Chapter 13: Devotion in Darkness
The lamp’s glow was the color of old honey, pooling on the floorboards between their discarded clothes. Bella lay still, trying to quiet her breathing, but every nerve was alive. Sandro’s hand was still on her hip, his touch impossibly warm, his fingers resting lightly on the very marks she’d spent a lifetime hiding.
He’d kissed her. Really kissed her. Not just possession, but something that felt like conversation. It was worse than the chapel. That had been a violation of place, of dogma. This felt like a violation of her own resolve.
“Why do you hide these?” His voice was a low rumble in the quiet room, his thumb stroking a faint, silvery line on her flank.
She stiffened. “They’re ugly.”
“They’re not.” He said it simply, a statement of fact. He shifted, his body curling around hers, his chest a solid wall of heat against her back. His lips brushed the spot where his teeth had bitten her shoulder. A brand. A claim. “They’re proof of life. Of a body that changes, survives. You see flaws. I see a map of a real woman.”
Bella blinked hard, staring at the grain of the wood on the far wall. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t be nice about it. Just take what you want and let me hate you. It’s easier.”
He was quiet for a long moment. The clock ticked in the hall. Then he let out a short, quiet breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Easy was never the point, Isabella.”
He rolled onto his back, one arm tucked behind his head. The movement broke the contact, and the cool air rushed in to take his place. She missed it immediately, a traitorous ache in her bones. She stayed facing away, pulling the sheet up to her chin.
“Look at me,” he said.
She didn’t move.
“Bella.”
The use of the nickname did it. She turned her head on the pillow. He was watching her, his dark eyes unreadable in the half-light. He looked younger like this, the ruthless Don stripped away, leaving just a man in a rumpled bed.
“Your family’s debt is cleared,” he said, his tone conversational, as if discussing the weather. “The paperwork was finalized this afternoon. The bakery is free and clear.”
The air left her lungs. Just like that. The weight that had been crushing her mother, crushing her, for years—gone. A single afternoon’s work for him. Tears, hot and sudden, welled in her eyes. She fought them, turning her face back into the pillow. It was the bargain. Her body for their freedom. So why did it feel like a cage door slamming shut instead of opening?
“Thank you,” she whispered, the words muffled and thick.
“Don’t thank me.” His voice held a sharp edge. “It wasn’t a gift. It was a purchase.”
She flinched. “I know what I am.”
Suddenly, his hand was on her jaw, turning her face back to him. His grip wasn’t cruel, but it was immovable. “You don’t. You have no idea.” His gaze searched her face, lingering on her wet lashes. “You think this is about a debt? That was just the key to the door. I saw you six months ago. In that little shop, covered in flour, laughing with some old woman about a burnt loaf. You glowed. Like you’d swallowed the sun.”
She stared at him, stunned. Six months?
“I watched you,” he admitted, his thumb brushing a tear from her cheek. “I had men tell me about your father’s problems. I waited. I could have cleared the debt then. But you would have taken the money and hated me from afar. This way… this way, you’re here.”
The confession was more intimate than anything they’d done with their bodies. It was a calculated, patient hunting. It should have terrified her. Part of her was screaming. But another part, a part she despised, felt a dangerous, thrilling pull.
“You’re a monster,” she breathed, but there was no force behind it.
A faint, hard smile touched his lips. “Yes. But I’m your monster now.” He released her jaw, his hand sliding down to cover hers where it clutched the sheet. “The chapel… that was for me. To break the saint in you. This,” he said, gesturing to the bed, the quiet, the shared space, “this is for you. To see the man in me.”
“I don’t want to see him.”
“Too late.”
He sat up, the sheets falling to his waist. The lamplight caught the scars on his torso, the powerful lines of his shoulders. He reached for his phone on the nightstand. The ordinary gesture was jarring. “Your mother called the house phone while you were sleeping. She was… concerned. I told her you were safe. That you’d be home tomorrow for a visit.”
Bella pushed herself up on her elbows. “You spoke to my mother?”
“I’m not a barbarian. She was crying. It was… inconvenient.” He scrolled through the phone, his expression shifting back to that of the Don, cool and impervious. The vulnerable man was gone, tucked away. “You’ll go see her. You’ll tell her the debt is gone. You will not tell her the terms. You will smile. You will let her believe whatever she needs to believe to sleep at night.”
“And what will I believe?” The question slipped out, raw and honest.
He looked at her then, and the intensity in his eyes pinned her to the bed. “You will believe that this is where you belong. It will take time. But you will believe it.”
He stood, walking naked to the window, a silhouette against the deep blue of the pre-dawn sky. “Get dressed. I’m taking you to the city today. You need clothes that aren’t borrowed nightgowns or flour-dusted aprons.”
“I don’t want your clothes.”
“You don’t get a choice,” he said, not turning around. “This isn’t a negotiation, Bella. It’s an assimilation. You can fight it every step, and I’ll enjoy the struggle. Or you can find a way to live in it. But you are here. The door is locked from the outside.”
She watched him, the absolute certainty in his posture. The debt was gone. Her old life was over. The chapel had been a desecration. This room, this quiet morning after, felt like the first day of a much longer, more complicated sentence.
And the most terrifying part was, as she looked at the man who owned her, she couldn’t tell if the flutter in her stomach was dread or the first, fatal stir of something else entirely.