All Chapters of The Vitale Brothers Ruined Me, Then Made Me Their Queen: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The lock clicks.Click. Thud.It is a heavy sound. The sound of a vault sealing.Aureliano didn't just lock the door. He stripped the room.He took the books. He took the fresh flowers. He took the lamps. He triggered the automated steel shutters on the floor-to-ceiling windows, plunging the room into absolute, suffocating darkness."Let’s see how long the plastic lasts without an audience," he had hissed before slamming the door.He thinks this is a punishment. He thinks isolation is a weapon.He forgets where I came from.I stand in the center of the pitch-black room. I don't move. I don't scream. I don't bang on the door begging for light.I breathe.In. Out.Aureliano grew up in a palace. For him, silence is something you buy. For him, darkness is something you fix with a switch.But I grew up in the cracks. I grew up hiding in closets while my father raged at creditors. I grew up sitting in the dark for hours, willing myself to be smaller than air so the monsters wouldn't find me

The house has gone quiet again, but it’s not the peaceful silence of an empty room. It’s the holding-breath silence of a hunter waiting in a deer stand.Ciro retreated to the basement after he failed to fuck the life back into me. Aureliano has barricaded himself in his office, burying his confusion in logistics and wedding contracts.That leaves Spadino.He has stopped shouting. He has stopped throwing things. He has stopped trying to kiss the ghost back into a girl.Instead, he has become a shadow.I am in the bathroom attached to my room. The lights are bright, reflecting off the white marble and the chrome fixtures. I am brushing my teeth.Brush. Spit. Rinse.I look into the mirror.My face is pale, the dark circles under my eyes vivid against the white skin. I look like I’ve been drained of blood.In the glass, a figure appears behind me.He doesn't make a sound. He is wearing socks, sliding over the tile. He stands just over my left shoulder, close enough that I can feel the hea

The house settles into an uneasy silence after the brawl. The maids have swept up the glass in the foyer, but the stain of violence hangs in the air like cigar smoke.I am sitting on the window seat, knees pulled to my chest, watching the moon reflect off the black water below.Five days.One hundred and twenty hours.That is all that stands between me and the "transfer." Between me and the hole in the ground they have dug for the trash.I have the password. I have the photos. I have the plan.I should be sleeping. I should be conserving my strength for the escape.But I am waiting.I don't know who I am waiting for. Maybe Spadino, to beg again. Maybe Ciro, to apologize with silence.When the door opens, it is neither.Aureliano stands there.He looks terrible.The Don of Palermo is usually a sculpture of ice and marble. Tonight, he is cracked. His lip is split, swollen and purple. A dark bruise is blooming along his jawline where Spadino connected. His shirt is unbuttoned at the coll

The roses in the Vitale garden are not red. They are black baccara—a deep, velvety burgundy that looks like dried blood in the midday sun.I am on my knees in the dirt.It is part of the penance. Part of the show.I am wearing the grey uniform, stained at the knees with soil. My hands are gloved in rough canvas, holding a pair of heavy shears.Snip.I cut a deadhead from the bush. It falls to the ground, shriveled and brown.The sun is beating down on the back of my neck. It is hot, humid, the air thick with the scent of fertilizer and sea salt. Sweat trickles down my spine.I don't wipe it away. I focus on the thorns.Snip.The house looms behind me, a fortress of stone and secrets. Inside, my suitcase is packed. Inside, the ashes of my mother’s legacy are washed down the drain. Inside, the clock is ticking down to the moment I open the vault.But out here, I am just the gardener. The help. The trash.Crunch. Crunch.Gravel shifting under tires.I don't look up. I know the sound of t

It is 3:00 AM.The house is a tomb. The heavy silence of the cliffside presses against the windows, broken only by the rhythmic crash of the sea below.I am sitting on the floor of my closet, huddled beneath the hem of the red dress I will never wear again.In my hands, I hold the burner phone.I retrieved it twenty minutes ago from the underside of the sideboard in the drawing room. I had taped it there yesterday morning, right before the Dowager arrived, hoping to catch a stray comment, a whisper of weakness.Instead, I caught a death sentence.I plug the cheap earbuds into the jack. I press play.Hiss. Crackle.The audio is grainy. The microphone rubbed against the wood of the sideboard.Then, a voice cuts through the static. Clear. Cold. Crystalline."Is it done?"Sofia Greco.There is a pause. A man’s voice, muffled. "The driver is secured. He understands the change in itinerary.""Good," Sofia says. I can hear the smile in her voice. "Aureliano thinks she is going to the Madonie