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Zeno paused at the bottom of the steps. He seemed amused.
“Yes.”
“You’re married?”
“I have been for some time.”
Demitri stared at him as if Zeno had announced that the house had been built on the moon.
“You never mentioned it.”
“You were gone for ten years. I never got around to it.”
Zeno held Demitri’s gaze for another moment before turning toward the house. “You’ll meet Ayla shortly. She’s visiting with her father, but she shouldn’t be much longer.”
Demitri followed him up the first step.
“Do you have children?”
It was a cautious question. A hesitation so slight I might have missed it if I hadn't spent days studying every change in his voice.
Zeno stopped.
“Not yet.” His gaze moved toward one of the upper windows. “But we’re hopeful there will be soon.”
Hopeful.
It made the space around the word feel fragile. Then he looked at Demitri again. “You’ll like her.” Zeno’s mouth shifted at one corner. “She’s a little hellion.”
Stella made a quiet sound that might have been a laugh. Zeno glanced toward her.
“But she’s my hellion.”
The affection in his voice undid me. There was nothing gentle in the way Zeno laid claim to his wife. It sounded possessive. Absolute. As though the entire estate, every man at the gates, and every weapon hidden beneath tailored jackets existed for one purpose—to ensure the woman behind him remained untouched by the world. Yet beneath that possession was something softer. Reverence.
He looked toward the house again, and the distance returned to his eyes. For those few seconds, he didn't seem aware of any of us. Only her. Ayla. The woman who had turned a man like Zeno Orsini into someone who could stand beneath the pillars of his own fortress and look almost vulnerable.
I want that.
The thought entered so quietly that I couldn’t stop it.
I wanted someone to speak of me that way. I wanted to be someone’s certainty. Someone’s hellion. Someone’s reason to glance toward home and forget the rest of the world existed.
The longing embarrassed me. I lowered my eyes before anyone could see it.
Perhaps some women were given that kind of devotion. Perhaps others spent their lives watching it from the outside. I no longer knew which kind I was. I had once believed love would arrive gently, when it was ready. Now, after everything that had happened in the past few days, I wondered whether I would recognize it at all.
My gaze moved to Demitri. He was watching Zeno. There was a strange, unreadable quiet in his face. Then, as though he felt me looking, his eyes turned to mine. The world narrowed. The steps. The cold night air against my uncomfortable clothes. All of it receded beneath the weight of his stare.
His exhaustion had stripped something from him. The careful reserve he wore like another layer of clothing had thinned. His eyes looked darker without it. More human. More dangerous.
I wondered what he had seen on my face. The longing, perhaps. The loneliness. Or the foolish thought I had not been quick enough to bury. His gaze dropped briefly to my mouth. So briefly I might have imagined it. Then Stella spoke, and the moment broke.
“Inside,” she ordered. “Before all three of you collapse on my front steps.”
The entrance hall alone was larger than the church where I had found Demitri.
My footsteps softened against old rugs laid across honey-colored stone. A broad staircase curved upward beneath a vaulted ceiling painted with faded vines and angels. Heavy wooden beams crossed overhead. Portraits lined the walls, their subjects stern-faced and dressed in clothes from another era.
