Page 29 of Until You Break
I smirked faint, more reaction than I allowed often. Nonna’s words rang old and sharp, but cages had their uses.
Nonna kissed my jaw and drifted out, trailing rosemary and old soap, the smell of every absolution she ever gave me. The touch remained longer than it should have, like a coin pressed into a palm with a private blessing tucked under its weight.
Mama's heels talked before she did. Black silk. A small smile cut with iron. She crossed the kitchen like someone had measured the room to her stride. Her gaze came to me the way a general checks a standard before the march. “You look handsome, my son. Come.”
The corridor changed temperature when we entered it, or maybe that was me. Portraits lined both sides, men who died standing, women who taught them how. Ghosts that nodded when you passed, if you’d earned it.
A velvet box waited on the console outside my suite, black, neat, inevitable. Inside were white-gold cuff links, the crest cut so precise it could open a vein. Not a gift. A reminder. I fastened them, thumbs sure, and kept moving.
Her office smelled of cedar, paper, and the last smoke-ghost of a clove cigar. Curtains sliced light into obedient ribbons. The clock on the credenza ticked with the kind of patience that teaches lesser men to sweat.
She indicated a chair. I stayed standing.
“When your father died.” Her fingertips rested on the frame that always lived on her desk. “It wasn’t quiet. A monster signed a paper and called it business.” One heartbeat, two. “He was my true love.”
Me at sixteen, rain glassing the windows, iron-coin in my mouth because I’d bitten my tongue to keep from making a sound. Her voice had been steady enough to build a house on that day. It was steady now.
“Everything after.” Her eyes stayed on the photograph. “I built to protect what was ours. When I look at you, I see him. The man who finishes. Tell me, was I right, Damiano? Was he the boy you couldn’t look away from, even that first night?”
I stayed silent, but she didn’t need me to answer. Her gaze sharpened like she already knew. “Your father had that look once, when he saw Isa across a room. It was the look that builds or burns everything after. You have it now. And it doesn’t let go.”
Her voice softened only at the edges, iron wrapped in smoke. “I built this empire from blood and Isa’s ghost. You’ll carry it further. Don’t mistake this for mercy. It’s command.”
Her mouth curved, not soft. “Good. That’s law.” She studied me for a long moment, eyes narrowing as if testing the edge of steel. Then, quieter, “You have your father’s mouth when you’re cruel. And my patience when you choose it.”
“I choose it.”
“Bene.” She stepped around the desk and corrected a flaw only she could see in my tie with two precise fingers, the small claiming touch she never used without reason. Her voice dropped, quieter than the clock. “He doesn’t know about the wedding, does he?”
“No.”
“Good. He knows what he needs to know. The rest is mercy.”
Mercy. Emilio would call it blindness. By nightfall, he would learn how much of his silence had been carved into law without him.
For once, Mama didn’t add the final word. “All right, I should get ready for today.” She left the room casually.
The corridor narrowed when I walked it alone, portraits leaning in as if to test my shoulders. My father’s absence pressed behind me, my mother’s pride at my side, and ahead, Emilio.
Always Emilio.
My phone buzzed. Blue light climbed my skin, cold and possessive. His room.
Curtains were drawn but not all the way. Through the camera, I watched him sleep—curled on the bed’s edge, hair spread across his face, my shirt slipping from one shoulder where the collar had gaped. He lay pale in the morning light.
Even asleep he shifted under the sheet, the hem of my shirt sliding higher on his thigh as he turned in a dream. A hand raised and fell again, a finger twitched, a foot shifted in small, unconscious movements. He made no sound. My jaw tightened. Heat crawled up under my collar, the kind that came with wanting to touch what I shouldn’t. If the cameras caught this, they caught too much. The memory of forcing his mouth on me last night only sharpened the possessiveness that bordered on violence. And today, our wedding would make it law.
Every chair is a weapon, she’d been right. And tonight, Emilio would be the sharpest blade in the room, seated where I chose.
He didn’t know I was watching. Still sleeping, he stirred sometimes, prey turning in a dream. Each faint movement hooked me tighter. I imagined him under chandeliers, throat exposed, lace collar biting light, every eye tracing what already belonged to me. If anyone dared notice the bruise, dared comment, I’d carve the answer into their silence.
By nightfall he’d be more than this shadow in silk. Before them all, he’d be mine. The families would measure his throat, his spine, the weight of his obedience. They’d call it ceremony. I’d call it law. And beneath the steel, I couldn’t stop the flicker of something sharper, of excitement. I remembered the shy boy with the wide eyes and the sketchbook. Now he’d sit beside me, not as memory but as possession.
I let the screen go dark, but his ghost clung anyway, cedar and paint and the faint ache of a mouth that hadn’t learned surrender but already wore it. I imagined the vows I’d force him to say, the words that would carve his silence into public law.
My family laughed like it was a wedding, my mother schemed like it was a war, but only I knew the truth. Emilio was both.
CHAPTER 10
