(Aria)
The city learned our shape quickly.
Not the truth of it—never that—but the outline. Luca and I, no longer a question mark or a rumor, but a line drawn clean enough for people to stop pretending they didn’t see it.
That was the first cost.
People stopped offering me the grace of curiosity.
They moved straight to assumption.
The morning after Ferraro’s retreat, the house felt different again. Not tighter. Not calmer.
Heavier.
The staff remained professional, but the softness was gone. No lingering pauses, no careful neutrality. Everything had direction now—measured, efficient, unmistakably aware of who stood where.
I had become part of the architecture.
I didn’t know yet whether I liked that.
“You’re early,” Luca said when he found me in the breakfast room.
“I couldn’t sle
