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10. The Vault
publish date:
2026-08-05 02:12:48
Latest chapter
Love's Darkest Cage 44. The Wanting
DoveI lay awake for a long time after Elio left.The issue of the party was still there, coiled in my stomach. The mask, the gold dress spilling out of its box on the chair, Don Vincenzo's cold flat eyes, all of it waiting for me tomorrow like a door I couldn't stop walking toward. Even with Elio's plan. Even with Maria and the second girl and the car. I was still afraid.But still, that wasn't the thing keeping me awake.“There’s something here that I don’t understand, and I need to understand it." His hand tightened ever so slightly around my face. "So when my father is gone, we'll talk. Properly. About what this is and what we do about it."I turned that over and over. We'll talk. Two words, and they'd rearranged my entire chest. Because it meant he'd noticed. It meant that whatever this was, this thing that had been building since I stepped foot into this house, wasn't only happening to me. He felt it too. He didn't understand it either. And he wanted to.I pressed my hands over
Love's Darkest Cage 43. The Situation
DoveI spent the whole day sick with it.I couldn't eat. I couldn't work. I sat through my online class without hearing a word of it and then sat staring at the blank screen for an hour after it ended, chewing my thumbnail down to nothing. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Don Vincenzo's face — that flat, patient, assessing calm, the smile that never got anywhere near his eyes. “You can entertain some of them. That's what you're for, isn't it?”I didn't know what a party like that meant. That was the worst part. I didn't know what would be expected of me, and I didn't know what would happen if I did it wrong, and I didn't know what would happen if I did it right. And for the entire day I was anxious, Elio hadn't come, and the whole long day dragged past with nobody telling me anything at all.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *By dark I'd made myself so anxious I was shaking. I got into bed just to have somewhere to put my body, and I lay there in the d
Love's Darkest Cage 42. The Deal
ElioI watched her go.Bare feet on the marble, my shirt swallowing her, her chin held high the entire length of that room. She didn't look back once she'd passed the threshold. And I sat there in front of my father and my brother with my hands loose at my sides and my face made of stone, and something in my chest was tearing.I have watched men die without changing expression. I watched my father's hand come at my face last night and did not lift a finger. And it took everything I had — every scrap of the discipline I've spent my whole life sharpening — to stand in this room and not go after her.Because I'd done it again. I'd let her be humiliated in front of me and said nothing. I didn’t say a word when Gio called her a toy, because the moment I corrected him, in front of my father, she would have stopped being a body and started being a reason. Nobody in this world dies faster than a thing a Visconti has a reason to care about. Just ask my mother.So I let it stand. I let them bel
Love's Darkest Cage 41. The Invitation
Dove"Come closer," Don Vincenzo said. "Let me look at you."I made my feet move. Four steps into that gold room, and I stopped, and stood there in Elio's shirt with my bare legs and my bruises and my heart trying to climb out of my throat.The old man looked me over.He did it slowly. Thoroughly. The way you'd examine a horse, or a painting someone was trying to sell you, and there was nothing in his eyes at all. No lust, no interest, nothing so human as either. Just assessment. He took in the shirt, and where it must have come from, and my bare feet, and he let his gaze travel to the ugly purple bruising down my arm and the marks on my wrist, and something in his mouth moved that wasn't a smile."And who," he said, "are you?"I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I wrecked my brain thinking of what to say. What would Elio want me to say? I glanced at him for help, but he just kept a straight face. Lie, Dove. Say something inconspicuous. I tell myself.But what do I say? Every li
Love's Darkest Cage 40. The Evidence
DoveI woke feeling… warm.The strange, unfamiliar, bodily fact of being warm. Not the thin chilly warmth of blankets, but the deep kind, the kind that comes from having been held all night by another person, and for a few floating seconds before I opened my eyes, I lay in it and felt safer than I had in weeks. Maybe than I had in years.Then I reached out, and the bed beside me was empty.I opened my eyes.I was alone in his room. Black satin sheets, dark wood, gray morning light coming through the tall windows — and no Elio. The whole enormous bed stretched out beside me with no one in it, and without him the room was cold. It felt like a different place entirely. It had been full last night; now it was just an expensive empty room that smelled faintly of cedar and belonged to a man who wasn't here.I put my hand out and touched the sheets where he'd lain.There was still an impression there. The shape of him pressed into the pillow, the sheets pulled back where he'd slipped out an
Love's Darkest Cage 39. The Limits
ElioTake me to the vault.It took me a second to register it. Wondering if she even realized what she had asked me. I stood there and watched her, waiting for her to crumble and change her mind. But she still stood in front of me and I felt the entire architecture of my self-control shudder.“Are you sure you want this?”Her lips trembled, but she said, “Yes.”I should have said no right there. It would have been the decent thing to do, though I never claimed to be decent. But of course, I looked down at this small, bruised, impossible girl offering me the one thing I have wanted for weeks, and I heard myself say:"Come with me, then."I lend out my hand. And she took it.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *She was quiet all the way down. Through the sleeping house, into the study, past the swinging shelf. I spun the dial — one, nine, six, nine — and the wheel turned over with its heavy final sound, and I pushed the steel door open on the dark, and I s
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