not here to tell her what to do.

For the fact that even now, even after everything, some part of her had still hoped her father would say, I know this is hard.

She cried because he had not merely given her away.

He had asked her to disappear inside the role entirely. To lie. To watch. To become another weapon in his hand.