CHAPTER 4

THE VOWS

He can feel every eye in the room, the staff, the hired witnesses, his father standing too straight, his mother refusing to look at him at all. None of it feels real. It feels like something happening to someone else, someone standing exactly where he's standing.

"Say it," Salvatore mutters, low, only for him. "Now."

Elian's mouth opens. Nothing comes out.

Salvatore's hand closes around his, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to make the point without a single word attached to it. Say it.

"I…" Elian's voice cracks. He forces the rest out before it can fail him completely.

Salvatore says his own vow the way he says everything, flat, fast. The ring goes on.

"Done," Salvatore says, to no one in particular. He's already checking his watch again. "Good. Now we can go."

He doesn't wait for a reaction. He takes Elian's hand, and pulls him straight toward the door, out past his father, out past his mother.

Elian is pulled into the car. They pull away from the house, toward Salvatore's, and the silence stretches long enough to feel like its own kind of danger.

"I hope you read the contract for this marriage, Elian." Salvatore doesn't look up from his phone.

Elian's mind scrambles. He's never seen the contract. Matteo must have read it, must have signed off on terms meant for a completely different man.

"Why aren't you saying anything?" Salvatore's eyes stay on the screen. "It was sent days before the wedding. You did read it?"

Silence. Elian doesn't trust his own voice.

Salvatore looks up, and something sharpens behind his eyes. Elian catches it. "Yes," he says quickly. "I did."

Salvatore's attention drops back to his phone, thumb moving again. "Good. Then tell me rule number three."

Elian's heart slams once, hard.

He coughs, sudden and unconvincing.

"You okay?" Salvatore asks, not looking up.

"Yeah...yes. I'm fine."

"Then go ahead." Salvatore's voice doesn't change, doesn't rise, which is somehow worse. "I don't repeat myself. Don't push me."

Elian's fingers knot together in his lap, buying seconds he doesn't have, searching for anything that could pass for an answer.

Salvatore looks up again, longer this time. "Why does everything about you seem so strange?"

"A simple question, and you can't answer it. Or did the Rossi family not bother teaching their own son manners." He goes back to his phone, unbothered. "Answer or don't. Either way, keep to the rules. I won't accept excuses from you, and I don't need to remind you what happens when you break one."

He turns the phone off, sets it down. "You're here to serve me until your father's debt is settled. And you're also here to pay for what was stolen from me."

Elian wants to say it. I don't know anything about that bag. But he stays quiet, because he has no idea how he'd ever convince Salvatore or his men that he's innocent.

The car pulls up to the house before Elian's ready for any of it.

The moment the door opens, Salvatore's men close in around him, hands already reaching. Salvatore waves them off. "Wait. He's just arrived. I'll give the order when I'm done with him."

One of them lingers. "Master, he might try to run while you're at the meeting."

"No need." Salvatore doesn't even look over. "I've cancelled it."

The staff are already lined up along the entrance, waiting. They bow as one when Salvatore steps out ahead of him.

"This is Elian."

They nod, silent, like the introduction is all the information they need.

Elian stands frozen in the middle of it, surrounded on every side by people who answer to one man, in a house he's never seen, bound by rules he's never read. Trapped is the only word that fits. And still, somewhere underneath the fear, some stubborn part of him refuses to let go of the idea that there's still a way out of this.

Salvatore leads him upstairs in silence, Elian trailing a step behind, taking in a house that already feels too big to ever find his way out of. Salvatore stops at a door near the end of the hall and pushes it open.

"This is yours now." He steps aside just enough to let Elian in, still not fully looking at him. "You have a few hours to rest. You'll need it. There's a lot ahead of you."

"What do you mean by that?" Elian asks before he can stop himself.

Salvatore's eyes cut to him, and whatever answer was forming behind them, he decides against giving it. "You'll find out." He checks his watch, already halfway turned toward the hall. "Get changed. Come down for dinner. Don't make me come back up here."

The door shuts. Elian counts the seconds until he hears Salvatore's footsteps fade down the corridor.

He doesn't move for a long moment. Then he sinks onto the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, and lets himself just breathe for the first time since the driveway.

He doesn't change. Not yet. Instead he stands and walks the room, taking stock of it the way a man might take stock of a cell: the window, high and narrow, offering a drop that would break more than his pride if he tried it; the door, no lock on the inside that he can find; a wardrobe already filled with clothes that aren't his but were clearly bought for him.

He opens the bathroom door and stops. It's nicer than anything he grew up with, marble and warm light, and for one disorienting second the comfort of it makes him angrier than the fear does. A gilded room is still a room he can't leave.

A knock interrupts him. He opens the door to find a young staff member holding a folded set of clothes.

"Master Salvatore said you'd need something for dinner," she says, eyes down, careful. "He doesn't like to be kept waiting."

"Does he ever," Elian mutters, taking the clothes from her.

She hesitates before she turns to go. "It's easier if you're just downstairs when he expects you. That's all I'll say."

The door clicks shut behind her, and Elian stands there a moment longer with the clothes in his hands, turning her warning over.

Downstairs, Salvatore is already seated, already changed, phone face-down beside his plate for once. He doesn't call up. He doesn't send anyone to hurry things along either, though the muscle in his jaw says exactly how close he is to it.

Minutes stretch past before footsteps finally sound on the stairs, and Elian appears at the top of them, dressed, pale, and clearly still deciding whether coming down at all was the right choice.

Elian hasn't changed. He's standing there in the same clothes from earlier, the ones Salvatore sent for him still folded, untouched, on the chair.

Salvatore's eyes go straight to it. "Why aren't you wearing what was sent to you." His voice is already dropping into something colder. "And why did you keep me waiting."

Elian opens his mouth, but before a single word makes it out, Salvatore's arm sweeps across the table, sending plates and glass shattering to the floor in one violent motion. He's on his feet, finger jabbed toward Elian, fury written across every line of his face.

"You like testing me." His voice is low now, worse than shouting. "You're going to regret that."

His phone rings before he can say anything else. He answers with the same anger still burning in his voice, and then, gradually, something shifts across his face, the fury sliding into a slow, satisfied smile.

"Very good," he says into the phone. "Bring them to my estate."

He ends the call and turns back to Elian, and whatever was building before dinner is nothing compared to what's in his eyes now.

"Your little group," he says, "the ones who stole from me. They've just been found. My men are bringing them here right now."

He calls for one of his guards without waiting for Elian to respond, doesn't so much as glance at the broken glass still scattered across the floor. His finger comes up again, this time pointed straight at Elian.

"Lock him up.”