The Devil's Contract Bride

CHAPTER 4: BELLA

He wrote back.

I stood in the library at seven in the morning and read his line three times.

Then you're already losing.

I put the book down, walked to the window and told myself I was looking at the garden. I know I'm not looking at the garden.

The thing that bothered me, that I kept turning over while I learned the layout of the east wing and took note of which doors locked from the inside, was that it wasn't a threat. It was an answer. A real one, in eight words in pencil, from a man who could have written anything and chose that.

Like we were having a conversation.

I picked up the pencil three times. Put it down three times. The words were there — I never said I was trying to win — but he'd see through it immediately. He saw through most things immediately and that was precisely the problem.

I shelved the book in a slightly different position.

Just to see if he'd notice.

I learnt the rhythm of the house slowly. In my father's house, the rhythm was him — his moods, his movements, the way the whole building seemed to breathe differently depending on whether he was pleased.

In this house the center of gravity was Sandro. In such a way that you'd look up and realize, without knowing when it had happened, that you knew exactly where in the house he was.

I noticed I was doing it on the third day and found it deeply annoying.

Matteo found me that same day, in the corridor outside the east drawing room. He came from the left and stopped slightly closer than polite.

We did the thing where the words meant something else and both of us knew it and neither acknowledged it. He told me the women who understood what they were here for did well and that the ones who developed ambitions had a harder time.

I told him I found that conversation tedious.

Something shifted in his face then, and I didn't want to get ahead of myself but it looked almost like respect.

"Sandro said you were sharp," he said.

"Well, Sandro is generous."

"He's not generous. He's accurate." A pause. "He doesn't notice people, Isabella. He assesses them. Keeps them at a specific distance." He held my gaze. "He noticed you. In a way I haven't seen in fifteen years."

The corridor felt smaller suddenly.

"Are you warning me about him?" I said.

He straightened and the flatness in his expression came back. "I'm warning you about the situation. People get hurt when things get complicated. Usually the ones who could least afford it."

He walked away.

I stood there holding my face completely still until he was gone.

He noticed you. In a way I haven't seen before.

This was a problem. Not because I hadn't planned for being watched. But because of the specific quality of Matteo's concern. He wasn't afraid I'd manipulate Sandro. He was afraid something would go wrong for both of us.

That was a different kind of warning entirely.

That night, past ten, music came through the walls.

Piano. Someone was playing something classical. The kind you play when the thinking is heavy. I lay on the bed and listened.

It stopped after about an hour, I waited to see if it would start again, it didn't.

In the morning there was a knock before seven. Elena, holding a folded note.

I took it.

The library has better light in the morning. — S

I stood at my door and felt, with complete clarity, that I was in serious trouble.

I folded the note and put it next to the list of objectives I still checked every morning like a prayer, then I went to the library.

He was right, I thought to myself, the light was better.

I opened The Art of War to the front cover, read his line, picked up the pencil, and wrote two words underneath:

Define losing.

I put the book back.

I sat down in the chair by the window and waited, though I told myself I wasn't waiting, that I was reading, I was thinking, I was doing anything other than listening for footsteps in the hallway.

Twenty minutes passed and then I heard them. They stopped right outside the door, there was a long pause and then they moved away again. I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding.

On my way back to my room that evening I passed the library without going in.

The book was in a different position on the shelf.

He'd moved it back to where I'd originally put it.

Not to where he'd put it but to where I had.

I stood in the doorway for a long moment and thought about a man who noticed which chair was his and which way a book had been shelved and the specific difference between a cage and a choice and then I went to bed.

And as I lay there in the dark I admitted, quietly, to myself, that the plan I'd built over four months was beginning to develop a crack.

Just one, but a very big one right down the middle.