Chapter 6 – The Leash Tightens

Eve

In the top corner of my bedroom, there’s a small black bead where wall meets ceiling. In the opposite corner, another. I imagine tiny red dots blinking inside their throats like quiet, satisfied hearts.

I lift my chin and stare straight into one. “I hope you’re enjoying the show,” I say to the air, voice hoarse with sleep. “Get my best angle, okay?”

I shower because not showering is a petty rebellion without payoff for me. The bathroom is gorgeous of course. Clawfoot tub, twin marble sinks, towels folded into perfect stacks like they auditioned for the job.

I brush my teeth too hard and spit with more satisfaction than is sane. The girl in the mirror looks a little like me after a car crash. Eyes too bright, jaw set, mouth trying to decide between a line and a circle.

I pull on jeans and a white tee, with sneakers I used to love. They squeak on the marble like small animals begging for mercy. I leave my hair down in wilful chaos.

When I open the double doors of the suite, two men glance up in perfect sync from the wall opposite. They wear tailored suits like second skins and earpieces that make them look like secret service agents. No visible guns, but I’m sure they don’t need to show teeth to let you know they bite.

“Good morning, Mrs-” one starts.

“No.” My voice is still rough, but the word lands like a slap. “Don’t call me that.”

He swallows the end of the honorific neatly. “Miss Larson.”

“Better.” I look past them, down the long corridor where chandeliers carry on like they were grown from the ceiling. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Of course,” the other says, as if I asked their permission. I dislike him most, I decide immediately.

At the staircase I stop to take it in again. The banister is a dark, glossy curve, the steps wide enough to land a small plane.

On the ground floor, the walls open into rooms that belong in the pages of Architectural Digest. A library with more leather than a biker rally. A music room with a gleaming black grand piano that looks like it belongs in a concert hall. A dining hall suspended under an artillery of crystal, with a table large enough to seat forty.

I angle toward a side door beyond the kitchen, where the smell of coffee and butter tries to make this morning normal. Luciana looks up from arranging fruit like she’s setting gemstones. She gives me a small smile that doesn’t show her teeth. “Breakfast will be served shortly, miss.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I’m just getting air.”

A small frown creases her forehead and I wait for her to tell me Dominik expects me to be at the table at a certain time. Instead she nods stiffly.

“I’ll be in the gardens,” I inform them, pleasant as arsenic.

“Mr. Grimaldi doesn’t want you leaving the house without an escort, miss,” the nicer one says. He’s got kind eyes, which is worse. It suggests he sold them himself.

“Marvelous. Then I guess we’ll all be in the garden.”

He steps into the doorway, filling it with polite muscle. “Not this entrance.”

I lean against the doorframe and smile like a wolf. “Are there exits I am allowed to use? Or is this place a snow globe and I’m the plastic figurine?”

“Please, miss. We’ll take you along the south walk.”

I could make a scene. I could claw and scream and try to break into a sprint. I’d make it three whole steps before someone grabs me. Instead, I uncurl from the doorframe, smile like a poisonous butterfly, and say, “Lead on.”

We walk the permitted loop. White roses bank like clouds. Hedges stand at military attention. The gravel crunches under my feet. A high wall runs the perimeter, hiding the world outside from me.

I count cameras hidden in boxwood and under the eaves. Seven on the south walk. Four on the west. A distant man by the gate who never looks directly at me and never looks away.

It’s artistry, this curation of control. Dominik Grimaldi doesn’t do things by halves. He builds cathedrals and calls them homes, then puts the altar exactly where he wants you to kneel.

By seven-thirty, the house has changed temperature. There’s a shift in air pressure, a tightening of screws. Staff move faster. Heaven forbid anyone upsets the lord of the manor.

When I walk into the dining room at five to eight, he’s already there, sitting at the head of the long table with his sleeves rolled to the forearms and his winterlight gaze turned on the doorway.

We start with olives as black as sin and bread that tears with a sigh. He watches me butter it, and there is no way to do that innocently under his gaze. I eat anyway, because starving out of spite is for girls who don’t realize you need energy to run.

“How was your walk?” he asks, like we’re old friends catching up on a Sunday.

“Educational.” I lift my water and watch the chandelier refract him into a thousand glittering threats. “I learned where you hide your eyes.”

He lifts his wine. Red clings to the glass like a promise. “My eyes aren’t hidden.”

“No,” I say. “They’re framed.”

When the plates are cleared, I put my hands in my lap and tip my head to look him in the face until the stillness of him makes my teeth itch.

“I’m not your pet,” I say. Each word is clean. I sharpened them on the walk and stored them behind my teeth like contraband.

He doesn’t blink. His gaze moves over my mouth and down the line of my throat. “No,” he agrees. “You are not.”

It almost wrong-foots me. “Good. Then stop treating me like one.”

“You misunderstand.” His voice remains low. He makes quiet into a weapon that hits harder than any shout. “A pet implies indulgence. Tricks for treats. I do not keep pets.”

“What do you keep?” I ask. “Collections? Curiosities? Things that look better gagged?”

He sets his glass down with gentle precision. The sound is so soft and polite that it takes me a second to register how final it is. “I keep what is mine.”

Heat floods my face, rage-bright. “You can’t own people.”

“You’re right.” He leans back, rolls his sleeves one more turn, exposing veins like roads across his forearms. “People own themselves until they make bargains they can’t afford.”

“You made a bargain, not me. I was coerced.”

“You made a bargain when you stepped between his head and my gun. You set the terms of your own cage. You could have chosen differently, but you chose this. Stop pretending to be a victim.”

I want to throw something at his head. The candelabra would do. Or the chair. Or the table if I believed in miracles. Instead, I hold my spine straight and let my voice go quiet the way his is. “You will never own me. And I’m not your wife yet.”

“It’s a distinction without difference. I act as if the vows are already spoken because functionally, they are. You live in my house. You eat at my table. You will share my bed. Paper is theatre, the truth is custody.”

I lift my chin so our eyes are level. “Here is my understanding. I will eat your food because I won’t starve for show. I will sleep in your bed because that is where the sheets are. I will not roll over. I won’t fetch. And if you expect me to wag my tail when you come home, you’ll be disappointed.”

He nods, once, as if I’ve turned in an assignment exactly as ruthless as the rubric demanded. He doesn’t say anything, simply smiling at me in his chilling way.

“Then that’s settled.” I rise and the chair’s legs whisper against the floor. “I’m done.”