Blood and Vows.

Chapter 32 — Silk and Steel

The bedroom kept the city outside as if it were weather she could schedule. Curtains the color of old pearls swallowed the balcony doors; citrus from the greenhouse slipped in anyway, riding the air like memory. Lamps were turned low and considerate. A tray of fruit sweated on the credenza beside a bottle that had never known a cheap hand.

Selma lay against a mountain of pillows in a silk robe the shade of smoke. The robe was belted loosely, as if she’d tied it with a thought and trusted the thought to hold. Fernando sat at the foot of the bed, one knee on the duvet, his shirt open to the second button, cufflinks abandoned on the nightstand like agreements that didn’t need witnesses. He had a bruised mouth and a satisfied posture. Behind both, the night went on making its case.

“Say it again,” Selma murmured, voice a warm instrument. She enjoyed the luxury of repetition—of being told what she already knew but in a tone that admitted the teller knew it was hers.

Fernando smiled with the carelessness of a man who remembered he was beautiful a second too late to pretend he’d forgotten. “Eastbridge, Kestrel, Banyan,” he said, ticking each on a finger. “Three valves. The woman at Eastbridge—Raisa—wants to believe in forms. Kestrel’s lawyer wants to believe in process. Patel at Banyan wants to believe in himself. Three doors, three keys. You’re holding all of them.”

Selma reached for a kumquat, turned it in her fingers without biting. “I’m holding what they think are keys,” she corrected. “What I want is the habit that makes them open to my hand whether I knock or not.”

“You’ll have it,” Fernando said. He shifted closer, the mattress bending toward him as if the bed recognized a man who knew how to occupy it. “You don’t need the money today. You need the message.”

She watched the fruit’s skin flash under the lamplight and set it back down. “The money is the message,” she said. “Money is the only grammar bankers are fluent in.”

Fernando leaned, bracing one palm near her hip, and looked at her the way men look at land before drawing borders. “And what do you say to Sebastian when he finds his grammar corrected?”

“That I am tired of subsidizing his experiments,” she answered lazily. “That the house invests where it chooses. That sons are not sovereign.”

He laughed softly. “You’ll call him son to his face.”

“I’ll call him what he is to remind him what he is not,” Selma said, and turned her head until his profile blurred into a man she had not permitted to exist in the last twenty years. “He has been practicing independence like a religion. It’s time he remembers who wrote his catechism.”

Fernando’s fingers traced a line on the duvet, not touching her, sympathetic to heat without trespassing. “He won’t crawl,” he said. “He’ll posture. He’ll pull a knife with his eyes and ask you which shoulder you prefer it in.”

“That, or he’ll send Martin to do arithmetic in a tone meant to bore me into submission,” she said, amused. “But he will come. Even when he doesn’t know he’s coming, he comes. He cannot help himself. Men always return to the house where their first hunger was fed.”

Fernando tipped his head. “Even men like him?”

“Especially men like him,” she said, and, because the thought pleased her, she unsnapped the first tie of her robe and let his attention follow without pretending it hadn’t. “Tell me about Salmo.”

“At last,” Fernando said, delighted. “I thought we were going to talk all night about accountants.”

“We are,” she said, smiling. “Salmo employs very expensive ones.”

He settled beside her, shoulder to shoulder now, both of them facing the ceiling as if the plan would be written there when the light finally confessed. “He’s cautious, which is a kind of vanity,” Fernando said. “He likes to be the last man to say yes and the first to say I told you so. But he understands the street has moved under him, and he hates to be photographed from a bad angle.”

“Angles have made and ruined empires,” Selma murmured. “What does he want.”

“He wants to stay wider than the camera,” Fernando said. “He wants his daughter to have a dowry so public that men will assume it’s power even when it’s theater. He wants to stand next to you without looking shorter.”

Selma’s robe whispered when she shifted and set her palm flat on his chest. “Elena is not a dowry. She is a bridge.” The tips of her fingers pressed just enough to register. “And bridges are beautiful until they are useful.”

He covered her hand with his own, thumb sliding idly back and forth as if to argue with gravity. “You’re certain she will do as told?”

“Girls are always certain they’ll rebel,” Selma said. “It’s part of their charm. They run toward different cages and call it escape. Her father has trained her to be expensive. I will teach her to be valuable.”

Fernando’s smile turned private. “And if she tries to be interesting?”

“Then we give her something interesting to do,” Selma said. “Children like puzzles. I will hand her Sebastian and say ‘solve this.’”

He laughed, warm in his throat. “You’ll hand her a storm and tell her it’s a summer dress.”

“She’ll think she’s choosing him,” Selma said. “She will not understand that the point of the party is not the bride and groom. It’s the guest list.” She rested her head against the high back of the pillows and let her gaze unfocus until the ceiling became a map only she could read. “Do you know why marriages are useful, Fernando?”

“Tell me,” he said, because he enjoyed being taught by her when she was in this mood—half confessional, half coronation.

“Because they compel people who want different things to pretend their desires rhyme,” she said. “Investors and pimps, priests and butchers, politicians and children. A wedding is obedience disguised as joy.”

He turned his head to look at her. “You sound almost sentimental.”

“I am,” she said lightly. “About obedience.”

He kissed her wrist, the pulse point there where perfume met blood. “And about me?”

“You,” she said, “are what happens when obedience and appetite agree on a song.”

The line pleased him. He followed it with his mouth higher along her arm, then stopped when her fingers caught his jaw—not to push him away, exactly, but to align him with the part of the night where business lived.

“Tell me what you told Salmo,” she said.

“That your son was thinking of marrying money without permission,” Fernando said, obeying. “That he has been shopping for affection with other currencies. That you would rather write the story than buy the newspaper.”

“And he agreed,” she said, not asking, remembering.

“He considered, which is as close to agreement as men like him get before dessert,” Fernando said. “He asked whether Sebastian would resent being harnessed.”

“Resentment is a leash men put on themselves,” Selma said. “Tell me what he asked about me.”

Fernando’s smile thinned. “He asked how long you intend to live.”

Selma laughed—genuinely, suddenly, delighted by the indecency of honesty. “And what did you say.”

“That you intend to live exactly long enough,” Fernando said. “And then longer if people are boring.”

She angled her face, studying him the way a jeweler studies light in a stone. “You make me sound vain.”

“You are vain,” he said softly. “It’s part of your courage.”

“My courage,” she echoed, tasting it. She slid her hand from his jaw to his throat and felt the hum there, the music a man makes when he is pleased to be heard. “Do you know what courage is for women like me?”

“Everything,” he said.

“It is for remembering your own name when men insist on pronouncing it wrong,” she said. “It is for choosing the hour and the weapon. It is for holding still while the world negotiates your story and then rewriting the last line.” Her fingers tightened a fraction. “My son thinks courage is refusing the leash. He has not learned yet that the hand holding the leash is the one that gets to point.”

Fernando’s eyes warmed. “He is learning,” he said. “He learns best when it hurts.”

“He will hate the girl,” Selma said, almost idly. “And love her. He will do both upright, to be difficult.”

“Will he obey you?” Fernando asked.

“He will obey the architecture,” she said. “I am only the architect.”

“Modest,” he teased.

“Accurate,” she returned.

They let the quiet unspool between them until it arranged itself into something softer than strategy. Fernando’s hand slid to her hip, then lower, a gravity she allowed because it was hers to allow.

“Tell me about the other girl,” he said into the hollow of her shoulder—careless, curious, cruel.

“Which one,” Selma asked, already knowing.

“The one with the look,” he said, the hunger in him waking not for her body but for the hunt. “The agent. The one your son keeps talking around and not about.”

Selma’s mouth curved. “Ah. The toy soldier.”

“She bit,” Fernando said, pleased. “It makes the breaking more interesting.”

“She lives because timing is a kind of leash as well,” Selma said, unbothered by the flicker of jealousy she identified and dismissed. “And because I wanted Samantha alive to watch the accounting. A banker learns best from bodies.”

Fernando nuzzled her throat, his smile grazing skin. “You saw the way he looked toward the east gate when she ran.”

“He looks at all exits,” Selma said. “He was born counting doors.”

“You think he wants her,” he said, saying wants with the cheerful vulgarity of men who enjoy the management of appetite.

“I think she reminds him of the man he would like to pretend he used to be,” Selma said. “But pretend is expensive. He will come back to the house for change.”

“You are forgiving,” he murmured against her. “Most women would set her on fire in the courtyard and make him hold the lantern.”

“Most women,” she said, “have had to do their learning in public. I prefer classrooms.”

He laughed again, softer. “You are a terrible teacher.”

“The best,” she corrected. “Ask Elma.”

“Elma wants blood,” he said, joyful with it. “She wants to chalk the floor with it.”

“She will get her lesson soon,” Selma said. “But not before the party.”

“The party,” Fernando repeated, stretching like a cat, plans making his body looser rather than tight. “We should give it a name.”

“Names make things real,” Selma said. “We will call it Thursday.”

He propped himself on an elbow and looked down at her as if he planned to argue. She silenced him with a fingertip to his mouth. “Hush. Now tell me what you will do before Thursday.”

He kissed her fingertip and let it rest against his lower lip when he answered. “I will seed the floor with men who believe in rumors. I will buy three small papers and tell them three different truths. I will visit Salmo’s daughter with flowers that make her think she chose the scent. I will take her hand and teach her to like the stage.”

“And if she does not.” Selma’s eyes were understanding and merciless. “If she throws her bouquet and chooses a boy who tells jokes instead of stories.”

“Then I will applaud,” Fernando said, meaning then I will make the jokes expensive. “And I will introduce her to the stagehand who pulls curtains when brides are tired.”

Selma held his gaze until she saw he had remembered the rule—don’t fall in love with your weapons—and could say it back to her without protest. Then she withdrew her finger and replaced it with her mouth. He tasted of the day’s last coffee and a man who had argued twice and won both times.

She let the kiss deepen, then broke it with a soft sound and a palm pressed to his chest. “Bring me proof,” she said, voice low, a command that had climbed into the bed with them because it always did. “Proof that Patel blinked. Proof that Kestrel asked for documents they shouldn’t. Proof that the girl looked at the gate when she should have looked at the floor. Proof that my son is learning humility.”

He kissed the heel of her hand. “I will bring you a bouquet of proofs.”

“And one more thing,” she said. “Bring me a picture of Salmo’s child smelling gardenias. I want to see if she understands what white means.”

He grinned against her palm. “Purity,” he said helpfully.

“Expense,” Selma corrected. “White shows stains.”

His laughter warmed the room. He bent again, then paused as if remembering a line he’d meant to deliver. “He asked how long you intend to live,” Fernando said again, light as a dare.

“I intend to live until the men who plan to outlast me grow tired,” Selma said, and finally bit the kumquat she’d been toying with. The burst of bitter sugar painted her tongue. “And then one day more.”

“Greedy,” he said, delighted.

“Disciplined,” she said, and tugged him down at last, the robe loosening in a way that meant the plan had been sufficiently worshiped and the night could be allowed the rest of its purpose.

He came willingly, his weight something she had chosen, and for a while the room needed no language. When the silence found sentences again, it was because the phone on the nightstand hummed the way an obedient animal hums to be noticed. Fernando reached for it, but Selma’s hand was quicker. She glanced at the screen and smiled like a woman who had anticipated the punchline.

“Raisa,” she said, approving. “She wants reassurance that the request came from the proper authority.”

“And did it?” Fernando asked, mouth at her shoulder, humor in his voice.

“It always does,” Selma said, and typed two words a woman like Raisa would keep inside her pillowcase: prudential carve-out.

Fernando watched her thumb move and sighed with the satisfaction of a craftsman. “I adore you when you speak accountant.”

“You adore me when I speak anything,” she said. “But yes. It is pretty to say.”

She put the phone down, rolled onto her side, and faced him in the lamplight that agreed with everyone’s vanity. “When you leave,” she said, “go by the east corridor. Elma will want a word about knives.”

“She wants a throat,” he said, amused.

“She may have a hand,” Selma said. “I am not fond of self-satisfied fingers.”

He flexed his own and kissed her knuckles in tribute to the joke and the warning beneath it. “I’ll tell her to sharpen something tender.”

“Tenderness is for later,” Selma said. “Tonight is for obedience.”

He bowed his head as if to an altar and then forgot ceremony altogether.

On the credenza, the fruit sweated and grew less beautiful. On the balcony, the city tried the glass and was denied. In the greenhouse, the citrus leaves turned in their sleep toward a light that would not arrive for hours. And in the bed, silk remembered it was woven to touch power and did so gladly.

When Fernando finally stood to dress, the robe had slid to Selma’s waist and stayed there because gravity liked her. He buttoned his shirt with the unhurried hands of a man who had never had to run for a thing he didn’t already own. She watched him without moving, the way queens watch ships leave: not with sadness, but with inventory.

“At breakfast,” she said, “tell Ernesto I will see him at noon.”

Fernando smiled over his shoulder. “Messenger,” he said.

“Mirror,” she corrected, and closed her eyes as if to sleep.

He kissed her hair and left by the east corridor to find a woman with a taste for knives and the patience to wait for the right throat.

Selma reached for the phone again, skimmed the answers she liked—Caldwell’s careful deference, Caro’s clipped apology for requesting documents she would never receive, Patel’s heroic nothing. Then she turned the device face down, drew the robe up over her ribs, and let herself rest for five minutes with a cat’s vigilance.

Money, marriage, obedience.

Silk and steel.

By Thursday, everyone would understand the order of things.