One Night With My Husband’s Brother

ARIA POVThe coffee cup was still rattling when Silas called my name. I froze with the tray in my hand, balancing it with two of my fingers gripping the edge and my thumb pressed flat against it. That was how I had learned to hold it steady, even when my hands wanted to shake. But right now, they were trembling for a different reason. I just knew that hearing him say my name this early in the morning never brought anything good.“Aria.” He said, his eyes remaining glued to his phone. “My study. Now, please.”Please was not a word Silas usually used. But when he did use it, it was a reason for concern, a quiet warning that something urgent was about to come up. I carefully placed the tray down on the table close to me without making a sound, because another lesson I had learned living in this house was that you never let anyone see when you were scared. My stomach tightened as I followed him down the hall. Something was coming, and I could already feel it.His study had always been th

ARIA POVI slowly climbed out of my own window hoping that I wouldn’t get caught just the same way a teenager might do. Not because the front door was locked, because it wasn’t. But heading out through the front door meant passing Silas’s study, and Silas was the kind of man who would look up and ask where I was off to at eleven in the night. Honestly, I just didn’t have the energy in me anymore to explain myself again to someone who already thought he knew everything about me. So instead, I chose the window. I dropped down onto the side lawn and started to walk, my pulse still hammering too fast over something as ridiculous as leaving my own house without permission.The night city wasn’t mine. It never had been if I’m being for real. I was used to being driven to places, dropped off, picked up, and accounted for. But walking down a sidewalk without anyone tracking me felt wrong in some ways. It was exhilarating and disorienting at the same time. The streetlights illuminated my path

ARIA POV“Hold still,” the woman behind me said with her mouth full of pins as she tugged on the corset laces so hard that I gasped for air.“Could you loosen it a bit?” I managed to squeak out.“You’ll thank me later,” she replied, not bothering to look up.So I did as I was told and held still. Honestly, I had gotten pretty good at that over the last three days.It all started with Silas standing in the hallway that faithful morning with his arms crossed, and his voice so calm it felt worse than if he’d shouted at me. I didn’t have a response ready because I had never needed one before.“Where have you been?” he asked.“Out,” I said, sounding ridiculous and useless, even to myself.“Out where?”“Just… walking. I couldn’t sleep. And I needed some fresh air…” I trailed off, hoping it would suffice.“You’ve never needed air at four in the morning in twenty-four years, Aria.” He pointedly replied to me without raising his voice. He never raised his voice. “So try again.”The truth was,

ARIA POV“Your room is just a few feet more over there, Mrs. Moretti.”The housekeeper delivered the message to me as if she was announcing a tour stop, polite and formal, while concealing any personal feelings I think she might have got about me. I almost wished for a genuine response, even if it were a negative one. At least then I would know what she was really thinking of me instead of having to read meaning into every small change in her expression.“Thank you,” I said, my voice feeling quiet against my throat as I stepped inside, overwhelmed by the vastness around me as we came to a stop at what would be my room now.The ceilings soared, and honestly, nearly everything in the Moretti house did too. The hallway to this place stretched on longer than it seemed necessary, and the room felt like it was designed to make anyone standing in the middle feel small and insignificant, just as intended. My eyes moved automatically, counting the doors, windows, and the distance to the neares