**Chapter Twelve**

**Sam's POV**

"I don't… "

Before I could get anything else out, Adrian reached over and took the mask straight out of Diego's hand.

"I'll have that," he said, calm as anything, and passed it back to me without so much as glancing at it.

"My apologies for bumping into the most beautiful Varezian lady I've ever met. I'm Diego Salvatore, heir to the Salvatore empire."

"Mrs. Dela Cruz. My wife." Adrian's voice stayed flat, almost bored, but there was nothing boring about the grip that followed it. "And yes, she is breathtaking." His eyes found mine and the room around us seemed to disappear for a heartbeat as his gaze lingered, steady and unreadable. There was no softness I could name, yet something in the way he looked at me made my pulse falter.

"We should move on," he added politely, already steering me away. "Enjoy the evening."

Adrian leaned down slightly as we walked, his voice low enough that only I could hear it.

"The fourth table."

I nodded, my heart still going too fast to trust my own voice.

We found our seats near the front. Diego and Bianca sat a few tables away, close enough that I couldn't avoid seeing them without turning my whole body away from the room.

I watched three separate conversations quietly reroute themselves in Adrian's direction over the next several minutes, men finding reasons to lean past their own dinner partners just to catch a word from him, women watching him from behind their wine glasses like he was the only interesting thing in the room.

I understood, watching it happen, that I wasn't the only one performing tonight. Everyone at this table was.

Bianca leaned in close to Diego a few tables over, her hand resting on his arm, fingers tracing slow circles against his sleeve. She laughed softly at something he said, tilting her head so her hair brushed against his shoulder. For a moment they looked like something out of a photograph, exactly the kind of couple the world was built to smile at.

My hand tightened on the edge of the table until my knuckles went white. My breathing went shallow, each pull of air harder to manage than the last. The room felt too hot suddenly, their laughter cutting through everything else.

I stood up slowly, my chair scraping against the floor. My legs felt heavy, but I pushed myself up anyway. The dress felt too tight across my chest all at once. I started walking toward their table, and the crowd seemed to part without my noticing, every step stretching longer than the one before it.

My hands were shaking, but I kept them low at my sides. I could see the steak knife resting against the centerpiece, silver and sharp under the chandelier light.

I reached for the handle.

Diego's head was tilted back, still laughing at whatever

Bianca had said.

I raised the knife.

The blade caught the light for half a second, flashing bright and sharp, then I drove it into his chest.

The shock on his face was instant. His eyes went wide. His mouth opened like he meant to say something and nothing came out. Bianca screamed, high and sharp, cutting straight through the music.

People turned towards me. Chairs scraped back. Someone shouted somewhere behind me. I stood there, breathing hard, the knife still stuck deep into his chest.

Finally… I felt free.

Warm hands closed around my thigh under the table.

The grip was firm. Steady. Impossible to ignore.

I blinked.

The room came back into focus around me.

The knife was still sitting on the table, untouched. Diego was still sitting there, laughing with Bianca, entirely alive.

No blood. No screaming. No freedom.

My eyes met Adrian's. Wide. Cold, on the surface. But there was something else underneath it too, something I couldn't quite name — not concern exactly, but close enough to it that it startled me more than his usual cold composure ever did.

He didn't let go of my leg.

The rest of the evening dragged on in a haze of forced smiles and careful conversation. Every time Bianca touched him, my stomach twisted a little tighter. I kept my hands folded in my lap, fingers digging into my own palm to keep them from shaking, kept my eyes fixed on the tablecloth, on the water glass in front of me, on anything at all that wasn't the two of them.

I sat there breathing slowly and carefully, trying to hold myself together, but eventually it became too much. The air felt too thick to keep pulling into my lungs. I needed a moment. Just one moment to breathe somewhere no one was watching me do it.

"I need to use the powder room," I whispered to Adrian.

He looked at me for a beat longer than the request should have required, something flickering across his face too fast to name

I stood and started away from the table, my legs unsteady beneath me. But I caught the smallest motion out of the corner of my eye. Adrian's chin tipping, barely, toward two of the men stationed near the far wall.

Neither of them said a word. They simply peeled off the wall and fell into step a short distance behind me.

—————

The hallway to the powder room was quieter, the music fading with every step. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The room was empty. Good.

I locked myself into one of the stalls and leaned back against the wall, closing my eyes. My breathing was still too fast. My hands were still shaking. I pressed them against my face and tried to slow everything down by force of will alone.

The memories wouldn't stop coming.

I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold tile, my dress pooling around me, and hugged my knees to my chest.

I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough that the faint music from the ballroom started to blur into a single unbroken hum.

Then I heard voices outside — raised, sharp, and one of them unmistakably a woman's, cutting through the quiet hallway.

"Why on earth are there male guards standing outside a women's restroom?"

Bianca.

I stood up, smoothed my dress down with both hands, and unlocked the stall. Whatever had been sitting in my chest a moment ago folded itself away.

I straightened my spine before I even reached the door, the way I'd started doing without meaning to since the night I signed that contract, since I'd started being something different.

She stood a few feet from the two guards, hands on her hips, glaring at them like they'd personally offended her by existing. She turned the moment she heard the door, her expression shifting instantly into something warmer.

"Oh! Mrs. Dela Cruz. I was just asking why these men thought it appropriate to station themselves outside a ladies' room."

She already knows I'm Adrian's wife… interesting.

"They're my guards," I said, my voice coming out cooler and steadier than I expected it to. "They follow my orders. Not the other way around."

Bianca blinked, clearly not expecting that particular tone from me.

"Your guards? I had no idea. I didn't mean to overstep," she said quickly, a smile flickering. "It's simply unusual, that's all. Most wives don't need this much... protection."

"Most wives aren't married to my husband," I said, holding her gaze without blinking.

Something shifted behind her eyes at that — recalculation, quick and quiet, the same look I imagined every man in that ballroom had given him tonight before deciding it was safer to orbit than approach.

"Of course," she said, softer now, all the earlier sharpness smoothed back under the surface. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it." She studied me for a moment, and I let her. Then she stepped closer, lifting one hand toward my face.

"Your lipstick's a little smudged, darling, let me just—"

I raised my own hand first, cutting the distance off before her fingers reached me, and wiped the corner of my mouth clean with the pad of my thumb instead.

"I've got it."

She pulled her hand back. For the first time all evening, I watched her actually reconsider me, the way you reconsider something you'd mistaken for harmless.

"Well," she said, recovering her smile a moment later, brighter than before, like she'd decided the safest move now was warmth. "I did want to ask you something, actually. I'm hosting a small event, the Salvatore Women's Outreach Program, three days, helping families in need across the country. Just the wives of a few important men. I'd love for you to join us."

"I'll think about it."

"Of course." Her smile held, though it didn't quite reach her eyes anymore, not the way it had at the start of the conversation. "I'll have the invitation sent tomorrow. I do hope Mr. Dela Cruz will allow it."

"I make my own decisions," I said. "But I'll think about it."

I turned and walked back down the hallway, my guards falling into step behind me without a word, and I didn't look back to see whatever expression Bianca was wearing once my back was turned.

The night wasn't over.

But for the first time since I'd walked into that ballroom, I felt like I was still standing on my own two feet, not because someone else had propped me up, but because some part of me had finally remembered how.