CHAPTER 15-THE UNSPOKEN RULE
1379 Words
There were rules in Alessandro’s world that were never written down.
They did not exist on paper, did not need to. They lived in glances, in silences, in the way air shifted when certain names were spoken. They were enforced not by law but by consequence.
One of those rules was simple:
Serafina and Luca Romano did not speak privately.
It was never said aloud, because saying it would acknowledge it. But Serafina understood it the way she understood all things in the mansion—through absence.
Luca never entered her rooms.
He never lingered near her too long when Alessandro wasn’t present.
He addressed her politely in public, always with the same formal distance. Mrs. Moretti . A nod, a few necessary words, and then nothing.
Their conversations, such as they were, happened only in fragments. In hallways with other staff nearby. In rooms filled with people. In moments where no one could accuse intimacy of existing.
And yet, something formed anyway.
Not through speech.
Through awareness.
Serafina began to feel Luca’s attention the way one feels the change in weather before a storm. Subtle, constant, undeniable. He noticed too much. He saw too clearly. And because he saw, it meant she was no longer entirely alone inside her silence.
That, in itself, was dangerous.
At dinners, Serafina sat beside Alessandro, her posture composed, her expression serene. The table was always full of men who smiled with teeth sharpened by ambition. They drank expensive wine and spoke in an indirect way that disguised savage behaviour.
Serafina listened.
Across the room, Luca stood like a boundary.
When voices rose too high, Luca’s gaze shifted and they lowered again.
When Alessandro’s temper tightened, Luca would speak a word or two—not soothing, never soft, simply redirecting. The empire’s violence contained within control.
Serafina started noticing something else.
Luca watched Alessandro the way she did.
Not with admiration.
With calculation.
It was a strange comfort, that parallel.
One evening, Alessandro’s cousin visited—a man named Marco who carried arrogance like perfume. He spoke too loudly, laughed too often, drank as though trying to prove he could.
He leaned toward Serafina at one point, smirking.
“Does he ever let you breathe?” he asked, as if it were a joke.
Serafina’s fingers tightened around her glass. She kept her face neutral.
“Of course,” she replied softly.
Marco chuckled.
“Funny. You look like someone holding her breath.”
Alessandro’s smile remained polite, but Serafina felt the shift beside her. The subtle tightening of control.
Before Alessandro could respond, Luca moved.
Not dramatically. Just enough.
His hand rested lightly on Marco’s shoulder—an almost affectionate gesture.
Marco froze instantly.
Luca’s voice was quiet.
“Watch your mouth.”
Marco’s laugh faltered.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.”
Silence spread across the table like spilled ink.
Alessandro’s eyes flickered toward Luca. For a moment, something unreadable passed between them—approval? Warning? Ownership?
Then Alessandro laughed lightly.
“My cousin forgets himself when he drinks,” he said, smoothing the moment. “Apologize to my wife.”
Marco swallowed hard.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, eyes lowered.
Serafina stared at her plate, pulse racing.
Luca withdrew his hand, returning to the shadows.
No one spoke of it again.
But Serafina felt something settle inside her.
An understanding.
Luca would not allow certain lines to be crossed.
Not openly. Not in ways that would expose him.
But he drew boundaries all the same.
It was not kindness.
It was something sharper, stranger.
Restraint.
The unspoken rule remained: they did not speak privately.
Yet Luca spoke through action.
And Serafina learned to answer with silence.
She became careful with her expressions.
If Luca noticed her discomfort, she did not acknowledge it.
If Luca intervened subtly, she did not thank him.
Gratitude was intimacy.
Intimacy was danger.
So they existed in a language made of nothing.
Of pauses.
Of avoidance.
Of awareness held at a careful distance.
It was almost worse than conversation.
Because conversation could be denied.
Understanding could not.
One afternoon, Alessandro left the mansion unexpectedly, summoned by urgent business. The house shifted in his absence—guards moved differently, staff breathed slightly easier.
Serafina wandered the library, seeking quiet.
She reached for a book she’d read before, more habit than desire.
Behind her, the door opened.
She stiffened.
Footsteps entered—measured, silent.
She did not turn immediately.
She already knew.
Luca stopped several feet away.
The distance was deliberate.
The rule.
Serafina kept her gaze on the shelf.
“I didn’t know anyone else came here,” she said quietly.
“I do,” Luca replied.
A pause.
His voice was low, controlled.
“It’s quiet.”
Serafina’s fingers brushed the spine of a book without pulling it free.
“Yes,” she said. “Quiet is rare.”
Silence stretched.
They were alone.
And the aloneness was unbearable in its significance.
Serafina’s heart beat too loudly.
Luca did not move closer.
He did not speak again immediately.
When he finally did, it was not what she expected.
“You shouldn’t wander when Alessandro isn’t here.”
Serafina turned slightly, enough to look at him.
“Because I’m unsafe?”
Luca’s gaze held hers.
“Because other people forget themselves when he’s gone.”
Serafina’s throat tightened.
“So he’s the only danger that matters?”
Luca’s jaw flexed faintly.
“No,” he said softly. “He’s just the most obvious one.”
The words felt like stepping onto thin ice.
Serafina forced herself to breathe evenly.
“And you?” she asked before she could stop herself.
Luca’s eyes sharpened.
“What about me?”
Serafina’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“Do people forget themselves around you?”
A pause.
Then Luca answered honestly.
“No.”
“Why not?”
His gaze did not waver.
“Because I don’t allow it.”
The simplicity of the statement made her stomach twist.
There it was again.
Control.
Absolute.
Serafina’s fingers curled against the book spine.
“Do you ever allow yourself anything?” she whispered, surprising herself.
For the first time, Luca’s expression shifted—not softness, not warmth.
Something like distance deepening.
“That’s not your concern.”
The words were sharp, but not cruel.
A boundary.
The rule.
Serafina nodded slowly, understanding the warning beneath them.
She looked away.
They stood in silence again.
Then, quietly, Luca said, “You read often.”
Serafina’s breath caught.
It was the closest thing to a personal observation he had ever offered.
“Yes,” she said cautiously.
“Why?”
She hesitated.
Because books were the only place she could live another life.
Because pages offered escape without movement.
Because imagination was the only freedom not punishable.
She did not say any of that.
Instead, she answered simply.
“They remind me I’m still… here.”
Silence.
Luca’s gaze remained on her, heavy with something unspoken.
He did not respond with comfort.
Comfort was forbidden.
But he nodded once.
As though he understood.
As though he had always understood.
Footsteps echoed suddenly in the hallway outside.
Servants returning.
The world reassembling.
Luca stepped back immediately, distance restored.
The rule reasserted itself.
Serafina watched him retreat into shadow, his presence folding seamlessly back into formality.
Before he left, Luca’s voice reached her—quiet enough that it might have been imagined.
“Be careful, Serafina.”
He used her name.
Once.
A violation small enough to deny, intimate enough to haunt.
Then he was gone.
Serafina stood alone among books she could not read, her pulse racing.
Nothing had happened.
No confession. No touch. No overt betrayal.
And yet everything had.
Because in the space where silence lived, something had formed.
Not romance.
Not yet.
Something more fragile and more dangerous:
Recognition.
An understanding that they were both trapped inside the same empire.
Both living by rules written in blood.
Both speaking in the only language that was safe.
The unspoken rule remained.
They would never speak privately.
But Serafina knew now—
some connections did not require words.
Some understandings were built entirely from what was never said.
And that made them impossible to break.
- Writer
