Page 18 of Ruthless Silence
Everything I own spreads before me. Simple clothes that look like rags compared to what could fill that enormous closet. My life in Rome reduced to fabric and memories. At the bottom, my origami paper.
My fingers find the familiar squares, muscle memory taking over. The crane begins to form, precise folds bringing order to chaos. Dante's book lowers slightly. He's watching my hands work, checking this weakness perhaps. This need for control through creation.
"Stop staring," I sign one-handed, not breaking the rhythm of my folding.
"You're in my room," he signs back. "I'll look if I want."
The first real claim he's made. His room, his right to observe. The words make my stomach flip. His room. His right. His wife. Each possession burns like a brand, marking me as his property. I should rage against it. Instead, heat floods my core.
The crane takes shape under my fingers while his ownership settles over me like a shroud.
The wedding dress has become unbearable. Heavy, suffocating, stinking of incense and failed murder. I need it off. Need to shed this costume of innocence I wore while trying to kill my husband in God's house.
I grab my nightgown from the suitcase. Soft cotton, worn thin from years of wear. Nothing special. Nothing seductive. Just mine.
"Turn around," I sign.
He tilts his head, considering. For a moment I think he'll refuse, claim that right too. Then slowly, deliberately, he turns his chair to face the windows. Giving me privacy I didn't expect.
I've never undressed in front of a man. Even with his back turned, I feel his presence like hands on my skin. Is this what wives do? This strange dance of modesty and possession?
The dress pools at my feet. Each button released feels like accepting defeat. The fabric whispers against my skin as it falls, taking with it the last of my armor. The nightgown slides on, soft and vulnerable against skin used to sharp edges.
"I'm done." The English feels wrong, too sharp. In Italian, I would know how to make it sound like a threat. In English, I sound like a child announcing she's finished her vegetables.
He turns back, eyes traveling the length of me once. Not leering. Not lustful. Just taking inventory of what's his now. The possessive weight of that gaze makes heat pool between my thighs, and I hate myself for the wetness gathering there.
I dive for the bed, pulling covers high like a shield.
The lights go out, leaving only moonlight streaming through those enormous windows.
I lie rigid in his bed while he settles into the chair, both of us maintaining the fiction of sleep. The sheets are silk, cool against my overheated skin. Everything smells like him. Cigarettes and expensive cologne, but also something else. Male. Dangerous. My exhausted body sinks into the mattress while my pussy throbs with unwanted awareness of him watching from the darkness.
His breathing fills the silence. Controlled, measured, completely awake. The leather creaks with each subtle shift of his weight. He's monitoring me. Waiting.
The moonlight catches something on the side table near his chair. A book perhaps, or his phone. His hands rest empty on the armrests, no weapons, just patient stillness. He's unarmed while watching me sleep. The restraint in it, the deliberate vulnerability, makes my stomach clench. My enemy refuses to arm himself against me, and I'm wet from the thought. What kind of monster am I becoming in his presence?
I test him, reaching slowly toward the nightstand where Papa's blade rests.
His breathing changes. Just slightly. A warning without words. I freeze, hand extended in the moonlight between us. The leather creaks once more. Acknowledgment that he sees, he knows, he's allowing this much but no more.
My fingers ache to grab it, to try again, but his breathing keeps me frozen. Even exhausted, even desperate, I'm learning his language of silence.
My hand retreats. His breathing returns to that steady rhythm. He's the wolf. I'm supposed to be the hunter. But in his domain, in his bed, I feel like the rabbit with nowhere to run.
How am I supposed to sleep with my enemy watching from the darkness? Every breath he takes reminds me I'm not alone. I'm trapped in his bed while he guards me from that chair. Or guards himself from me. I can't tell anymore.
My hands move in the darkness, knowing he can see despite the shadows: "I still hate you."
Silence stretches between us, long enough I think he won't respond. Then his hands rise, silver from moonlight as he signs back: "Hate me better tomorrow."
The words burrow under my skin like he's planting seeds in my hatred, nurturing it into something else. Something thatmakes my thighs clench and my breath catch. I came here to kill him, but my body wants to climb from this bed and… No.That's exhaustion talking. Tomorrow I'll remember why I hate him.
The repetition sounds different now. Less mocking, more… encouraging? Like he needs my hatred as much as I need to give it. Like we're both playing roles in a tragedy written before we were born.
Exhaustion pulls at me like undertow, the jet lag finally winning against adrenaline.
My body grows heavy despite my mind's protests. Three days of no sleep, crossing an ocean, attempting murder, and now lying in my enemy's bed while he watches. It's too much. Even hatred can't keep me conscious forever.
