Questions She Shouldn't Ask

I kept turning over, during the dark hours of the night, replaying his messages over in my head, the same two lines circling around until they lost all meaning and then found it again, sharper each time.

“You should stop trying to understand me tonight.”

“You'll only ask questions you're not ready to get the answers to.”

I couldn't decide if he meant it as a warning or a kindness, Maybe both, Maybe neither. By the time the morning light crept through my curtains, I had given up trying to sort it out and told myself I wouldn't bring it up at all.

When I went downstairs, I found him in the kitchen, already dressed, already working through something on his laptop with a cup of black coffee beside him. He looked up when I walked in.

"Morning," he said, like nothing had happened. Like he didn't send me two messages the night before, that had kept me awake until nearly two a.m.

"Morning," I said back, returning the same energy, refusing to give him the satisfaction of asking.

That irritated me more than if he had brought it up himself.

I poured my own coffee and sat across from him at the counter, watching him work for a moment before he finally closed the laptop.

"We have the Ashford Gala tonight," he said. "Our first public appearance as an engaged couple."

"I'm aware."

"The press will be there, Business press mostly, but a few society members as well. People will ask how we met, when I proposed, and why now?" He slid a folded piece of paper across the counter toward me. "I've written out likely questions. And reasonable answers."

I unfolded it, my eyes darting back and forth on the list, It was extensive, Nearly a full page, organized by category, personal history, business implications, family reaction. He anticipated questions I hadn't even considered, including two from reporters I recognized by name, each one paired with a response written exactly to sound believable without revealing anything real.

"You anticipated all of this."

"I try to anticipate everything."

"Even the reporter from the Ledger who always tries to ask something off topic to catch people off guard?"

"Especially her."

I studied him for a moment, squinting my eyes at him. "Do you always prepare carefully? I mean for everything?"

"Only when something matters."

Something in the way he said it made me look up from the paper.

"Does this matter to you?" I asked. "The engagement?"

I expected him to answer the way he answered everything, quickly, evenly, with just enough distance to keep the conversation professional. He didn't. He was quiet for a moment, his eyes on mine, something lurking behind his eyes that I couldn't quite place.

"It does now," he said.

I didn't know what to do with that, I told myself it was just careful planning, the kind of thing he would say to keep the cover story consistent even when it was only the two of us in the kitchen. But it didn't feel like that. It felt like something he hadn't planned to say and said anyway.

I set the paper down and didn't push further, though the sentence stayed with me for the rest of the morning, resurfacing every time I thought I managed to set it aside.

We spent the next hour going over logistics, what time the car would arrive, who we'd be photographed with, how long we needed to stay before it was the appropriate time to leave. Somewhere in the middle of it, I found myself going back to something I had been avoiding since the terrace two nights before.

"Tell me about your family," I said.

Julianii went still, just slightly, his pen pausing over the notes in front of him.

I braced for him to change the subject the way he had before. He didn't.

"We had a company," he said. "Marchetti Textiles, before it became Marchetti Holdings. My grandfather built it, and my father expanded it. We were doing well, until we weren't."

"What happened?"

"A business collapse, a deal that went wrong, very quickly. We lost most of what my grandfather had built in less than a year." His voice was calm, but something underneath it had gone careful and measured, like he was choosing each word before letting it out. "My father never fully recovered from it. Neither financially nor otherwise."

"I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologize. You didn't do it."

"I know, I just……" I stopped, head down, a remorseful look taking over my face, my mouth opening and closing unsure of how to finish the sentence. "I didn't know any of this, Not really, I only knew there'd been some kind of collapse. I never knew it had an effect on your family specifically."

He nodded slowly, like that didn't surprise him. "Some wounds become part of who you are. You stop expecting anyone else to understand them."

I sat with that for a moment, something in it landing closer to home than I expected.

"My father changed around then too," I said quietly. "I remember, then, I was young, but I remember him being different afterward, Quieter, Distracted most nights like he was carrying something he never talked about." I had always assumed it was the pressure of the company, the weight of running Castellane Group at the level my grandmother expected. "I never thought to connect it to anything specific."

Julianii looked at me carefully, more carefully than the conversation seemed to need.

"What do you remember, exactly?" he asked.”

I opened my mouth to answer, though I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to say. Before I could get a word out, my phone rang on the counter between us.

Vesper's name lit up the screen.

I almost let it go to voicemail, Something in Julianii's expression made me hesitate, made me want to finish the conversation before answering anything else. But Vesper rarely called unless it mattered, and after everything with the will, I couldn't afford to ignore him.

I picked it up. "Vesper."

"I need you at the office, Now." His voice had an edge to it I didn't recognize, something urgent underneath the usual polish.

"I'm in the middle of something."

"This can't wait, Sabine!"

I glanced at Julianii, who was watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"Fine," I said. "I'll be there within the hour."

Vesper was waiting for me in his office when I arrived, standing behind his desk instead of sitting, which was unusual enough on its own to put me on edge before he said a single word.

"What's this about?" I asked.

He didn't answer right away. He reached into a drawer, pulled out a thin folder, and set it on the desk between us. Then he opened it and slid a single page toward me.

"Your father never wanted you to see this," he said.

I looked down at the paper. A financial report, old, the paper slightly yellowed at the edges, numbers and figures I didn't immediately recognize, laid out in careful columns.

My eyes moved to the date printed at the top.

It was the same year the Marchetti family lost everything.