THE ART OF REFUSAL

CHAPTER THREE: THE ART OF REFUSAL

Louis's eyes fluttered open to white ceiling, beeping machines, and that smell. The hospital smell that hits him right in the gut and says "somebody's about to get a bill they can't afford."

Then a face was hovering right above him.

"GAH!" Louis jolted so hard the heart monitor spiked. Pain shot through his ribs. "What the…you can’t just…do you not know what personal space means?!"

Lorenzo didn't move or blink but just looked down at him with those glacier-blue eyes, arms crossed over his expensive chest like he'd been standing there for hours.

Louis noticed he'd changed clothes. New suit. Dark gray that probably cost more than Louis's life.

Still looked like he'd stepped out of a magazine, Louis thought bitterly. Then he remembered he probably looked like he'd been hit by a truck. Because he had. Metaphorically and physically.

"You are awake." Lorenzo's English was careful, deliberate... like each word cost him something to pull out of his brain. "Good."

"'Good'?" Louis tried to sit up, failed, flopped back against the pillow.

"I'm in a hospital because your little show with the guns gave me a... a stress aneurysm or whatever. Do you even have a license to carry those things in this country?"

Lorenzo tilted his head. Slight confusion creased his forehead. "You are... funny. When scared."

"I'm not scared. I'm annoyed. There's a difference."

"You are okay?" Lorenzo asked.

His eyes swept over Louis's face, the bandage on his forehead. The bruise peeking out from under the hospital gown. Then his split lip that he wished he could kiss.

He looked at every single thing like each one personally offended him.

Louis blinked at the sudden softness in his voice. Then shook it off. "Of course I'm okay. This isn't my first rodeo. Probably won't be the last, knowing my luck."

He gestured vaguely at himself. "You should see the other guy. Wait, you did see the other guys. You had guns on them."

Something flickered in Lorenzo's eyes. Dark and satisfied. "They don't touch you again."

The words were flat, and certain more like a promise than a prediction.

Louis went still. "...What does that mean?"

"I take care of it." Lorenzo said it like he was discussing the weather. Boring. Simple. "The debt. The men. All gone. You don't worry."

Louis stared at him. "All... gone? What do you mean 'gone'? Like, gone-gone? Like, buried in the desert gone?"

Lorenzo's brow furrowed. "No desert. I pay. They go away."

"Oh." Louis let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Okay. That's... that's good. That's really…”

He stopped himself and sat up straighter, ignoring the pain screaming in his ribs.

"Wait. No. Thank you. Really. That's..." He ran a hand through his messy blonde hair. "But you have to stop. This whole thing. The paying, the showing up, the 'my husband' stuff. I'm not marrying you. You have to give it up. It's not happening."

Lorenzo just watched him. Silent and still. Those blue eyes never leaving his face.

"I mean it." Louis was rambling now. He could feel it happening, like a train he couldn't stop.

"I don't know how they do things in Italy, but here? You can't just show up at someone's door and declare them your spouse. It doesn't work like that. I'm not a... a package you ordered. I'm a person. A person with opinions. And my opinion is NO."

Lorenzo didn't react.

"I'll pay you back. Every cent. The hospital, the debt, whatever you gave those guys... I'll find a way and if I can't, I don't know, sell my organs? People need kidneys, right? I've got two. I'm young. They're probably in good shape. Minus the stress. Does stress damage kidneys? I feel like it might..."

"You talk much."

Lorenzo's voice cut through the ramble like a knife. Quietly and almost amused. But his eyes... his eyes hadn't moved from Louis's face since he woke up.

They traced every feature like he was memorizing a map. The curve of his jaw.

The way his nose scrunched when he was frustrated. The exact shade of gold in his eyes when the light hit them.

Louis sputtered. "That's your response?!"

"When you are scared. You talk much." A tiny pause. "Is... cute."

"I am not cute. I am stressed for goodness sake”

Lorenzo almost smiled. "Okay. Stressed."

Louis dragged both hands down his face. "You're not listening to me."

"I listen."

"Then you heard me say no. Multiple times, very clearly."

"Yes." Lorenzo leaned forward slightly. Close enough that Louis could smell whatever expensive cologne he wore. "I hear no."

"And?"

"And I ask again." His voice was calm like gravity..like sunrise or like things that don't change just because you want them to.

"You marry me."

Louis made a sound of pure frustration. Something between a groan and a scream. "Do you even understand English? Like, actually understand it? Or are you just picking random words from a phrase book?"

Lorenzo considered this. Actually considered it, like it was a real question worth answering.

"I understand. Words are... clear. But..." He touched his temple.

"Here? Different. In my head, I think in Italian and French sometimes. Then I find English words. Sometimes they come right. Sometimes..."

He shrugged. "They come how they come."

"So you do understand me saying no."

"Yes."

"But you're choosing to ignore it."

Lorenzo's lips curved. Not quite a smile but something else. Something that made Louis's stomach do a weird little flip he didn't appreciate.

"I don't ignore. I wait."

"For what?"

"For you to stop saying no."

Louis stared at him, opened his mouth to speak then closed it and pened it again.

Nothing came out. For the first time in maybe his whole life, Louis Carter had absolutely nothing to say.

Lorenzo tilted his head, that unsettling gaze never wavering. "You are angry now?"

"Angry?! I'm…I don't even have a word for what I am right now!"

"This is good." Lorenzo nodded once, satisfied. "Angry I understand. Angry is passion. Passion is..." He paused, searching for the word. "Close to other things."

Louis's brain short-circuited.

*****

Louis was out of that hospital within the hour.

Well. "Out" was generous.

He'd waited until Lorenzo stepped into the hallway to speak with Anya…something about "the matriarch" and "business"…then grabbed his clothes and fled like a man escaping prison.

Which, honestly? Not far from the truth.

The afternoon air hit his face like a blessing. Freedom. Sweet, beautiful freedom.

No glacier eyes watching his every move. No declarations of husband-hood. Just him, the sidewalk, and the beautiful sound of birds not speaking Italian.

He pulled out his phone to text his boss at the cafe.

Made up some excuse about a family emergency. It sounded pitiful even to him, but whatever. Not like that job was long for this world anyway.

Then his phone rang.

MIRA flashed on the screen.

Louis almost dropped it. "Hello?!"

"Louis, baby!" Mira's voice crackled through the speaker, as energetic as he remembered. "How fast can you get to the studio?"

He blinked, still walking, still scanning for tall Italian billionaires around every corner. "What? Now?"

"Now, yesterday, last week…doesn't matter. Just get here. We have another spot. Perfume again, different brand, bigger pay. You in?"

Louis's feet had already changed direction. "Yes. Absolutely yes. But…" He touched his face, winced. "I have a... situation. Bruises, some swelling from a little accident."

Mira laughed. Loud and bright. "Honey, that's what concealer was invented for. Get your pretty face here in one hour."

The line went dead.

Louis looked at his phone. Looked at the street ahead. Looked back toward the hospital where a very persistent, very confusing Italian man was probably discovering his absence.

He ran.

*****

The penthouse was silent except for the soft hum of the tablet on repeat.

"For the beauty of longing..."

Lorenzo watched the new commercial for the thirty-seventh time.

Maybe the fifty-second. He'd lost count somewhere after midnight. Not that it mattered. He'd watch it a thousand times if he had to.

Louis's face filled the screen. Same eyes. Same impossible gold-flecked sadness. There were bruises. Poorly hidden beneath makeup.

Lorenzo noticed everything.

His jaw tightened. The way Louis held himself slightly stiff. The flinch in his eyes before the smile came. The shadows that makeup couldn't quite hide.

"For the beauty of longing..."

"Signor Volterra."

Anya's voice cut through the haze. He didn't look up, he just couldn't look up. Louis was on the screen. Louis was always on the screen now.

"The jet is ready. You have meetings. The board is…"

"No."

Anya pauses, he was good at pauses. She'd learned them from him.

"Signor Volterra. You have been here one week. The matriarch requests…"

"The matriarch can request." His voice stayed flat. "I don't care."

"If you want a woman, a nobody," Anya said carefully, "for a marriage contract? To annoy the family? I can arrange. Many families would…"

Lorenzo's head turned. Slowly and deliberately, like a predator noticing prey.

"I don't remember," he said, each word precise and sharp as a blade, "asking you for advice."

Anya went still.

"You failed," he continued. "Your job? Get him to sign. He hasn't signed. He ran from hospital. He does commercial. He says no again and you?" A cold smile. "You tell me about women."

Silence.

Then…Lorenzo laughed.

It was a strange sound, rusty, like he didn't do it often, like the machinery of it had seized up from lack of use.

"He said no to me." He shook his head, almost wondering. Like he'd discovered a new species of animal.

"He... no one says no. Ever. But this one? Tiny American with sad eyes and bruised face? He says no. He means it."

Another laugh, softer, almost genuine.

"I think..." He paused, testing the words. "I like men now. Or maybe just this one. I don't know."

He said it like it didn't matter, like the gender was just a detail. The only thing that mattered was the face on the screen.

"He is stubborn." Lorenzo turned back to the tablet. Watched Louis's face again.

Those eyes…that mouth. The way his nose crinkled slightly when he said the line. "He told me no. To my face, like I was... normal person."

His voice dropped.

"Like my money meant nothing."

He watched the commercial cycle again.

Seven seconds. That was all he got. Seven seconds of that face, over and over. It wasn't enough. It would never be enough.

"If he doesn't sign soon..." Lorenzo didn't finish the sentence..he didn't need to. The air in the room did it for him.

He looked at Anya. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. Businesslike and underneath that, something darker.

Something that had never been told no before and didn't know how to handle it.

"Buy the company. The one that makes these commercials. All of it. Every piece. Every place he works."

Anya nodded, tablet already out, fingers flying. "And Louis?"

"Nothing yet. Make sure he doesn't know. But..." Lorenzo's eyes went back to the screen. "In case we need to push. Make the corner... tighter. So he sees only one way out."

He watched Louis's lips form the words. Watched his eyes hold that beautiful, aching sorrow.

Watched the bruises that someone else had put on his skin.

"Mine," he whispered. "Soon."

The commercial ended and started again.

"For the beauty of longing..."

Lorenzo smiled, then whispered. “This isn’t a choice, Mio Gattino”

He looked at Anya with the darkest smile she had ever seen.

"The contract. Change it."

Anya's pen paused. "Change how?"

Lorenzo's eyes never left the screen. Louis's face. Those eyes. That mouth he hoped to kiss soon.

"Remove the expiration. One year is not enough. I want..." He searched for the word. "Forever. Or nothing."

Anya was quiet for a long moment. "He won't sign that, he hasn’t even agreed to a year”

Lorenzo turned to look at her. His smile didn't reach his eyes.

"He will. When there is no other door left. Because I would do everything in heaven and hell to make him mine."