CHAPTER 3

THE SUIT

Salvatore reaches the front step before Elian's mother hears him coming.

She freezes with the suit still bundled in her arms, caught between the doorway and the staircase, and for a moment she looks like a woman who has forgotten how her own face works.

"May I ask," Salvatore says, quietly, "why you're holding Elian's suit."

"Oh, this." Her voice climbs half an octave before she wrestles it back down. "I'm only helping him along. He's moving so slowly, I thought I'd call the staff to speed things up."

Salvatore studies her the way he studies everything, unhurried, missing nothing. "Give it to me."

Her hands are shaking by the time the suit changes hands, though she covers it well enough that only someone looking for it would notice. Salvatore notices.

"Good. You can go now." His voice doesn't rise, doesn't need to. "I don't mind finishing the dressing myself."

She doesn't argue. She has already learned, in the space of one afternoon, exactly how far arguing gets a person in this house today. She turns and goes, and Salvatore waits, patient, silent, until the sound of her footsteps fades down the hall before he lets any of what he's holding back show on his face.

He finds Elian exactly where he left him.

He crosses the room, closes a hand around his arm, and drags him back against the wall, the suit pressed flat between them like a threat he hasn't finished making yet.

"Do you think you're going to get away from me?" It isn't a question. "Keep testing me, and I'll rip that tongue out of your mouth right here in your father's house, and that's only a preview of what happens once you're under my roof and decide to disobey me again. Try me, and I promise you I'll take you apart piece by piece."

He presses harder, and Elian feels the full weight of that anger for the first time, no performance left in it at all.

Elian doesn't fight it. He can't. Something in him goes still and calculating instead, folding the fear down into a smaller, quieter shape he can carry: cooperate now, survive today, find a way out later. Even married, even dragged into a house that isn't his, he tells himself there will be a way to prove he's not one of the men Salvatore is hunting. He just has to still be alive long enough to find it.

He gets dressed quickly after that.

Salvatore watches from beside the mirror, arms crossed, until something in Elian's hand catches his attention. "What is that you're holding?"

Elian's fingers tighten instinctively around it. He can't make himself answer.

"Let me see it." Salvatore is already moving toward him.

Elian steps back. Salvatore keeps closing the distance, and Elian keeps retreating, one step and then another, until his heel catches the edge of the bed frame before he even registers how far back he's gone. He goes down.

Salvatore catches him on instinct rather than intention, one arm hooking around him before he can hit the floor, and the momentum carries them both onto the bed instead, Salvatore's weight braced above him, close enough that for one suspended second neither of them moves at all.

Their faces are inches apart. Elian can feel the warmth of Salvatore's breath, can feel his own heart slamming so hard it drowns out every rational thought telling him this is the man who wants him dead. He closes his eyes, certain, for one impossible heartbeat, that Salvatore is about to kiss him.

Salvatore doesn't move to close the distance. He simply looks, that same unreadable study he's given Elian since the driveway, and when he finally speaks his voice has dropped into something low and almost amused.

"I see," he says. "You like putting yourself in trouble.”

Elian's eyes snap open.

The paper. He's still holding it, the address for his interview, the life he was supposed to walk into today. He shifts his hand, tries to hide it.

Salvatore is off him in an instant. "What the hell are you doing?" His voice goes cold. "Reaching for my belt while I've got you pinned?"

"No, wait, I wasn't…"

"Bold. For someone who knows nothing about anything." Salvatore straightens, done with him already. "Shocking how well that act holds up."

A knock hits the door.

Salvatore doesn't wait for Elian to explain. He grabs his hand and pulls him off the bed. "Time to go." He checks his watch, jaw tight. "I don't have time for this. I'm late."

Downstairs, the house has stopped pretending. Corrado stands by the door. The priest waits beside him. A small crowd of staff and hired witnesses fills the room, patience running thin.

Elian is dragged toward the stairs, the paper crushed in his fist.

The priest doesn't get to finish his first sentence before Salvatore cuts him off.

"Skip to the part that matters. I don't have all day."

The priest glances at Corrado, who gives a quick, nervous nod, and adjusts without argument. Nobody in this room is going to be the one who makes Salvatore repeat himself.

Elian stands beside him, hands cold, legs barely holding him up.