Chapter 4 - The Breaking PointI ran down the grand staircase, my bare feet hitting the marble steps with frantic speed.
The double doors of Enzo’s ground-floor study were completely splintered, hanging off their iron hinges. Inside, the room looked like a hurricane had ripped through it. Bookshelves were overturned, antique crystal decanters lay shattered in pools of amber liquor, and the heavy mahogany desk was gouged and scarred.
Enzo stood in the center of the wreckage.
His suit jacket was gone, his white shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing corded muscles and bruised knuckles. His breathing was heavy, ragged, his dark eyes blazing with a fury so intense it felt radioactive.
He heard my footsteps and whipped his head around.
"Get back to your room," he growled, his voice vibrating with suppressed violence.
"Was he here?" I asked, stepping over a broken crystal glass, refusing to retreat. "Did you see him?"
Enzo took a sharp step toward me, his face pale and contorted. "I told you to go to your room, Arya!"
"Stop treating me like a piece of furniture you can lock away when things get dangerous!" I yelled, the terror and frustration of three years finally erupting out of me like a volcano. "Dante was in this house! He walked right up to the library! He knows everything—he knows you ignore me, he knows we live like strangers, he knows this entire marriage is a sham!"
Enzo froze.
The fury in his eyes didn't vanish, but it shifted into something hollow, something devastatingly painful.
"A sham," he repeated quietly, the word tasting like poison on his tongue.
"Isn't it?" I stepped closer, tears hot and stinging in my eyes. "Three years, Enzo! Three years of sleeping in separate rooms, three years of silence, three years of acting like I'm invisible unless an audience is watching! If Dante wants to take me, why should I care? At least he looks at me like I'm a living person!"
The moment the words left my lips, I regretted them.
Enzo lunged forward.
It happened so fast I didn't even have time to blink. In two strides, he closed the distance between us, his hands shooting out to grip my shoulders. He didn't shake me; he slammed me back against the nearest unbroken wall, his body caging me in, his face inches from mine.
The heat radiating from him was scorching.
"You think I don't see you?" Enzo’s voice cracked, raw and bleeding with a desperation I had never heard in him before. "You think every second of every damn day I haven't tortured myself because the woman I wanted more than my own life was sitting across from me at a table, and I couldn't touch her?"
I stopped breathing. My eyes widened as I stared up at him. "What... what are you talking about?"
Enzo pressed his forehead against mine, his chest heaving, his dark eyes swimming with a torment that tore my heart apart.
"Why do you think I slept in the chair on our wedding night?" he whispered, his voice trembling. "Why do you think I kept my distance for three years? My father built this empire on blood and betrayal. Every enemy I’ve ever made, every monster I’ve ever put in the ground—they were all looking for a weakness. And the moment I looked at you on our wedding day, I knew you were mine. If I had touched you then—if I had let myself love you the way I wanted to—they would have torn you apart to get to me."
He gripped my shoulders tighter, his fingers digging into the fabric of my dress.
"You thought I didn't care," he choked out, a bitter, self-loathing laugh escaping his lips. "I was dying a slow death every single night, sleeping ten feet away from the only person I ever wanted, just to keep you breathing."
The anger inside me didn't just vanish; it melted away, replaced by an overwhelming, tidal wave of realization.
Before I could process the words, before I could even tell him how many lonely nights I had cried into my pillow, Enzo’s lips crashed down onto mine.
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It wasn't gentle. It was desperate, hungry, fierce, and raw—the explosion of three years of pent-up starvation, fear, and absolute devotion.
For the first time since we had said our vows, my husband truly touched me. And as his arms wrapped around my waist, lifting me against him as if he would never let go, I knew the war outside had only just begun.
