Chapter 3: The First Night

I woke to a house that didn't feel like mine.

The ceiling above me was unfamiliar — high, carved with patterns I didn't recognize, nothing like the low, water-stained ceiling of my childhood bedroom. For one disoriented moment I forgot where I was. Then the weight of the ring on my finger reminded me, cold and unyielding, and the events of the previous night came flooding back all at once: the vows, the kiss, Marco's bloodied face, Dante's hand gripping mine like I was the only solid thing in a room full of chaos.

I sat up slowly, the sheets pooling around me, and looked around the room properly for the first time in daylight. It was even larger than I'd registered the night before — dark wood furniture, heavy curtains now pulled back to let in gray morning light, a fireplace cold and unused on the far wall. Someone had left a robe draped over the chair by the window. Someone had also, I noticed, left the door slightly ajar, as if whoever had checked on me during the night hadn't wanted to fully shut me in.

I didn't know if that was meant to be kindness or simply habit.

***

Marta found me twenty minutes later, already dressed, sitting at the small writing desk near the window and staring at nothing in particular.

"Good morning, Signora Moretti," she said, and the title landed strangely in my ears, like a coat that didn't fit yet.

"Please don't call me that."

"It's your name now." She said it gently, not unkindly, setting a tray of coffee and pastries on the desk in front of me. "You'll get used to it."

"Will I?"

Marta hesitated, glancing toward the door as if checking whether anyone might overhear. "Most don't," she admitted quietly. "But you seem like the kind who might."

I wasn't sure whether to take that as comfort or warning. Knowing this house, it was probably both.

"Is there word about Marco?" I asked, because it had been the first thing on my mind since I'd opened my eyes.

Something shuttered behind Marta's expression. "That's not something I'm permitted to discuss, Signora."

"Of course not," I murmured, and let the subject drop, though it sat uneasily in my stomach alongside the coffee.

***

I found Dante an hour later in a study on the ground floor, the door open just enough that I could see him before he saw me. He sat behind a heavy desk covered in papers, his sleeves rolled to the elbow, a phone pressed to his ear, his voice low and clipped in a way that told me whatever conversation this was, it wasn't a pleasant one.

"—I don't care what it costs, I want the perimeter doubled by tonight," he was saying. "And I want eyes on anyone who left that garden in a hurry."

He caught sight of me in the doorway and held up a hand, a silent request to wait. I waited, arms crossed, studying him in the unforgiving morning light. He looked like he hadn't slept. Dark shadows sat beneath his eyes, and there was a tension in his shoulders that hadn't been there even during our wedding, when a bleeding man had been dragged across the grass in front of two hundred guests.

He ended the call and set the phone down with more force than necessary.

"You're up early," he said.

"I could say the same to you. Did you sleep at all?"

"Sleep is a luxury I don't always have time for."

"That sounds like something someone says right before they collapse."

The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "Noted."

***

"Any news about Marco?" I asked, coming further into the room, though I stayed a careful distance from the desk.

Dante's expression closed like a door. "That's not something you need to concern yourself with."

"He worked for my father. That makes it my concern whether you like it or not."

"Isabella." My name, again, in that low, warning tone he seemed to reserve for moments he wanted to end quickly. "This is family business. My family's business, specifically. Not yours."

"I'm your wife now. Doesn't that make your family business mine as well?"

Something flickered across his face — surprise, maybe, or reluctant amusement at being cornered by his own logic. "That's a convenient argument."

"It's an accurate one."

He studied me for a long moment, dark eyes unreadable, before he finally exhaled and gestured to the chair across from his desk. "Sit. I'll tell you what I can. Not everything. But something."

I sat.

***

"Marco gave us a name last night," Dante said, his voice quieter now, more careful, like a man choosing which stones to hand over and which to keep buried. "Or part of one. Enough to know that whoever hired him has access inside this family — someone with knowledge of the estate's layout, the timing of the ceremony, even which gate had the weakest patrol."

My stomach turned cold. "Someone close to you."

"Someone close to me," he confirmed.

"Do you have a suspect?"

His jaw tightened, and for a moment I thought he might refuse to answer entirely. "I have someone I don't trust," he said finally. "That's not the same as proof."

I thought of Luciano's raised glass at the reception, the mocking little toast, the unhurried calm of a man watching events unfold exactly as he'd planned. I wondered if the name in Dante's head matched the name in mine. I didn't ask. Some instinct told me it wasn't the moment to push that particular door open, not yet.

"What happens to Marco now?" I asked instead.

"That depends on what else he remembers, and how quickly."

"And if he doesn't remember anything else?"

Dante didn't answer that. The silence told me more than words would have.

***

"I want to see him," I said.

Dante's head came up sharply. "Absolutely not."

"He's worked for my family for eleven years. I've known him since I was a child. If he's frightened, if he's hurting, maybe I can get him to talk in a way your men can't."

"Or maybe you'll get yourself hurt trying to play negotiator in a situation you don't understand." Dante stood, circling the desk, closing the distance between us with the deliberate, controlled steps of a man used to ending arguments before they escalated. "The answer is no, Isabella."

"You don't get to just decide that for me."

"I do, actually. That's exactly what I get to do. This is my house, my family, my business, and until I know who's responsible for what happened at our wedding, you are not going anywhere near that wing."

I stood too, refusing to let him tower over me while I stayed seated like some scolded child. "You can't lock me in a house and expect me to just sit quietly while people I care about get hurt."

"I'm not locking you in a house." His voice had risen slightly, the first real crack in his composure since I'd met him. "I'm trying to keep you alive."

The words hung between us, unexpected and raw, and for a moment neither of us seemed to know what to do with them.

***

"Why does that matter to you?" I asked quietly. "Keeping me alive. You made it very clear yesterday that I'm nothing more than a payment. Payments don't need protecting once the debt is settled."

Something shifted behind his eyes — guilt, maybe, or the discomfort of a man confronted with his own words reflected back at him.

"That's not—" He stopped, seeming to reconsider whatever he'd been about to say. "It's more complicated than that."

"Then uncomplicate it for me."

"I can't." His voice had gone rough, almost pained. "Not right now. There are things about this marriage, about why it matters so much to certain people, that I'm not ready to explain. Not because I don't trust you. Because I don't yet understand all of it myself."

It was, I realized, the most honest thing he'd said to me since the doors of my dressing room had opened the day before.

"Fine," I said, softer now. "Then at least let me help. Not with Marco directly. But there has to be something I can do besides sit in a room and wait to find out if my father's oldest employee lives or dies."

Dante studied me for a long moment, some internal calculation playing out behind his dark eyes. "There might be something," he said finally. "But you're not going to like it."

***

"What is it?"

"Luciano has requested a private meeting with you. Today. He claims it's a courtesy — welcoming you properly to the family, since the reception was interrupted before he had the chance."

My skin prickled at the memory of Luciano's gaze lingering too long, his voice dripping with false warmth. "You don't trust him."

"No."

"But you want me to meet with him anyway."

"I want to know what he says to you when he thinks I'm not listening," Dante said. "You're right that you might be able to help. Just not in the way you were imagining."

I considered this, weighing the discomfort of being alone with a man who made my skin crawl against the small, undeniable thrill of being trusted with something real, something that mattered.

"You want me to spy on your own cousin."

"I want you to be careful," Dante corrected. "And to tell me everything he says afterward. Every word."

"And if he tries something? If he says something dangerous, or worse?"

"Then I'll already be closer than you think." A ghost of something almost protective passed over his face. "You won't be alone in that room, Isabella. Not really."

***

I left the study an hour later with instructions, a knot of nerves in my stomach, and the uncomfortable realization that somewhere between the altar and this conversation, I had stopped thinking of Dante Moretti purely as my captor.

That thought frightened me more than Luciano's smile ever could.

As I climbed the stairs back toward my room to prepare for the meeting Dante had arranged, I passed a window overlooking the garden where, less than a day ago, I had said vows I hadn't meant to a man I hadn't chosen. The flowers were already wilting in the morning frost, the string lights dark and lifeless without the glow of evening around them.

It seemed a fitting image for the marriage itself — beautiful for one single, staged night, and cold and uncertain in the daylight that followed.

Whatever waited for me in that meeting with Luciano, I understood one thing clearly as I reached the top of the stairs: this house, this family, this fragile, complicated marriage, had already begun asking

g more of me than I'd been prepared to give. And somewhere beneath the fear, a small, dangerous part of me was starting to want to give it anyway.

*End of Chapter 3.*