LOGINThe library feels like a courtroom where the sentence has already been passed, but the crime hasn't been named.Aureliano is standing over me. His hands are flat on the desk, his knuckles white. He is leaning in, invading my space, using his height and his anger to cage me."A mistake," he said. "We will fix the mistake."He meant abortion. He meant purging the intruder. He meant cutting out the part of me that dared to create a life without his permission.I sink back into the leather chair. The leather creaks. Scritch. It sounds like a bone breaking.I look at Ciro.He is standing by the door. He is the only one who knows. He heard me retching. He saw my face. He felt the changes in my body when he lay with me in the dark.He looks at the floor. He won't meet my eyes. He is the Enforcer. His loyalty is to the House of Wolves, not to the stray they let in.I look at Spadino.The Wildcard. The boy who loves chaos.He is standing near the bookshelf. He has stopped crying. His tears hav
The chair legs scream against the marble floor.Skreeee.It is a sound of violence. A sound of escape.I don't excuse myself again. I don't look at Aureliano. I don't look at Ciro, who is half out of his seat, his hand outstretched as if to catch me.I just run.I turn and sprint for the door. My heels slip on the polished stone, but I catch my balance on the doorframe and propel myself into the hallway.The air in the dining room was thick with the smell of roast lamb—grease, rosemary, blood. But the hallway isn't safe either. The scent follows me, a cloying, oily ghost that clings to the back of my throat.My stomach contracts. A violent, cramping spasm that doubles me over as I run.Not here. Not on the floor.If I vomit in the hallway, they will see. They will smell the sickness on me, and they will know it isn't just a stomach bug. They will smell the truth.I need a door. I need a lock.I scramble for the powder room under the stairs. It is the closest sanctuary.I slam into the
The dining room is a stage set for a play no one wants to perform.The chandeliers are dimmed to a polite, golden glow, but they don't hide the tension. It hangs in the air like smoke, thick and acrid.Aureliano sits at the head of the table.He is miles away.Physically, he is only ten feet from me. But emotionally, he is on another planet. He is wearing a dark suit, his tie knotted with geometric precision. He is drinking wine—the Amarone he opened the night he accused me of theft.He doesn't look at me. He stares at the centerpiece—a massive arrangement of blood-red roses—as if it holds the secrets of the universe.I sit in the middle.Ciro is on my right. He is a wall of solid, silent heat. He isn't eating. He is watching Aureliano, his hand resting on the table inches from mine, ready to intercept a threat that hasn't materialized yet.Spadino is on my left. He is vibrating. He is tearing a bread roll into tiny, doughy pieces, making a pile of crumbs on the pristine white tablecl
The tension in the mansion is a physical weight. It sits on my chest, pressing down until my ribs ache.It has been three days since the partition. Three days since Aureliano locked himself in the East Wing and left us to rot in the luxury of the West.But we aren't rotting. We are suffocating.Ciro and Spadino are everywhere. They are a constant, hovering presence. If I stand up, Ciro is there to offer me a hand. If I sigh, Spadino is asking what's wrong. They are trying to fill the void Aureliano left with their own bodies, their own devotion.It is exhausting.I am sitting in the library. I am trying to read a book on Roman history, but the words swim on the page. My head is heavy. My stomach is a knot of cold iron.I haven't eaten properly in two days. The nausea is back, sharper than before. It strikes at random—morning, noon, midnight. I hide it. I swallow the bile. I smile and say I’m just not hungry.But my body is keeping score.Spadino enters the room. He is pacing. Click. C
The partition is made of silence, but it is reinforced by glass.I am standing at the window of the West Wing suite. It is late. The house is quiet, settled into the uneasy truce of the night.Below me, the garden stretches out towards the cliffs. It is a dark, tangled landscape of shadows and wind-whipped roses.But there is a light.A single, burning point of orange in the darkness.Aureliano.He is standing on the stone terrace, his back to the house, facing the sea. He is smoking.I watch the cherry of his cigarette brighten as he inhales. Fwoosh. Then dim as he exhales a plume of grey smoke that is instantly snatched away by the wind.He looks destroyed.Even from this distance, even in the dark, I can see the slump of his shoulders. The way his head hangs heavy on his neck. He isn't the King tonight. He is a man standing in the ruins of his own kingdom.I press my hand against the cold glass.I miss him.It is a physical ache, a hollow space in my chest that throbs with every be
The West Wing suite has changed.It used to be a cage. Then it was a sanctuary. Now, it is a fortress within a fortress.Aureliano is gone. He is locked in the East Wing, brooding over his bloodline, drinking himself into a stupor to forget that he slept with his sister.But his absence has created a vacuum. And nature abhors a vacuum.Ciro and Spadino have filled it.They are everywhere.When I wake up, Ciro is sitting in the armchair, watching me sleep. When I take a bath, Spadino is sitting outside the door, guarding the threshold. When I eat, they are both there, watching every bite, ensuring I consume enough calories to feed an army.They have become... intense.It isn't the chaotic, competitive intensity of the early days. It isn't the "who can break her first" game.It is a wall of muscle and devotion.They know.They know I am pregnant. They know Aureliano thinks it’s an abomination. And they have decided that their job—their only job—is to make sure I don't feel the cold draf
Ciro doesn't take me to the kitchen. He doesn't take me to the dining room.He drags me down the hallway, past Aureliano’s office, past the heavy oak doors that locked me in the dark. His grip on my arm is bruising, tight enough to cut off circulation, but I don't pull away. I don't complain.I am
The house is screaming.Downstairs, in the main drawing room, the Dowager is tearing her sons apart. I can hear her voice echoing up the grand staircase—a shrill, terrifying sound that cuts through the stone walls like a diamond drill."You have let this house rot!" she shrieks. "Discipline is dead
It is two in the morning.The house is sleeping. The monsters are in their caves.But the light under the library door is still on.I stand in the hallway. I am wearing my oversized t-shirt, my bare feet cold on the marble. I am shivering, but not from the temperature.I am shivering because I am a
The diary burns against my skin.I can feel the leather cover pressing between my breasts, hidden by my dress. Every breath I take reminds me it’s there.I am blood.The thought echoes in my head, louder than the clatter of pans in the kitchen. I am scrubbing a copper pot, my hands red and raw from







