Chapter 5
1136 Words
The house moved around us with frantic, muffled urgency — footsteps, hurried whispers, doors opening and closing. But in my father’s study, everything felt still.
Too still.
The guard stood in the doorway, breath shaking, waiting for orders.
My father didn’t give any.
Massimo did.
“Clear the house,” he said, without looking away from me.
“No phones. No calls. No one leaves.”
The guard obeyed instantly — not because Massimo outranked him here.
But because his voice left no room for alternative outcomes.
The door closed.
We were alone.
My father sat slowly, as though the news had aged him decades in a single moment. But Massimo didn’t look at him. He didn’t look at anything except me.
“Sit,” he said.
It wasn’t a command.
It wasn’t even a request.
It was inevitability.
I sat on the edge of the desk, palms pressed into wood to keep my hands from trembling.
“So.” My voice felt too thin in the heavy room. “I’m dead now.”
His eyes flicked, barely, to my hands. He noticed everything.
“You’re not dead,” Massimo answered.
“But as of tonight, the world believes you are.”
I blinked. “Which means I disappear.”
“Which means,” he corrected quietly, “you become someone new.”
The room dimmed around the edges — not from darkness, but realization.
My life — my name — my existence outside this room — gone.
I swallowed hard. “How long until I’m myself again?”
His silence was the answer.
My throat tightened.
Forever.
He stepped closer — not invading my space, just closing the distance between two truths.
“If they believe you survived,” he said, voice quieter now, “they will try again. They won’t fail twice.”
“So I hide,” I whispered.
“No.” His voice sharpened, cutting through the air.
“You don’t hide.”
He looked at me the way someone looks at a map before choosing the path through fire.
“You return,” he said.
“Under my name.”
My heart beat once — too loud. “As your wife.”
“As my wife,” he confirmed.
The air between us shifted — slow, heavy, inevitable.
“And what,” I asked, voice barely steady, “does that actually mean, Massimo?”
His eyes held mine — unflinching.
“It means they can’t touch you,” he said.
“They can’t threaten you. They can’t speak your name without consequence.”
“And me?” My voice cracked. “What do I become?”
There was no hesitation in his reply.
“Untouchable.”
He didn’t say safe.
He didn’t say protected.
He said untouchable — as if safety was too small a word.
My father finally spoke, voice low and tired. “You will leave tonight. A private chapel. Papers will be prepared.”
I stared at him — at the man who had raised me, taught me to read, to speak, to be poised and obedient.
He couldn’t even look at me.
“Do I get to grieve my own life?” I asked him.
My father closed his eyes but did not answer.
It was Massimo who responded.
“No.”
Not cruel.
Not dismissive.
Honest.
Because grief was a luxury.
And luxury was gone.
My father stood and left the room — as if the conversation was finished. As if I had already agreed. As if I was already gone.
The door shut behind him.
Silence again.
Except this time it wasn’t empty.
It was charged.
Massimo stepped closer, stopping right in front of me — close enough that I could see the faint scar along his jaw, close enough to feel the warmth of him.
Close enough that the absence of touch felt like touch.
“You think I want this,” I whispered.
He didn’t look away.
“No.”
“You think I asked for it.”
“No.”
“Then why—”
“Because someone wants you dead,” he said quietly.
“And I will not allow that.”
Not I can’t.
Not I won’t let them.
I will not allow that.
It was not sentiment.
It was law.
My breath trembled. “Why do you care?”
The smallest pause.
So small I almost missed it.
Then:
“I don’t,” Massimo said.
My chest tightened — sharp and sudden — before I could school my expression. He saw it. Of course he saw it.
But he wasn’t finished.
“I don’t care the way you mean,” he clarified.
His voice softened — not in tone, but in temperature — something warmer beneath the ice.
“You are not a weakness,” he said.
“And you are not a pawn.”
My breath held.
“You are leverage.”
The words should have stung.
They didn’t.
Because there was something else hidden underneath — something unspoken, unformed, unnamed.
Something that felt like I see you.
I nodded slowly. “So that’s what I am to you.”
“No,” Massimo corrected.
And for the first time — the very first time — something broke through the steel in his voice.
“You are the only point on the board that matters now.”
My heart stopped.
He didn’t say it like affection.
He said it like strategy.
Which was worse.
Which was better.
I whispered, “I don’t know how to be what you need.”
“You already are,” he said.
There was no room for refusal.
No room for disbelief.
Only truth.
A knock sounded at the door.
Both of us turned.
One of Massimo’s men entered — black suit, expression unreadable.
“It’s time,” he said.
Massimo nodded once.
Then he looked at me.
Not as the man who saved me.
Not as the man I was being given to.
But as the man I would be tied to — irrevocably.
When he spoke, his voice was low, certain, absolute:
“Ophelia Hale died tonight.”
He extended his hand.
“Come with me.”
I stared at his hand — the simplest gesture, the smallest distance, and the most permanent choice.
My chest tightened.
My lungs burned.
My world narrowed to two words.
Yes.
Or no.
I placed my hand in his.
His fingers closed around mine — firm, steady, unshaken.
And my fate sealed itself.
Without ceremony.
Without vows.
Without love.
Only inevitability.
We walked toward the door.
But before we reached it, Massimo spoke again — so quietly I almost thought I imagined it.
“My name,” he said, like a promise or a threat.
“Is the only one you answer to now.”
- Writer
