Chapter 8: Fractures Beneath the Steel

The dining room was too quiet.

Again.

Only this time, Siena didn’t try to fill the silence. She simply sat at the end of the long mahogany table, poking at her untouched food with a fork, eyes fixed somewhere past the candles.

Adriano hadn’t said a word since entering the room.

He sat across from her, elbows on the armrests, his dinner growing cold in front of him. His jaw was locked, and the muscle beneath his cheek twitched every few seconds. He hadn’t even bothered to change after the search — dark smudges stained his shirt, his sleeves still rolled up, veins visible beneath the taut skin of his forearms.

But it was his eyes that Siena kept noticing.

They weren’t dead.

They were burning.

With fury. With fear. With something deeper — something he didn’t know how to carry.

“Did she sleep?” he asked finally, voice low.

“Yes,” Siena said. “Eventually.”

Silence again.

The kind that stretched thin, waiting to snap.

Adriano reached for the glass of whiskey beside his plate. Took a slow sip. His gaze flicked up.

“She shouldn’t have been alone,” he said.

Siena’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“She’s four,” Siena said, her voice rising. “She’s not a soldier. She’s not supposed to live in a fortress.”

His tone stayed even, but the edge was razor-sharp. “She wouldn’t have been in danger if you’d told me about her four years ago.”

And there it was.

The spark.

Siena set her fork down slowly. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” he asked, calm and deadly.

“Blame me for something you never had the right to in the first place.”

Adriano stood. The chair scraped back. He didn’t shout. He didn’t have to.

But his voice dropped into something colder than ice.

“I could’ve protected her. From the start. I could’ve given her everything.”

“You mean locked her up? Surrounded her with men with guns? Called that protection?” Siena rose, her chest heaving. “That’s not safety, Adriano. That’s a prison.”

“She was taken from that prison,” he snapped, slamming his hand down on the table. “Under your watch.”

Siena froze.

Pain flickered across her face — and then vanished under steel.

“I’m done,” she said, pushing her chair back. “I’m not doing this with you.”

She turned, walking toward the hallway.

And behind her —

The sound shattered through the room like thunder.

Glass.

A whiskey glass, hurled with full force, exploded against the wall.

Shards rained onto the floor, amber liquid dripping down the white plaster like blood.

Adriano stood at the head of the table, breath heaving, fists clenched.

Siena didn’t look back.

She just kept walking.

---

The room was a graveyard.

Shards of glass sparkled across the marble like a crime scene. The whiskey had already sunk into the baseboard, a slow amber smear dripping downward, as if the wall itself were bleeding.

Adriano stood motionless, his chest rising and falling with each ragged breath.

His hand burned.

He hadn’t even realized he’d clenched the glass so tightly until he threw it.

He hadn’t meant to.

No — that was a lie. He had meant to. He just hadn’t meant to do it in front of her. Hadn’t meant to need to.

But everything inside him was chaos.

He could still see the image in his mind — Lucia’s empty bed, the fluttering curtain, the cold window frame. And then Siena's voice, cracking open in that room like a scream swallowed too late.

She’s gone.

The echo of it hadn’t stopped.

He had lived through a thousand violent storms, spilled more blood than he cared to count — but nothing had come close to the way his heart had stopped when he thought he might lose a child he’d never even known he had.

Lucia.

His daughter.

He ran a hand through his hair, pacing once, twice.

The house was silent now. Somewhere down the hall, a door closed. Maybe Siena’s. Maybe hers.

He should have followed. Should have apologized. Should have said something.

But he didn’t know how.

Not when everything in him felt like a battlefield of emotion — guilt, rage, fear, grief. And beneath it all, the raw, gnawing ache of almost having lost something that had barely just become his.

He pressed his hands flat against the table, grounding himself.

Adriano Valtasari did not lose.

He didn’t beg.

He didn’t flinch.

But tonight... he had nearly shattered.

And the worst part?

She had seen it.

She saw me break.

---

The dining room was quiet.

Too quiet.

The kind of silence that pressed against the skin, thick and heavy, like fog with teeth. Only the soft clinking of cutlery broke the tension, brittle and uncertain. Siena sat stiffly at the far end of the table, her posture guarded, her eyes fixed on the untouched coffee in front of her.

Adriano was on the opposite end, elbows on the table, shoulders hunched slightly forward, as if the weight of the previous night still clung to him. His movements were mechanical — cut, chew, swallow. Not a glance in her direction.

Neither of them spoke.

And yet the room pulsed with everything unsaid.

The mark on Siena’s wrist had faded, but not disappeared. A shadow of pressure lingered beneath her skin — not just from his grip, but from the memory. The heat in his voice. The fury in his eyes. The man she had known... and the one he’d become.

She hated that he could still make her feel small. Hated even more that part of her had understood.

He had almost lost a daughter he never got to meet. She had almost lost a daughter she had raised.

That kind of fear... had no language.

And so they sat — breathing the same air, drowning in it.

Until —

The door burst open with a thud.

“Mommy!”

A whirlwind of curls and joy launched itself across the room, charging toward Siena with a stuffed fox clutched tightly in one hand.

Siena gasped, rising to her feet just in time to catch Lucia as she threw herself into her arms.

“Lucia!” she whispered, hugging her tightly, sinking to one knee beside the chair. “Baby, what are you doing—?”

“I smelled bacon!” the girl declared, utterly unbothered by the tension. Her little nose crinkled. “And Mr. Fox was hungry!”

Behind her, Elena appeared in the doorway, breathless. “Forgive me, sir,” she said quickly, smoothing her skirt. “I tried to keep her upstairs. She slipped out the moment I turned my back.”

Adriano had frozen mid-motion. Fork suspended in the air. Jaw clenched.

Then, slowly, he lowered his hand, placed the fork down, and raised his palm in a quiet, controlled gesture.

“Let her be,” he said quietly.

Elena nodded, still catching her breath. “Yes, sir.”

Lucia wriggled into Siena’s lap, completely unaware of the storm she had just walked into.

“I like it here,” she announced. “The floor doesn’t squeak and the pillows are fluffy and the lights in the hallway are blue!”

Siena laughed softly — the sound barely escaping her throat. She brushed a hand through Lucia’s hair, kissed the top of her head. Her heart, still bruised from the night before, warmed just a little under the innocence in her arms.

Adriano watched — discreetly, silently — his knuckles pale against the edge of the table. His face unreadable.

Lucia reached forward suddenly and grabbed a piece of toast from the platter between them. “Ooo, eggs!”

Adriano’s voice came then. Low. Final.

“Lucia will stay here.”

Siena’s head snapped up.

Lucia, already mid-chew, blinked at him with wide eyes. “Huh?”

But it wasn’t meant for the child.

Elena had frozen by the door. “Yes, sir,” she answered immediately, bowing her head slightly.

She was about to leave when Adriano spoke again.

“And one more thing.”

Elena paused mid-step.

He didn’t look up.

“From now on, prepare something suitable for children in the mornings.”

A beat of stunned silence.

Then —

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

And with that, Elena slipped out, so softly the door barely made a sound as it closed.

Siena remained still, arms around her daughter, heart thudding slowly. She looked at him — really looked. Noticed the tightness in his jaw, the shadows under his eyes, the stubborn refusal to meet her gaze. As if the night before had been carved out of his chest and hidden beneath layers of silence.

He didn’t say another word.

Just picked up his fork and resumed eating.

Like nothing had happened.

Like the girl at the table wasn’t the one he’d torn apart the estate searching for. Like the woman across from him wasn’t the one he’d nearly shattered with a single grip.

Siena held Lucia tighter, her thoughts a whirl of questions and warnings.

She still didn’t know whether to thank him…

Or be afraid of him.

---