Chapter 3: Table Manners
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The dining room is designed to intimidate.
Long table. High-backed chairs. Enough empty space to seat a small army. The lights are low, warm in a way that feels calculated, like someone decided exactly how much comfort I deserved.
Not much.
I’m seated at one end of the table.
Alessandro sits at the other.
Of course he does.
Between us: polished wood, untouched silverware, and a silence so heavy it presses against my chest.
Servants move in and out like ghosts, placing dishes with precise movements. No one looks at me. No one speaks to me. I might as well be decorative.
I hate how aware I am of everything—how straight Alessandro sits, how relaxed his shoulders are, how he doesn’t look at the food at all.
He looks at me.
“So,” I say, picking up my fork. “Is this the part where you ask about my day?”
A few heads snap up.
A mistake.
Alessandro doesn’t react. He cuts his steak slowly, deliberately. Chews. Swallows.
“You haven’t eaten,” he says.
“I’m not hungry.”
“That’s a lie.”
I smile sweetly. “You don’t know me well enough to—”
“I know control,” he interrupts. “And I know when someone is withholding it from themselves to prove a point.”
I stab a piece of food and put it in my mouth just to spite him. It tastes too good. That annoys me even more.
“You win,” I mutter.
He tilts his head. “This isn’t a competition.”
“Everything is a competition to men like you.”
A pause.
“Explain.”
I lean back in my chair, crossing my arms. “You don’t buy people because you need them. You buy them so no one else can have them.”
Something flickers in his eyes.
Interest.
“You think that’s why I bought you?” he asks.
“No,” I say calmly. “I think you bought me because I remind you of something you couldn’t control once.”
The air changes.
Servants suddenly find reasons to leave the room.
Alessandro sets his knife down. The sound is soft. Final.
“That’s a dangerous assumption, Aria.”
“Truth usually is.”
Silence stretches.
For the first time since I met him, Alessandro doesn’t speak immediately.
Good.
He stands, slowly, and walks toward me. Not rushed. Not threatening. Just inevitable.
He stops beside my chair.
“Look at me,” he says.
I do.
Up close, his eyes are darker than I realized. Not empty. Guarded. Layered. Like a locked room with no windows.
“You think you’ve touched something real,” he says quietly. “You think you’ve found a weakness.”
I lift my chin. “Did I?”
He bends down, bracing his hands on the arms of my chair, trapping me without touching me.
“You found a door,” he admits. “That doesn’t mean it opens.”
My heart pounds, but I didn’t look away. “Then why are you standing so close?”
His voice drops. “Because I want you to understand something.”
I swallowed.
“You don’t scare me because you’re powerful,” he continues. “You scare me because you’re observant.”
A pause.
“Careful,” he adds. “Men like me don’t forgive being seen.”
I smile—small, sharp. “You shouldn’t have brought me here, then.”
For a moment, the tension between us is electric. Alive. Dangerous.
Then he straightens.
“Clear the table,” he says calmly.
The servants rush back in.
He looks down at me one last time. “You did well tonight.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“You didn’t beg. You didn’t cry. You didn’t eat to please me.” His gaze lingers. “Most people fail at least one of those.”
“That wasn’t your test.”
“It was.”
He turns and walks away.
I sit there, pulse racing, anger and something else twisting in my chest.
I didn’t win.
But I didn’t lose either.
And as I’m escorted back to my room, one thought burns bright and dangerous in my mind:
Alessandro De Luca didn’t expect me to fight back.
Now he knows.
And that knowledge?
That’s power.
- Writer
