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Chapter 3
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2026-08-07 16:53:51Dinner moved slowly, the low hum of conversation between Victoria and Leonardo fading into background noise as my mind wandered somewhere far from the table.
The staff moved quietly around us, refilling glasses, clearing small plates. I sat with my fork resting untouched against my plate, nodding occasionally whenever Victoria’s voice rose in my direction, though I couldn’t have repeated a single word that had been said.
One moment I was staring at my plate, and the next I felt Leonardo’s hands finding my waist, pulling me close, his voice low against my ear as he whispered something only I could hear.
I answered him softly, breathlessly, the word slipping out before I could stop it. Yes, Daddy.
My lips curved without my permission. My teeth caught my bottom lip. My fingers traced idle circles against my thigh beneath the table, lost entirely in the fantasy playing behind my eyes.
The rest of the room had gone quiet and distant, folded away somewhere I couldn’t reach, while the version of Leonardo in my mind held me like I was something worth holding onto.
“Amelia.”
Victoria’s voice cracked across the table like a whip.
I flinched hard, blinking back into the room, my face flooding with heat as I registered where I was, the dining table, the crystal glasses, Leonardo’s gaze flicking toward me with faint, unreadable curiosity. My heart slammed against my ribs.
I hadn’t realized how far I’d drifted, hadn’t realized what my face must have looked like while I was gone.
“Get up,” Victoria said, her voice tight and controlled in a way that was somehow more frightening than shouting. “Now.”
I rose on unsteady legs and followed my mother out of the dining room, down the hall, until Victoria rounded on me the moment we were out of sight.
“What,” Victoria hissed, “was that?”
“What do you mean?” My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.
“Don’t play stupid with me.” Victoria’s eyes were narrow, furious, cutting straight through me. “I saw you. Smiling at him like that. Biting your lip. Rubbing your thighs together at my dinner table like some desperate little—” She stopped herself, jaw tightening, and took a breath before continuing, quieter now, more dangerous for it. “You were flirting with my husband. In front of me.”
“I wasn’t,” I started, but the lie died in my throat. There was no version of this where I could explain the truth without making everything worse.
“I don’t care what you were doing in that head of yours,” Victoria snapped. “I care about what it looked like. Do you understand what’s at stake here? I need this marriage intact for three years, and I will not have you jeopardizing it because you can’t control yourself for one dinner.”
I said nothing, staring at the floor, letting the words wash over me the way I’d trained myself to do for years. I had learned long ago that silence was safer than defense, that anything I said would only be twisted and handed back to me later.
Victoria stepped closer, lowering her voice to something colder, sharper. “I won’t warn you again. Next time, I won’t just talk to you about it.” She let the threat hang there, unfinished, familiar enough that I didn’t need her to finish it. “Go to your room. I’ll make your excuses to Leonardo.”
I turned without another word and walked back down the hall, my legs carrying me faster than I meant them to, until I reached my room and shut the door behind me.
I fell onto the bed and exhaled deeply, staring up at the ceiling, my heart still racing from more than just fear.
How did that happen?
I pressed my palms against my eyes, replaying the moment, the way I’d drifted so completely into the fantasy that I’d forgotten where I was, forgotten who was watching.
It frightened me a little, how easily I’d lost myself. I’d meant to be careful, patient and Quiet, the way I’d promised Maya I would be. And instead I’d nearly given myself away in the first few hours, in front of the one person who could ruin everything with a single phone call.
I just love him so much, I thought, and the admission startled me even as I thought it. Not liked. Not wanted. Loved already, impossibly, after only a handshake and a few careful hours in the same house. It made no sense, and yet it felt more real than anything else I’d felt in years.
I sat up slowly and reached for the small notebook I kept tucked in my bag, the same bag that still carried the folded canvas beneath my clothes. I opened it to a blank page and began to write, my handwriting small and deliberate.
Day One.
I stared at the words for a moment, then kept writing not a diary exactly, but something close to it. A record. A countdown.
If I was going to survive under Victoria’s rule while trying to win a man who didn’t yet know he was being pursued, I needed to be smarter than I’d been tonight.
No more daydreaming at dinner tables. No more careless smiles that Victoria could catch and twist into a weapon.
From now on, everything had to be deliberate. Every glance, every soft word, every quiet moment near Leonardo would need to be planned, timed, controlled.
I wrote a few more lines beneath the date, small reminders to myself, rules I intended to follow no matter how hard it had already proven to be.
I closed the notebook and set it on the nightstand, then lay back against the pillows, letting my eyes drift shut.
Somewhere down the hall, I could hear the low murmur of Victoria’s voice, smoothing things over with Leonardo, spinning some easy explanation for her daughter’s sudden disappearance from the table.
I wondered, briefly, what excuse my mother had chosen. And then I wondered something else entirely, something that made my chest tighten with a mixture of guilt and quiet thrill.
I wondered if Leonardo had noticed. Really noticed. Not just the interruption, not just Victoria’s tight smile as she’d led me away, but the moment before that. The bitten lip. The far-off look in my eyes that hadn’t belonged to an innocent daydream.
And for reasons I didn’t fully understand, that thought didn’t frighten me at all.
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