LOGINA few days after that breakfast, Nicholas turned into an expensive shadow that only ever seemed to pass through.Sometimes I heard his car pull in when the house was nearly asleep. Sometimes I came downstairs early and found his coffee already gone cold in the sink, but the man himself had vanished, as if he had a natural talent for making a room feel used without ever truly inhabiting it. A suit would change places. A brief phone call would drift through the hallway. Footsteps would come and go too quickly for me to classify as presence.What was interesting was that he still made time for Sienna.Enough for the small things that, for some reason, were even more unsettling. Two minutes at the door before leaving, bending slightly when Sienna held up a new drawing of a mermaid armed with a glitter bazooka. One large hand ruffling her cute little bangs while he said, “This is a national security threat.”One afternoon, when he came in only to grab something from the study, he still sto
I woke up with Nicholas’s words still snagged in my head like a tiny hook catching on expensive fabric and refusing to come loose. I stared at the ceiling for a few seconds longer than was reasonable, then exhaled into the pillow.Don’t be stupid, Maya.A drunk man can sound like a poet too when his face is sinfully beautiful and his voice is made of dark wood, expensive scotch, and multigenerational family damage. That doesn’t mean anything. I got up, ran my fingers through my hair in place of a proper comb, and went downstairs with my head still feeling stuffed with hot cotton.The smell of coffee reached me before I even stepped into the kitchen.I stopped in the doorway.Nicholas was already there. Already turned back into the public version of Nicholas De Castello. Crisp white shirt. Sleeves rolled neatly to the elbows. His dark hair set back in place like he had never slept sideways with alcohol still clinging to his skin. His face was calm, like last night had been nothing mo
I was on my feet before I could reconsider and head out onto the terrace.His driver turned to me at once. “I’m sorry, ma’am. He said he was fine.”“I am fine,” Nicholas said flatly, his voice roughened by alcohol, because of course it was.I stopped one step away from him. The smell of whiskey, night air, and expensive cologne reached me first.“You look like a mess.”Nicholas finally turned his head. His blue eyes looked a shade darker tonight. “I can walk on my own.”I took in the slight tilt of his shoulders. “And I’m Miss Universe.”“I don’t need help.”“I’m not offering.”He let out a breath, then started walking.The first two steps were steady enough.The third made him sway slightly as he climbed the terrace steps.My hand moved faster than my pride.I caught his arm.His body heat pressed straight into my palm, hard and alive. The muscle beneath his shirt tightened as if I’d touched a live wire.Nicholas looked down at my fingers curled around his arm. Then his eyes lifted b
I stopped on the last step, one hand still on the railing. The chairs at the dining table had already been pushed back in at angles too exact to be natural. The cloth napkins were folded like the household staff had entered some kind of military competition. The house felt too... hollow.One of the house staff passed by carrying an empty tray. The second she saw me, she lowered her head politely. “Good morning, ma’am.”I gave a small nod. “Your boss already left?”“Very early, ma’am. Before breakfast.”I just nodded and kept walking to the kitchen.“Mommyyy.”Her voice got there first. A little rough from sleep, a little offended because the world had not yet fulfilled all her basic rights as a tiny queen.I turned.Sienna was standing at the end of the hallway in rumpled peach satin pajamas, her short hair exploding in every direction, her bangs stuck halfway across her forehead, and one star-patterned sock only pulled up to her ankle. Her glitter pacifier dangled from her left hand.
I dabbed my mouth with my napkin. “Agree. This family does seem very relaxed.”Nicholas’s knee brushed mine under the table, just once.Lorenzo’s mother smiled faintly. “I’m glad you have a sense of humor. It will be useful. A family like this isn’t always kind to women who are... unaccustomed.”I held her gaze. “Thank God. I was raised by plenty of things that weren’t kind.”She tilted her head. “No doubt.” Then she turned to Nicholas. “How is Vittoria?”My spoon stilled in the air for half a second.“Stable,” Nicholas answered, still eating.“Still no change?”“No.”“What a pity.” Lorenzo’s mother exhaled softly, her eyes dropping to her wineglass. “That girl had become so close to this family. We all worked so hard on a reception worthy of her and you. If good news comes and everything needs to be salvaged, I could certainly help oversee the reception for the two of you. It would be such a shame to let all of it go to waste.”The spoons kept moving. Glasses were still being touched
Nicholas sat beside me with that infuriating calm of his, one hand loose on the wheel, the profile of his face cut by the city lights into something far too precise to belong to an ordinary human being.I tried to focus on my own breathing. On the hem of my dress falling at my knees. On the lip tint is already fading from the inside of my mouth. On anything except the fact that I was on my way to dinner with the De Castello family, with the name De Castello attached to the end of mine too, like jewelry far too expensive to ever feel comfortable wearing.The car turned onto a quieter private road.Then the mansion appeared.It stretched wide in pale stone washed in golden light. Its tall windows glowed from within. Massive columns stood at the front. A fountain off to the left spilled softly, as if money was supposed to sound exactly like that.My stomach tightened.For a split second, quick as a flash, something else slipped into my head. Cartagena. The tall wooden doors. Ceilings are
The staff moved with a kind of theatrical precision. They lifted our luggage like they were transporting museum artifacts instead of glitter-covered suitcases belonging to a little mermaid whose belongings probably consisted of broken toys, crusty slime, and pacifiers lost and then triumphantly rec
Nicholas POVThe white gown wasn’t hers. Yet it clung to her body like it had been made for her alone. Satin and lace wrapped her shoulders, hugged her narrow waist, and spilled in smooth waves along her steps.She was too beautiful for logic, too familiar for the pulse scratching under my skin. Fo
Nicholas’ POVTen in the morning and the Bali sun still burned like it had a grudge. I stood on the upper balcony of my own wedding venue, cigarette in hand.Guests began to pour in, draped in designer gowns and painted faces. Strings floated through the air, weaving with the crash of waves. But Vi
I nodded slowly, or more accurately, pretended to examine my thumbnail while trying to process what he’d just said.The face.The voice.Sometimes… a green-eyed woman.Did he know it was me? Or was it just ...(what’s the word..?) some kind of visual residue from his malfunctioning brain? A faint cr







