Married to a Scandal

~CHAPTER X~

Luca's POV

The Whitfield Foundation gala was the fourth time this month Luca had to pretend to be the devoted husband, and by now, it felt automatic. He no longer needed to think about the steps. His hand rested on the small of her back, keeping them at just the right distance for photos. He laughed on cue, whether or not she was actually being funny. He smiled at the right moments, leaned in at the right angles, played his role with the ease of a man who had been performing his entire life.

Selene moved beside him like she had been born for rooms like this—poised, polished, untouchable. Her smile never wavered, her posture never slipped, her composure never cracked. She was a fortress in silk, and Luca found himself watching her more than he should have.

"You're doing the thing again," she murmured, smiling for a photographer three feet away.

"What thing?"

"The thing where your hand ends up somewhere it doesn't need to be for the photo to work."

"It's called commitment to the role." He leaned in slightly, close enough that his mouth nearly grazed her ear. He felt the almost imperceptible hitch in her breath before she covered it, and something in his chest tightened with satisfaction. "Besides," he continued, his voice low and warm, "if I'm going to be photographed pretending to adore you, I might as well enjoy the pretending."

"That's not what pretending means."

"It's exactly what pretending means." He straightened, smiling at the next group of guests coming their way. "You're just not good at it."

He leaned in again, his voice dropping to something almost intimate. "Careful, wife. People will start thinking you like me."

"People already think that." She kept her smile perfectly in place. "That's the whole point of tonight."

"I meant you," he said.

He watched her face carefully, waiting for the c***k. And there it was, a fleeting flicker of something real, something unguarded, there and gone before any camera could catch it. She smoothed it over with practiced ease, but he had seen it.

For reasons he refused to examine too closely, he treasured those glimpses. They made her feel less like a stranger and more like someone he was beginning to understand.

They managed forty minutes of effortless mingling, the rhythm of the party swallowing them whole. Luca smiled and nodded and made small talk with people whose names he had forgotten the moment they were introduced. Selene stayed close, her presence a constant, steady warmth at his side.

When his phone finally buzzed in his pocket, Luca didn't even need to look at the screen. He knew exactly what it would say.

FATHER: Don't forget the family dinner by eight. Do NOT be late.

He stared at the screen, feeling the familiar, heavy weight of family obligation drag him under. Those two words—family dinner—never failed to drain the air right out of his chest.

"We have somewhere to be," he said, pocketing the phone.

"Should I be worried?"

"Only if you like a side of psychological warfare with your appetiser." He forced a dark chuckle, but there was no humour in it. "Trust me, the tension is always the main course."

The Kensington family dinners were a total performance, hosted in a dining room built specifically for the show. The lighting was low, the table was long, and the massive chandelier made everyone look far more important than they actually were. It was the kind of room designed to intimidate, to remind everyone in it exactly where they stood in the hierarchy.

Robert took his usual spot at the head. Ingrid sat beside him, wearing ivory again, a deliberate choice, Luca knew, a silent declaration of her place in the family. Directly across from him sat Julian, with Isabella playing the perfect spouse beside him.

Luca took his seat beside Selene, his posture relaxed, his smile easy. He had been doing this his entire life. He knew how to survive rooms like this. But tonight, he wasn't alone. And that changed everything.

"Selene," Julian said warmly, the warmth doing absolutely nothing to disguise the calculation underneath it. "How are you finding married life? I imagine it's been... eventful."

"It's been interesting," Selene said, smooth as glass. She picked up her wine glass, letting the pause stretch just long enough to make Julian uncomfortable.

"I'll bet." Julian's smile widened, and Luca recognised the shape of what was coming. Julian had never once managed to disguise a jab as anything other than exactly what it was. "It must be humbling, though. Marrying a man the tabloids can't stop writing about. And not for anything you'd want printed on a billboard."

"Julian," Robert said. His tone was perfectly mild, the effortless warning of a man who loved to pull strings from the shadows while keeping his own hands completely clean.

"Congratulations, by the way." Isabella cut neatly across whatever Julian had been building toward, her voice light and pleasant. "On Meridian. Managing Director, at your first real posting."

She said it lightly, reaching for her wine, but there was an edge underneath it, aimed squarely at her husband rather than at Luca.

Julian's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "It's a failing textiles subsidiary, Isabella. It's not exactly a coronation."

"It's still something," Isabella said, her smile sharp as glass.

Julian turned back to Selene with the same warm, fake smile, clearly determined to land somewhere. "Does it bother you? Being the one who has to clean up after him?" He tilted his head, his eyes glinting with malice. "I would imagine crisis management gets exhausting when the crisis lives in your own house."

Luca felt his jaw tighten. He opened his mouth to respond, to deflect, to do what he always did, turn it into a joke, make himself small, make himself harmless.

But before he could say a word, Selene reached out and firmly locked her hand in his, right on top of the tablecloth.

It was a calculated move for the audience at the table, Luca knew that. She was performing, just like him. But the sudden, steady heat of her skin against his palm slipped entirely past his guard. His breath caught, just for a second, and he felt something shift in his chest, something he couldn't name and didn't want to examine.

"It doesn't bother me at all," she said, her smile warm, bright, and completely convincing. "If anything, I feel sorry for anyone who sat back waiting for him to fail, and now has to watch him do the exact opposite."

She let her gaze rest on Julian for a precise, icy beat. "Constant disappointment must take a serious toll."

A heavy silence filled the room. Julian opened his mouth to snap back, then closed it again, found no words, and settled for a look of pure, impotent rage. The only person enjoying this was Isabella, and Luca watched as she struggled and failed to hide her amusement.

"Anyway," Selene said, reaching for her water like she hadn't just said anything at all, "I hear the second course is fish. I hope it's better than the conversation."

The clatter of silverware and polite chatter swallowed the rest of the dinner. Luca smiled and nodded, and made appropriate noises at appropriate times. But he didn't hear a word of it.

He was staring at her hand.

It was no longer touching his, but it was close enough on the tablecloth that he could still feel the warmth of her palm against his. The sudden lack of her weight against his hand felt like a hollow pull in his chest, a ghost-touch he couldn't shake.

She had defended him. She had taken his hand in front of his family and defended him. No one had ever done that before. Not once in his entire life.

He forced himself to look away, to focus on the conversation, to be present in the room. But the memory of her fingers laced through his lingered, stubborn and unwelcome.

The moment the heavy car doors clicked shut, the glittering, suffocating world of the Kensingtons vanished. The privacy glass rolled up with a soft, definitive hum, cutting off the rest of the world and trapping them together in the quiet.

Outside, the neon pulse of the city began to slide past the tinted windows in a blur of gold and shadow. Luca sat in the heavy dark, watching the light catch the sharp edge of Selene's profile. The silence between them was different tonight, less hostile, more charged with something he couldn't quite name.

"You didn't have to do that," he said finally.

"Do what?"

"You defended me tonight." His voice was quiet, stripped of its usual lazy charm. He searched her face, catching an emotion he couldn't quite name, something raw and completely unfinished. "It wasn't in the contract, Selene."

"No." She kept her gaze fixed on the window, watching the city blur past. "It wasn't."

She offered nothing further, and for once, he didn't push for answers. Instead of the usual stiffness, the air inside the car grew thick and surprisingly warm. It felt like a fragile truce, the heavy prelude to a confession neither of them had the courage to voice.

Luca stared at her profile, his mind racing.

She had taken his hand as if it was a natural thing to do. She had defended him in front of his family, the family that had spent years tearing him down. She had made him feel, for one brief, disorienting moment, like he wasn't alone.

Sitting there in the quiet car, reality finally caught up to him.

He didn't know his wife at all.

In fact, he understood her less today than the day they married.

And for the first time in his life, that terrified him more than any of his plans ever had.