The villa had a heartbeat of its own.
It pulsed through the marble floors and the high arched ceilings. By morning, it was too quiet, the kind of silence that presses against your ribs until you can't tell if it's the air that's heavy or your own thoughts.
I sat by the window in our bedroom, sunlight spilling across the floor in pale gold. Below, the courtyard was empty except for a few guards drifting like shadows between the olive trees. Dante was gone. He hadn't said where. He never did.
He'd kissed the top of my head before leaving, a soft, almost tender gesture that didn't match the cold set of his jaw. "Don't leave the villa," he'd murmured, a command disguised as care.
Now, hours later, the echo of those words crawled under my skin.
I'd tried to read. To rest. To pretend the walls weren't closing in. But the air in this house felt… watched. Every time I turned a corner, I swore I felt eyes on me, silent, unseen, waiting.
I wasn't being ignored. Far from it.
The guards acknowledged me with stiff nods, the maids moved around me carefully, their eyes lowered, their smiles too polite. Dante had told them all: She is to be obeyed.
But obedience wasn't warmth.
It was another kind of prison.
I could still feel the ghost of his hands from the night before, the way he'd pinned me to that door, kissed me like he was trying to erase every thought that wasn't him. I hated how my body remembered it more vividly than my anger.
I pressed my palm against the window, watching a cloud drift lazily across the sun. For a moment, I imagined what freedom would taste like, air that didn't smell like expensive cologne and control.
The thought was a spark. Small. Dangerous. But it caught.
I rose to my feet, smoothing the silk robe he'd insisted I wear, the fabric whispering over my skin like a reminder of him. My reflection in the mirror met my gaze, pale, sharp-eyed, a stranger wearing my face.
"You're not his prisoner," I muttered under my breath. "You're not."
But even I didn't believe it.
The hallway outside was cool and dim, lined with old portraits, Bellanti ancestors, maybe. Men with hard eyes and women with secret smiles. I wondered if any of them had felt this way, trapped in luxury, drowning in silence.
My steps echoed softly as I walked, aimless at first. Then more deliberate. Past the dining hall, the private library, the marble staircase that curled down into the west wing.
I didn't know what I was looking for.
Maybe air. Maybe answers.
Maybe proof that I wasn't losing my mind in this gilded cage.
A flicker of movement caught my eye, one of the guards by the far end of the hall turned a corner. When he was gone, I noticed something I hadn't before: a narrow hallway partially hidden behind a tapestry.
Curiosity pulsed. Or maybe defiance.
Either way, I found myself walking toward it.
The villa had many rooms. But something told me this one, this hallway wasn't meant for me.
And that only made me want to see it more.
The tapestry shifted under my fingers, dust rising in faint gold motes through the filtered light. Behind it, the narrow passage was almost invisible, a strip of shadow carved into the villa's polished perfection. No one had cleaned here in years. Or maybe no one dared.
I hesitated for only a heartbeat before stepping inside.
The air was cooler, stiller. My slippers made no sound against the stone floor, and with every step I took, the hum of the villa faded until all I could hear was the soft rhythm of my own breath. The corridor curved gently, leading deeper into the west wing, a place Dante never took me.
At the end, there was a door.
It was heavy, made of dark oak and reinforced with steel. Not the kind of door that belonged in a home, but in a vault. Or a secret.
I pressed my hand against it. It didn't budge.
Locked.
My first instinct was to turn back, to pretend I hadn't found it, to slip back into my role as the beautiful, obedient wife. But curiosity has teeth. And I was tired of swallowing it.
I scanned the frame. No keypad. No visible lock. Just a sleek indentation where a handprint might fit. My pulse quickened. A biometric lock.
Dante's touch, and only his, could open this.
Frustration coiled low in my gut. I pressed my forehead to the door, feeling its chill against my skin. What are you hiding from me, Dante?
I'd thought I understood him, the dangerous charm, the control, the heat between us. But this? This room whispered of another life. One I wasn't meant to see.
Turning away, I caught sight of something glinting beneath a small table beside the wall. A fallen cufflink, dark gold, engraved with a symbol I didn't recognize. A serpent coiled around a dagger.
When I picked it up, a smear of red marked my thumb. Blood.
My breath caught. It wasn't dry.
I dropped the cufflink as though it burned. It landed with a sharp clink against the stone floor.
Before I could decide what to do, footsteps echoed down the main hallway, firm, deliberate. Someone was coming.
Panic flared. I slipped back through the tapestry, pressing myself against the wall just as one of Dante's guards passed the corridor. He didn't look my way, but his gaze lingered on the tapestry for half a second too long before he moved on.
He knew.
They all did.
I stood frozen until the sound of his boots faded, my pulse a drumbeat in my throat. Then, slowly, I made my way back to the main hall, my mind spinning, my heart thundering.
The house felt different now.
Colder.
Smarter.
Like every wall had eyes.
Before I reached our room again, the mirror above a vanity reflected my face, pale, tense, eyes sharp with something I hadn't seen before. Not fear. Not yet.
Suspicion.
And beneath it… a dangerous curiosity.