It had just been waiting.
Waiting for someone who already knew how to tend wild gardens.
Someone who understood that the most beautiful things often grew in the spaces between order and chaos.
Someone who’d been there all along, invisible as heartbreak, patient as prayer.
Chapter Two
SIENAH POSADA LEARNEDthe art of invisibility the day she and her mother moved into the Cannizzaro compound. Sixteen years old, all knees and elbows and dreams too big for a housekeeper’s daughter, she’d promised herself she’d be nothing but professional. A ghost who cleaned. A shadow who served.
That resolution lasted exactly forty-seven minutes.
Because that’s when Aivan Cannizzaro walked through the front door, still in his racing suit from practice, smelling like burnt rubber and expensive cologne and pure, distilled trouble. Twenty-five years old. Already making headlines. Already breaking hearts across three continents.
Already making her forget her own name.
“You’re new,” he said, those dark eyes sliding over her once before dismissing her entirely.
Not a question. Just an observation filed away with all the other household changes he’d catalog and forget by dinner.
“Sì,signore. I’m Sienah. Lynnette’s daughter.”
He was already walking away, peeling off his gloves, tossing them on the console table she’d just polished. The leather left marks. She’d have to clean it again.
She didn’t mind. In fact, she spent an embarrassing amount of time later touching those exact marks, wondering if they were still warm from his hands.
Pathetic?Yes. Did she care?Not even a little.
What followed were three years of exquisite torture wrapped in Egyptian cotton sheets and served with perfectly brewed espresso. Three years of watching him move through the world like he owned it, which he essentially did. Three years of memorizing every detail about a man who looked through her like she was made of glass.
At first, she was just confused by her own reactions. Why did her stomach flip when he entered a room? Why did her hands shake when she collected his coffee cups? Why did she find herself volunteering for every task that might put her in his vicinity?
“You’re hovering,”Mama observed one day when Sienah had cleaned the same mirror three times because Aivan was on the phone in the next room.
“I just want to make sure...”
