in love with the devil himself

What he knows

I couldn't sleep.

That wasn't new. Sleep had never come easily inside this mansion — there was always too much silence, too many shadows that seemed to breathe, too many thoughts I couldn't shut off. But tonight was different. Tonight I lay on top of the covers fully dressed, staring at the ceiling, and all I could hear was Vincenzo's voice.

Why, out of everyone in that city — they chose you specifically.

I turned the question over and over until the sky outside my window began to shift from black to the deep, bruised blue that came just before dawn. Then I gave up pretending I was going to rest, swung my legs off the bed, and went looking for the kitchen.

I didn't expect to find him there.

Vincenzo was standing at the large window that overlooked the back gardens, a cup of something dark and steaming in his hand, still dressed from the night before. He didn't turn when I walked in. Didn't startle. Of course he didn't — I was beginning to suspect he was aware of every movement in this house the way a spider feels every thread of its web.

"Couldn't sleep either?" I said, because the silence felt too heavy and I needed somewhere to put my voice.

"I don't sleep much." A pause. "It's one of the less poetic realities of what I am."

I stood in the doorway for a moment, weighing my options. Then I walked to the counter, found a mug, and poured myself whatever he was drinking. It turned out to be black coffee, strong enough to make my eyes water. I drank it anyway and moved to stand a few feet away from him at the window.

The gardens were silver and still in the pre-dawn light. Beautiful, in the way that things are beautiful when they don't know anyone is watching.

"Tell me," I said quietly. "What you know about me. About why Aria wanted me."

He was quiet for long enough that I thought he might not answer. Then he turned from the window and looked at me — really looked at me — and something in his expression shifted. Not softer, exactly. More like a door opening a crack.

"Your mother," he said, "was not who you think she was."

The coffee mug felt suddenly very heavy in my hand. "What?"

"She didn't just work for my family, Selina. She was one of us. Not turned — born into it, the way some are, through bloodlines old enough that most people have forgotten they exist." He watched my face carefully as he spoke, like he was gauging how much weight I could hold. "She left. Gave it up, gave up everything, and built a quiet life. She thought distance would be enough to keep you safe."

I set the mug down on the windowsill before I dropped it. "You're saying I'm —"

"Human," he said, and there was something almost gentle in the word. "Entirely. The bloodline doesn't always carry. But it marks you, even when it doesn't turn you. People like Aria — people who deal in the kind of power that requires very specific ingredients — they can sense it. What runs in your veins is rare. Valuable." His jaw tightened slightly. "You were never a coincidence to her. You were a resource."

The room felt like it was tilting. I pressed my fingers against the cool glass of the window and focused on that — the solidity of it, the cold — and tried to breathe evenly.

"How long have you known?" I asked.

"Since before you arrived here."

I turned to look at him sharply. "Then why didn't you tell me?"

"Because," he said, with the kind of patience that made me feel like he'd rehearsed this conversation many times in his own head, "you would not have believed me. You didn't trust me. You still don't, not fully. And frightened people who don't trust you make desperate decisions." Something flickered across his face — brief, almost imperceptible. "Like running toward the first person who offers them a hand without checking what that hand wants in return."

It landed exactly where he meant it to. I looked away.

We stood in silence for a while after that. Not the heavy, suffocating silence from earlier — something different. Quieter. Like the space after a storm when the air is still charged but the worst has passed.

"She never told me," I said eventually. My voice came out smaller than I meant it to. "My mother. She never said a word."

"No." His voice had changed. Still low, still measured, but something had gone out of the careful control of it. "She wouldn't have. She wanted you to have a normal life. She believed it was possible." A beat. "She was braver than most people I've known. And I have known a great many people."

I looked at him. "You knew her. Personally."

He didn't answer straight away. He turned back to the window, and in the growing pale light I caught something on his face that I had never seen there before. Not grief, exactly. Something older than grief. The look of someone who had carried a loss long enough that it had worn smooth, like a stone in a river.

"Yes," he said simply.

And somehow that single word told me more about Vincenzo than anything else he had ever said or done. More than the cold control, more than the effortless authority, more than the way whole rooms rearranged themselves around his presence. Somewhere beneath all of that was a person who had lost someone. Who still felt it, even now.

I didn't know what to do with that. I wasn't sure I was ready to do anything with it.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "For running. I didn't — I didn't know any of this."

He looked at me then, and for just a moment, in the grey and silver of early morning, the devil himself looked almost human.

"I know," he said. "That's why you're still here and not somewhere far more dangerous."

It wasn't quite tenderness. But it wasn't nothing, either.

I picked up my coffee, cold now, and held it with both hands. Outside, the first thin light of dawn was beginning to touch the garden, turning everything gold at the edges.

I didn't trust him. Not fully. Maybe not even halfway.

But for the first time since I'd arrived in this house, I didn't feel like I needed to run.