Vows Written in Blood

Chapter 2: The Gilded Cage

I exited the study and left Elara behind, as I could tell from her trembling shoulders that she was at last beginning to realize the full extent of how her life had just been altered. I didn't stop to reassure her I had more urgent things to do, so I went down the hall to the security center where my cousin Marco was already waiting for me.

He was standing with his arms folded against the wall, watching multiple camera screens on the monitors. and the expression on his face said he had a lot to say about the contract I'd just signed.

"So the deal is now officially done, and you’ve tied our family name to a sinking ship for a mess of dusty warehouses in Liverpool,” Marco said as he stepped into the kitchen behind me, his voice filling the marble-floored hall as he dipped a hand into a bowl on the counter to pull out an apple.

I filled a glass with water and drank it, ignoring his tone because I knew he was just trying to find a way to discredit me before the staff, who were all bustling about getting ready for the evening meal. "It isn't only the warehouses, Marco, because those shipping routes are the sole means through which we can circumvent the new customs laws without alerting the authorities." I ate slowly, taking a few sips of water as I watched him pace. He took a noisy bite out of the apple and shook his head: the logistics of the merger had certainly not won him over, he had always regarded more direct, violent means of expansion as preferable to legal manoeuvres.

​"We could have just waited for her father to go under and snatched up the assets for nothing at the auction, so I don’t see why you felt the need to bring a total stranger into the house who probably wants to slit your throat while you sleep," he said, halting his pacing to fix me with those cold, calculating eyes that always made me wonder where his real loyalties lied.

I put my glass on the counter because this conversation was starting to give me a headache, especially since I knew he wasn’t going to stop teasing about it until he found a weakness, some kind of weapon he could use later.

“If the company were to be sold, the books would be subject to scrutiny from every federal investigator in the country, but this marriage keeps everything private and allows us total control over the records without anyone coming our way with questions,” I told him, then swiveled away to head back downstairs as I was finished explaining myself to a man who didn’t have the capacity to understand his role in all of this.​​ Elara was precisely at the same place I had left her, though she had moved away from the desk over to the window, where she was gazing out at the driveway with a vacant look on her face.

“Now, we’re going to take you to show you where you’re going to be living, so get your stuff and try to keep the complaining to a minimum while we walk through the house,” I said, and she didn’t even glance at me before grabbing her purse and trailing me up the grand staircase.

We walked along the upper gallery, which was lined with heavy velvet drapery and portraits of men who appeared to be as frigid as I was, until I paused in front of the double doors that opened to the east wing guest suite.

“This is your place and I’ve stocked the closets with anything you might need so you won’t have to worry about the luggage your father was much too embarrassed to bring along,” I told her as I opened the door to the expansive bedroom and the private sitting area that looked out over the gardens. She entered the room but didn't glance at the furniture; her attention was immediately caught by the hi-tech locks on the doors leading to the balcony and the slight glimmer of security cameras camouflaged in the corners of the ceiling.

“You can call it a suite all you want, Luca, but we both know this is just a very pricy cage where you can watch over your new possession,” she said , she pivoted to face me, her stare so intense that I understood quickly that she wasn’t going to be the silent, broken girl I’d first anticipated.

“The security is there because you’re a target now and, by virtue of carrying the De Rossi name, there are people who would love to use you to hurt me. If they found a single gap in my defences...” I said to her, leaning on the doorframe as I observed her test the weight of a large crystal vase on the nightstand as if she were gauging it for use as a weapon.

She laughed at that, a short and bitter sound that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, because there was no fear in that laugh at all.

“Don’t pretend like you care about my wellbeing when you’re the one who stripped me of my freedom, and if you think I’m going sit here and smile and play the part of the happy bride, you’re even more deluded than my father was,” she snarled, and I saw a spark of something nearly like respect because she was still fighting, even after she had lost everything in a single day.

I told her dinner was at eight and that I wanted her there because we had visitors coming who needed to see us as a couple, then I left her to simmer in her rage while I went to my office to work.

A couple more hours passed, but I was bored, so I pulled up the garden cams on my phone just on the off chance she was trying for a breakout, and that’s when I saw her moving along the stone wall by the perimeter. She was not running though, she was stopping every few steps to measure the distance between the guard posts and under some security lights, while she was making notes on a small book that she had hidden in her pocket.

I headed out to the courtyard to meet her, and the fact that she never batted an eye when I emerged from the shadows told me she recognized my steps and thought nothing of it.

“The wall is ten feet high and the cameras have motion sensors that alert the guard house, so you’re just wasting your energy looking for a hole in the fence,” I said as I made to grab the notebook from her hand to see what she had been jotting down. She handed it over without protest, and as I thumbed through the pages, I found detailed maps of the estate, schedules for guard rotations, and notes on blind spots in the lighting.

“I'm an engineer, Luca,” she said, glancing up at me calmly, a defiant calm that made her voice all the more unbelievable, “and I've spent my entire life repairing the broken or circumventing the impossible obstacles people said couldn't be crossed.” look more dangerous than any of the men I worked with.

​I handed the book back to her because I was actually impressed by her focus, and I realized that having her in the house was going to be much more complicated than a simple business transaction.

"Go inside and get dressed for dinner, Elara, and try to look like you aren't planning my murder, because we have a long night ahead of us and I don't want to spend it explaining why my wife looks like she’s scouting a prison break," I said, and as she walked past me back toward the house, I knew that the "forbidden desire" I had been worried about was already starting to become a problem.