HIS BELLISSIMA

Dante

One day.

That was all it had taken for the room to start feeling like a coffin with better lighting. One day of the same four walls, the same too-soft bed, the same breakfast tray that arrived that morning and sat untouched until the smell of it turned her stomach instead of tempting it.

She hadn't eaten. Not since dinner the night before, since he had placed the photograph before her , taunting her with a power she had no idea what it actually holds.Her body hadn't started complaining yet, not really, but the thought of food felt obscene anyway, like swallowing anything at all would mean accepting that this was simply how things were now.

She told herself it wasn't about him. It wasn't some grand gesture, some hunger strike meant to prove a point to a man who probably wouldn't notice if she disappeared entirely. It was simpler than that. Eating meant getting up. Getting up meant being awake for all of it, the fear, the grief, the photographs still burned into the back of her eyes every time she closed them. Staying in bed, staying still, staying hungry, that was the only control she had left in a house that had taken everything else.

She stared at the ceiling, at the same crack in the plaster near the chandelier she'd memorized by now, and thought about her mother. She missed her smile. Her ability to make everything feel so much better just by running her fingers through her soft black hair that seemed to always be a mess.

She missed her so much it felt like a physical thing, a stone lodged somewhere behind her sternum.

A knock sounded at the door, brisk and unfamiliar, nothing like Clarise's soft, apologetic tap.

She didn't answer.

The door opened anyway.

She expected Clarise, or one of the silent, broad-shouldered men who'd checked on her once already that morning like she might have tunneled out through the floor. Instead a man she didn't recognize strolled in like he owned the place, hands in his pockets, dark hair pushed back in a way that looked deliberately careless, an easy smile already on his face before he'd even looked at her properly.

"So." He glanced around the room, taking in the untouched tray, the drawn curtains, the general air of a woman staging a one-person protest. "One day in, and you've already decided food is the enemy. Ambitious."

She stared at him, too tired and too raw to summon the venom she wanted to. "Who are you?"

"Dante." He said it like it should mean something, then seemed to realize it didn't and shrugged. "Occasional voice of reason. Apparently also the guy who cares for some reason that the new house guest is planning to starve herself out of spite."

"Not yet."

"Encouraging." He pulled one of the armchairs closer to the bed and dropped into it, entirely too comfortable for a man in a stranger's prison cell. "Although I'll be honest, if this becomes a habit, it's going to be a problem for me long before it's a problem for you."

"How is that your problem?"

"Because if you starve yourself into a hospital bed, Matteo will be unbearable, and I'll be the one who has to listen to it." He said it lightly, but there was something almost sincere buried under the sarcasm. "So really, I'm here out of pure self-interest. Eat something for me. Not for him."

She almost laughed. Almost. It came out instead as something closer to a rough exhale, the first sound resembling amusement she'd made in over a week. "That's the worst pitch I've ever heard."

"I'm aware. I had a much better one prepared, something about how your body needs fuel and grief doesn't care about your blood sugar, very inspirational, very Oprah. But you look like you'd throw the tray at my head if I tried it, so." He spread his hands. "Pure self-interest it is."

"I might throw it at your head anyway."

"Yeah,I figured." He looked almost pleased about it, which unsettled her more than it should have.

She pulled herself upright against the headboard, arms wrapped around her knees, watching him with the wary calculation of someone deciding whether a new threat was actually a threat or just a different flavor of nuisance. "Why are you really here."

"Because Clarise came back downstairs looking like she'd seen a ghost, and word travels fast in this house when the new guest won't touch a tray." He tilted his head, studying her the way she imagined he studied most things, like there was a joke hidden somewhere he hadn't found yet. "Come take a walk. Grounds are nice this time of day. Less depressing than staring at that ceiling, I'd imagine."

"I'm not really in the mood for a garden tour."

"Good, because I'm a terrible tour guide. I'll mostly just be pointing at things and making fun of them." He stood, offering nothing, no hand, no help, just the assumption that she'd follow if she wanted to. "Your other option is staying here and getting to know that crack in the ceiling a lot more intimately than either of you would like."

She hated that it worked. She hated that some small, stubborn part of her, the part that used to argue with her mother about curfews and roll her eyes at Audrey's terrible taste in men, was still in there somewhere, and it wanted, more than it wanted to admit, to be anywhere that wasn't this bed.

"Fine," she said, swinging her legs over the side of the mattress like it cost her nothing. "But I'm not talking to you."

"You're already talking to me."

"I'm reconsidering."

He grinned like she'd said something delightful instead of hostile, and led the way out.

**************************************

The grounds were, infuriatingly, beautiful. Late afternoon sun slanted gold through rows of cypress trees, the air carrying the faint, sweet smell of something blooming she couldn't name, and for the length of one unguarded breath she almost forgot where she was.

"So," Dante said, hands in his pockets, matching his pace to hers without seeming to try. "How are you finding the accommodations. Five stars? Would you recommend to a friend?"

"I'd recommend it to my worst enemy."

He glanced sideways at her. "For what it's worth, most people who end up here don't try the not-eating thing at all. They're too scared to make a scene. You've been in this house not even two days and you're already annoying everyone by refusing to fold. That's either impressive, or a genuinely concerning level of stubbornness."

"Can't it be both."

"Oh, it's definitely both." He said it approvingly, which she hadn't expected. "I like it, honestly."

"Good." The word came out sharper than she meant it to, and she didn't take it back.

They walked in something close to silence for a stretch, past a stone fountain gone quiet for the season, past a row of hedges trimmed with more precision than she'd ever seen outside a magazine. She found herself watching him instead of the scenery, trying to place him. He didn't move like the men who'd chased her through the alley, didn't carry that same coiled stillness Matteo wore like a second skin. Dante moved like a man who'd never once doubted a room would go his way.

"You're not what I expected," she admitted, before she could decide whether she wanted to say it.

"No? What were you expecting."

"Someone more like him." She didn't have to say the name. "Cold. Scary. Vaguely murderous at all times."

"I can be all of those things, given the right incentive." He said it easily, no boast in it, just fact. "But there's no percentage in wasting it on you. You haven't done anything yet."

"Yet." She caught the word. "That's a very specific way to phrase that."

"I'm a very specific person." He smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes this time, something more careful moving underneath it. "You should know that about me early. Saves us both time later."

They reached the edge of a low stone wall overlooking the valley, and Dante stopped there, leaning against it with the ease of a man who'd done this a hundred times before, watching the light change over the hills.

"Can I give you some advice," he said, "since I'm apparently the only person in this house willing to."

"Do I have a choice."

"Not really, but I like pretending you do." He turned to look at her properly, and for the first time since he'd walked into her room, the humor dropped almost entirely out of his voice. "That thing you're doing. The refusing, the fighting, the not backing down even when it would be so much easier. I get it. I even respect it. But you need to be careful with it, and I mean that as a friend, which I realize we are not, but bear with me."

"Careful how."

"There are men in this family who'll see that fire in you and find it charming." He held her gaze, steady now, none of the earlier lightness in it. "And there are men who'll see it as something that needs to be put out. Not everyone here is going to be as amused by you as I am, Alondra.”

She felt something cold settle low in her stomach, the garden's warmth suddenly not enough to chase it off. "Is that a threat?"

"It's a warning." He straightened off the wall, the easy grin sliding back into place like a door closing, though something behind his eyes stayed watchful. "There's a difference, even if it doesn't always feel like one in this house. Come on. Let's get you something to eat before Matteo finds out I let you skip dinner too."

He turned and started back toward the estate without waiting to see if she'd follow.

For the first time since she'd shut that door behind her the night before, she did.