The Devil's Contract Bride

CHAPTER 2: BELLA

We were far enough from the other guests that no one heard, but something shifted in the air between us, and I could tell that they noticed. I kept my eyes on Sandro's.

"That's quite an assumption," I said. "We haven't even sat down yet."

"No," he agreed. "We haven't." He gestured toward the far end of the room, where a smaller table had been set apart from the rest. "Shall we?"

My father moved to follow. Sandro looked at him, just briefly, and something passed between them, some silent communication that I filed away even as it happened, even as I was already walking, already working.

My father stayed where he was.

I didn't look back.

The table had two chairs.

Of course it did.

I sat. He sat. A glass of wine appeared at my elbow almost immediately, which told me the staff had been watching for the signal. Everything about this man was signals. Everything about this house was choreography.

I picked up the glass.

"You're not what I expected," he said.

"What did you expect?"

"Something more—" He paused. Chose his word with care, or made a show of choosing it. Hard to tell which, with him. "Reluctant."

"The night is young."

He gave me a slow appraisal from head to toe and said. "Your father said you understood the arrangement."

"I understand it."

"And?"

"And I'm here, aren't I?"

He looked at me for a long moment. His eyes were dark brown, or possibly just dark in this light and they didn't give much away. That part I'd known from the photos. What the photos hadn't conveyed was the quality of his attention. He was the kind of man who listened like he was collecting evidence.

I was going to have to be careful.

More careful than I'd planned, and I'd planned quite a lot.

"You've done your research," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Everyone here tonight has done their research."

"On me specifically."

I took a sip of the wine. It was excellent, which I resented slightly because I'd wanted to be unimpressed by at least one thing. "You're the man my father is making a deal with. Of course I've done research."

"What did you find?"

What a question. I found bank records and body counts. I found three unsolved disappearances that stopped being mysterious if you knew where to look. I found a man who ran one of the most ruthless criminal operations in Europe with the kind of methodical patience that most people associated with accountants and serial killers.

"That you play chess," I said.

He blinked. First crack in his composure. A small crack though, but it made me impressed with myself nonetheless.

"Most people find the other things first," he said.

"The other things aren't interesting."

"And chess is."

"Chess tells me how someone thinks." I set my glass down. "You're not the kind of man who wins by force. You're the kind who waits until his opponent makes the move he planned for three turns ago." A pause. "That's more useful to know, at least to me “

Alessandro was watching me in silence again, and I immediately thought: he wasn't expecting this. He'd expected the performance my father had coached. The composed, compliant daughter. The piece that moves where it's told.

"And what does that tell you," he said slowly, "about how to handle me?"

"I haven't decided yet."

He leaned back in his chair. "Honesty," he said. "Interesting choice."

"Is it dishonest to tell you I haven't decided something?"

"Most people in your position would pretend to have a strategy. Make themselves seem more dangerous."

"I have a strategy," I said pleasantly. "I'm just not pretending it's more developed than it is."

Another silence. This time the silence felt like something I should be careful about.

"I'm going to be very straightforward with you," he said.

"Please."

"This marriage is a contract. It protects both families. It ends a conflict that has cost both sides more than either will admit." His voice was even. Factual. Like he was reading terms of service. "I don't expect love. I don't expect performance. I expect presence, discretion, and loyalty."

"Loyalty," I repeated.

"To this house. To the alliance. To—" He stopped. Something shifted in his face, brief and unreadable. "To me."

The way he said the last part was different from the rest of it. Not softer, exactly. But different. Like the word meant something specific that the rest of the sentence would never understand.

I held his gaze. "And what do I get?"

"Protection. Resources. The end of the war that's been killing your family's men for three years."

"And personally?”

He looked at me like I'd said something incredulous, which meant he'd expected me not to ask. Interesting. "What do you want, personally?"

Hmmmn. I wanted my brother to stop getting people killed on both sides of a pointless territorial dispute. I wanted my father to stop treating me like a currency he'd been saving. I wanted to look across a table at a man — this man, specifically — and know that every move he made was one I'd anticipated.

I wanted out of a life that had been built around me like a cage and dressed up to look like a palace.

"Autonomy," I said, keeping the rest of my thoughts to myself.

Something flickered in his eyes. "Within reason."

"That depends on your definition of reason."

"It depends on yours, too."

We looked at each other across the small table, across the wine and the crystal and the choreographed quiet of his choreographed house, and I immediately thought Alessandro is going to be a problem. Not because he was what I'd feared. Not because he was crueler or colder or more violent than I'd prepared for.

Because he was interesting. And I hadn't budgeted for that. Maybe because a lot of men in this world were very uninteresting.

"We should rejoin the others," he said, finally. He stood, and when he offered his hand to help me up, I took it before I'd consciously decided to.

His hand was warm. That surprised me too. I don't know what I'd expected, something colder, probably, something that matched the rest of what I thought I knew about him. But warm, and steady, and he didn't hold on a beat longer than necessary.

He just let go.

"Sandro," I said, trying the name out, watching his face when I said it.

He looked at me.

"I'm going to need the library," I said. "Wherever it is in this house. I need somewhere to think."

For the first time, the expression that crossed his face was something I recognized clearly. Something that looked, improbably, almost like amusement.

"Third floor," he said. "East wing. I'll have someone show you."

"I'll find it myself."

"I don't doubt it."

I walked back toward the gathering, and I did not look behind me, and I told myself very firmly that the warmth still faintly present in my right hand was residual body heat and nothing more.

It wasn't nothing more.

But I had four months of planning and a very precise list of objectives, and I was not about to let one warm handshake and a pair of unreadable dark eyes rewrite a single item on it.

Not yet.

Not until I understood him better.