Revenge and Roses

What Love Costs

Conti Estate, Palermo — Saturday Evening

Elara's POV

"Sit down, Elara," her uncle said.

"I would rather stand," Elara replied.

Don Enzo didn't insist, not yet. He lowered himself into his chair, laced his fingers together on the desk, and looked at her the way he looked at men he respected enough to tell the truth to before he told them what he needed from them. Two glasses of whiskey sat on the desk between them. He never drank whiskey alone, and the second glass had clearly been poured before she'd walked in — before he could have known whether she'd take the news standing up or sitting down, in silence or in fury.

"I have found you a husband," Don Enzo continued.

The words landed too calm for what they were. She waited for the rest of it — a joke, a qualification, something to make the sentence smaller — and none came.

"I don't need you to find me anything," Elara replied.

"Silas Vane," he said, as though she hadn't spoken. "You'll be married within the month."

"You cannot be serious." She stayed where she was, arms crossed, feet planted, and made him watch her not move. "I am not signing my name over to a man I have never met because you've decided it's convenient."

"It isn't convenience. It's survival," Don Enzo retorted.

"Then survive some other way." Her voice climbed, sharper than she meant it to. "Sell a property. Cut a different deal. You have run this family for thirty years — are you telling me the only asset left to trade is me?"

"Sit down," he said again.

"I said I would rather stand." She held his eyes and didn't blink first. Whatever was coming, she wasn't going to receive it folded into a chair like an obedient girl waiting to be told what her life would look like next.

Don Enzo studied her for a long moment — not angry, which somehow unsettled her more than anger would have. Then he rose, came around the desk, and something moved behind his composure that she rarely let herself look at directly: not the Don, but the uncle who had taught her to ride a bicycle in this same garden, who had cried once at her mother's funeral and never again in front of anyone.

"Elara." His voice dropped, quiet enough that she had to lean in without meaning to. "Please."

She hated that it worked on her even a little. She hated it more than she hated the request itself — that after everything, after every wall she'd built specifically so a room like this couldn't get to her, one soft word from the man who'd raised her still found the seam. She didn't sit right away. She made herself hold the silence a beat longer, made him wait for it, before her knees finally gave the argument up, and she lowered herself into the chair like it cost her something. It did.

"Silas Vane's network has grown too powerful to ignore," he said. "An alliance with him secures this family for a generation. Without it, we are exposed," Don Enzo said.

"Exposed to what." Her pulse was going hard enough now that she could feel it in her throat. "Say it plainly, for once in your life."

"To the Ferraro’s. To what happened to the Bellini shipment last spring." His jaw tightened. "You remember the Bellinis, Elara. You remember what was left of their warehouse when Silas Vane decided they'd double-crossed him on a routing fee. He didn't burn the cargo. He burned the building with four of their men still working the night shift, and he stood outside and watched it until the roof came down, because he wanted everyone in this city to understand exactly what disloyalty cost him. That is the man I am asking you to marry. That is also, God help us, the only kind of man strong enough to make sure it never happens to us."

She said nothing. Her fingers had found the stem of the whiskey glass without her permission, and she realized, distantly, that she was gripping it hard enough to feel the crystal bite into her palm.

"I raised you because I loved your mother," he went on, quieter now, “and because I loved you the moment you were old enough to be loved.” “I have never once asked you for anything in return for that. I am asking you now."

"You're using the fact that you raised me," she said, and her voice shook on it, "as leverage."

"I am asking my niece for help," Don Enzo said.

"What would you call it, then, if not that?" Elara asked.

He didn't answer right away, and in the space where the answer should have been, she understood he didn't have a better word for it — that he knew exactly what he was doing and had decided to do it anyway, because the alternative frightened him more than her anger did.

"I would call it family," he said finally. "Family asks hard things of each other."

"And if I refuse?" Elara said.

"Then I will have failed you as thoroughly as I failed your parents." Something in his voice broke open just enough for her to see, for one unguarded second, that he meant it. "I cannot protect this family alone anymore. I am asking you to help me try harder."

Her hand was still locked around the glass. She made herself loosen it, finger by finger, before she cracked something she couldn't afford to replace.

"That is not the same as safe," she said.

"No," he agreed. "It isn't. But it's better than anything else you'll get in our world."

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Two people who had just told each other something true, and didn't know what to do with the room now that it was sitting between them.

"Why would a man like that agree to marry a woman he has never met?" she asked finally. "Men who burn buildings to make a point don't hand pieces of their empire away for nothing. What does he get that you haven't told me?"

Don Enzo's hesitation was brief, but she caught it — the same half-second delay he used at the negotiating table right before he offered a number lower than what he actually owed.

"An alliance. Access to our routes." His voice hardened, the Don surfacing again beneath the uncle. "There will be time for the rest of it later. Tonight I need to know whether you're willing to do this."

She filed the deflection away the way she filed everything that didn't add up.

"I need time," she said.

"You have until the wedding is announced." He crossed to the window, and for a moment his silhouette was lit by headlights sweeping up the drive below — a car she didn't recognize, idling too long at the gate before it was waved through. Don Enzo didn't so much as glance at it, which told her more than if he had. "After that, there is no version of this where you can still say no. He isn't a patient man, Elara. He has already waited longer for this than he wanted to."

She picked up the whiskey glass and, for the first time all evening, drank.