Six more days bled into each other.
Alessia stopped speaking entirely. Not to the guards. Not to Signora Esposito. Not to the silence that filled her room like water. The meals arrived and left untouched. Her gray dress hung looser on her frame each time she caught her reflection in the mirror.
She did not catalogue anything. She did not test boundaries. She did not press the loose panel in the wardrobe or retrieve her hidden notebook. What was the point? She had mapped every exit in this cage and found none. The only door that had ever been open was the one she had walked through willingly—to his room, to his bed, to the warmth of his chest and the steady beat of his heart under her palm.
She had been a fool.
The cold weight in her chest had become a permanent thing. It pressed against her ribs when she breathed, ached when she moved, throbbed when she lay still in the dark and listened for footsteps that no longer came. He had stopped pausing outside her door. The study remained closed. No guard appeared with a clipped summons.
She told herself she did not care. She was ice. She was stone. She was exactly what he had told her she was.
You are not essential.
On the sixth night, she heard him.
The footsteps in the corridor were wrong. Heavy. Uneven. Stumbling. Not the measured stride of the don. Something broken.
The pounding on her door was not a knock. It was a fist against wood, desperate and demanding.
"Alessia," Enzo said. His voice was rough, slurred, stripped of every layer of control she had ever catalogued.
She sat up in bed, her heart slamming against her ribs. The door rattled under his hand.
"Open the door," Enzo said.
She did not move. Her fingers gripped the sheets, knuckles white. The cold weight in her chest had become a block of ice, and she could not breathe around it.
The pounding stopped. Silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
"Please," Enzo said. His voice was lower now, ragged, scraped raw.
The word cracked something open inside her. She had never heard him say it. Not to anyone. Not once.
She rose on unsteady legs and crossed to the door. Her hand hovered over the lock. She thought of every cruel word. You belong to me now. You are a weapon. Do not think because you spread your legs for me that the contract has changed. You are not essential.
She turned the lock and opened the door.
He stood in the corridor, shirtless, barefoot, his dark hair disheveled. The scar through his eyebrow was pale in the dim light. His eyes were red-rimmed, wild, nothing like the cold assessment she had memorized. He reeked of whiskey and something else—something that smelled like ruin.
"Enzo," Alessia said. Just his name. Nothing else.
He moved fast. His hands caught her face, tilting her head back, and his mouth crashed into hers. Not gentle. Not controlled. Desperate. Hungry. A kiss that tasted like whiskey and grief and everything he could not say. His body pressed her back against the doorframe, hard and hot and shaking.
She kissed him back for one breathless moment—her body betraying her before her mind could catch up. Then the ice returned. She remembered the cold dismissal in his study. The way he had looked at her like she was nothing.
Her hands came up and slammed against his bare chest.
"No," Alessia said. The word tore out of her, raw and jagged.
He stumbled back a step, his eyes wild, uncomprehending. His chest heaved. The scars on his torso caught the dim light—the thin ridge over his ribs, the knot near his shoulder, every mark a map of violence she had traced with her fingers in the dark.
"You said you could have any woman," Alessia said. Her voice shook, but she did not lower it. "So go on. Have them. Get out."
He froze. The words hit him like a physical blow. She watched him absorb them, watched the flicker of shock move through his shattered eyes. No one had ever spoken to him like this. No one had ever dared.
"Alessia—" Enzo started.
She shoved him. Her palms connected with his bare chest, hard muscle and warm skin, and he stumbled back another step. She advanced on him, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her entire body trembling.
"You take everything from me," Alessia said. Her voice broke on the words. She hit his chest again. "My life." Another hit. "My heart." Her fist connected with his shoulder. "My body." She struck him again, and this time her hand caught the scar over his ribs. "My brother."
He did not block her. He did not move. He stood there, shirtless and broken, and let her hit him.
"You take and you take and you take," Alessia said. Her voice rose, cracking, splintering into something that was not anger anymore. Something rawer. "And you give me nothing. Nothing but cruelty and cold and—"
Her legs buckled.
She fell to her knees on the cold marble floor, the impact jarring through her bones. The sobs tore out of her, ugly and uncontrolled, her shoulders shaking. She pressed her hands flat against the stone as if she could hold herself together through sheer force of will, but her body would not obey. She crumpled forward, her forehead nearly touching the floor, her entire frame wracked with tremors.
She had not cried like this since the first night, since the blood on her knees and the lock clicking from the outside. She had held everything inside, catalogued every wound, built walls out of every sharp word. And now the walls were gone. There was nothing left but the wreckage.
"Leave," Alessia said. Her voice was muffled, broken, barely audible. "I said leave."
Enzo stood over her. His hand lifted—reached for her shoulder, her hair, something—and hovered there. She did not look up. She could not look at him. She could only press her forehead to the cold floor and sob until there was nothing left.
His hand fell.
He turned.
His footsteps retreated down the corridor, unsteady, fading into the dark.
In the corridor near the staircase, Signora Esposito stood frozen. The glass of water in her hand trembled slightly. Behind her, a young guard—new to the villa, still learning the rhythm of this place—stood with his mouth slightly open, his gaze fixed on the closed door where the don had just been refused.
He had heard everything. They had all heard everything. The shouting. The hitting. The collapse. The don, shirtless and reeking of whiskey, walking away from a woman sobbing on the floor.
Signora Esposito turned and walked back toward the kitchen without a word. The guard followed, his face pale, his footsteps silent on the marble.
The villa was quiet.
But the walls had ears.
And somewhere in his study, Enzo Moretti sat alone in the dark, the taste of her still on his lips, the echo of her sobs still ringing in his skull. He had broken something he did not know how to fix.