Chapter 1: Bound and Giggling
Golden afternoon light spilled through the sheer curtains, painting lace shadows across the tangled sheets. The air in Gabriella’s bedroom was warm and sweet, thick with the scent of lavender from the dryer sheets and something else, something like the sugary remains of morning pastries.
Gabriella Brignoni took a slow, controlled breath, focusing on the blush-painted wall opposite her canopy bed. She refused to give them the satisfaction. Her wrists ached where the soft, pink silk ropes bit into her olive skin—not enough to hurt, just enough to remind her she was thoroughly, humiliatingly trapped. Ankles, too, secured to the opposite bedposts with infuriating neatness. Her long dark curls were fanned out across the pillow, a stark contrast to the pale gold of the linen.
“You’re being dramatic, Ella,” Amalia said, her voice a calm, smooth river running through the tense quiet. She stood by the dresser, examining her own reflection as she meticulously rolled up the sleeves of her cream linen shirt. Tall, sleek, and utterly composed. “It’s just a game.”
“A game you rigged!” Gabriella shot back, straining against the knots. They held firm. Of course they did. Amalia tied sailing knots. “You ambushed me. That’s a war crime.”
Raena bounced onto the edge of the mattress, sending a ripple through Gabriella’s bound form. Her wild auburn curls caught the sun like coils of fire, her freckled face alight with uncontainable glee. “You stole my last mochi ice cream. That was the crime. This is the sentencing.”
“It was in the freezer! It was community property!”
“My name was on the box, you liar.” Raena’s grin widened. She leaned in, her voice a singsong whisper. “You’re already sweating. You’re nervous.”
“I’m boiling. You two heated the room like it’s a sauna.”
“Coincidence,” Amalia said, finally turning from the mirror. Her keen brown eyes settled on Gabriella with the focus of a cat watching a mousehole. She approached the bed with a predatory silence. “We just want the truth. That’s all. Where were you last night? You came in at, what, three AM? Smelling like sandalwood and poor decisions.”
Gabriella clenched her jaw. “None of your business.”
“Everything about you is our business,” Amalia corrected softly. She sat on the edge of the bed, the frame creaking. Her fingertips, cool and precise, brushed a stray hair from Gabriella’s forehead. The touch was deceptively gentle. “You’ve been secretive. You’re texting someone with a smiley face lock on their messages. You’re sighing at your phone. It’s revolting.”
“And you’re paranoid.”
“We’re curious,” Raena chirped, scooting closer. Her fingers wiggled in the air near Gabriella’s ribcage. “And we have proven, scientific methods for inquiry.”
Panic, bright and fizzy, shot through Gabriella’s veins. She tried to buck, but the ropes limited her to a feeble twist. “Don’t you dare. I will scream. I will tell Nonna you defaced her gardenias with spray paint last summer, Rae.”
Raena paused, her grin faltering for a half-second. “That was a communal effort.”
“And I will tell Mama you used her good velvet pillows to build that fort for your ‘atmospheric studying’,” Gabriella fired at Amalia.
Amalia didn’t even blink. “She already knows. I told her. Transparency, Ella. It’s a thing.” She leaned forward, her eyes tracing a path from Gabriella’s throat, down to her sides, draped in just a thin cotton camisole. “You have two options. The easy way, where you just tell us his name. Or the hard way.”
“There is no hard way,” Gabriella scoffed, tilting her chin up. “I’m not ticklish.”
The lie hung in the fragrant air, obvious and pathetic.
Raena snorted. Amalia just smiled, a slow, terrifying curve of her lips. “Right,” she breathed. “Of course not.”
Gabriella saw the shift. The moment of play was over. The interrogation had begun.
Amalia’s hand moved with deliberate, slow-motion clarity. She didn’t go for the obvious spots. Instead, she hooked a finger under the edge of the surgical tape—leftover from Raena’s ill-advised hair highlighting project—that was pathetically stuck to the sheet near Gabriella’s left underarm. A stupid, flimsy barrier.
“What are you doing?” Gabriella’s voice cracked.
“Removing the evidence,” Amalia said, her tone clinical. She pinched the tape’s edge between her thumb and forefinger.
The peel was agonizingly slow. The adhesive tugged at the fine hairs, then at the incredibly sensitive skin of her underarm. Gabriella gasped, a short, sharp intake of breath. Her body went rigid, every muscle locking down in anticipation of the exposure. The sound of the tape separating was obscenely loud in the quiet room.
As the last inch pulled free, exposing the vulnerable hollow, Raena struck.
Her fingers were a burst of frantic energy, spider-walking up the arch of Gabriella’s bare foot.
The sensation wasn’t a choice. It was a circuit overload. A shriek tore from Gabriella’s throat—high, helpless, and utterly genuine. Her back arched off the bed as much as the ropes allowed, a strangled laugh already mixing with the scream.
“He’s a barista!” she yelped, the words exploding out of her.
The fingers on her foot froze. Amalia’s hand hovered over her underarm.
“A barista,” Amalia repeated, deadpan.
“At the Artisan Bean on Elm!” Gabriella panted, chest heaving. “His name is Leo. He draws little otters on the latte foam. Are you happy? Now get off!”
Raena and Amalia exchanged a look over Gabriella’s trembling form. It was not a look of victory. It was a look of profound disappointment.
“Otters,” Raena said, flatly.
“You’ve been sighing over foam art?” Amalia’s nose wrinkled. “That’s worse than we thought.”
“He reads Proust!”
“He displays Proust,” Amalia corrected. “There’s a difference.” Her hovering hand descended, not with tickling fury, but with a single, precise finger that lightly traced a circle right in the center of the bared underarm.
Gabriella jerked, a squeak escaping her. “I told you! I told you everything!”
“You told us a preamble,” Amalia murmured, her finger continuing its lazy, torturous orbit. “We want the chapter and verse. How did you meet? Who made the first move? What’s the plan?”
“There is no plan! He’s just—he’s nice!”
Raena’s hands descended again, this time not tickling, but framing Gabriella’s ribs, thumbs resting just below the curve of her breasts. A threat. “Nice is for golden retrievers and grandparents, Gabs. Spill. Or I start counting down from three.”
Gabriella squeezed her eyes shut. The afternoon light was red through her eyelids. The scent of lavender was suddenly cloying. The gentle, constant threat of their touch was a live wire on her skin. The tough exterior she wore every day like armor was gone, stripped away by silk ropes and sisterly persistence. She felt naked, foolish, and absurdly young.
“I went in last Thursday,” she whispered, the fight leaching out of her. “He was wearing a The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill t-shirt. We talked about the sample he was playing. He gave me my drink for free. I went back Friday. And Saturday. He asked for my number yesterday. I gave it to him. We’re getting coffee. As… equals. Not customer and barista. Tomorrow.”
She opened her eyes. The expressions above her had softened. The predatory glint was gone from Amalia’s eyes, replaced by a warm, calculating curiosity. Raena’s grin had returned, but it was gentler now.
“See?” Raena said, patting her side. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“It was horrific,” Gabriella muttered, but the tension in her shoulders had eased a fraction.
Amalia’s tracing finger stilled, coming to rest warmly in the hollow it had been exploring. “Leo the Proust-reading, otter-drawing barista,” she mused. “Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it? No commentary? No ‘he’s probably a serial killer’?”
“We’ll run a background check later,” Amalia said dismissively. She leaned back, releasing the physical threat. “But for now… you held out on us. For a barista. There has to be a consequence.”
Before Gabriella could protest, Amalia nodded to Raena.
This time, it wasn’t an interrogation. It was a celebration. A punishment. A release of all the built-up tension. Raena’s fingers dug into her ribs, skittering and relentless. Amalia joined, both hands now dancing over the sensitive skin of her underarms, her sides, the dip of her waist.
Gabriella’s world dissolved into sensation. The laughter burst out of her, raw and uncontrollable, a river breaking through a dam. She thrashed against the ropes, tears of mirth streaming from the corners of her eyes, her pleas for mercy lost in breathless, hiccupping shrieks. The canopy above her blurred. The lace shadows swam.
She was laughing so hard it hurt, so hard she couldn’t breathe, so hard that the secret of Leo felt silly and small and wonderful. This was the truth, more than any confession. This binding, this relentless, affectionate torment. This was her world.
As her laughter began to subside into exhausted, wheezing giggles, Amalia finally relented. Raena collapsed next to her, hugging her bound form.
“You’re the worst,” Gabriella gasped, her cheek pressed against the pillow.
“We love you too,” Raena said, planting a sloppy kiss on her temple.
Amalia moved to the bedpost and began, with the same deliberate care, to untie the knots. “Tomorrow at three, right? The Artisan Bean?”
“Yes,” Gabriella whispered, her body still thrumming with the aftershocks of laughter.
“We’ll be at the table by the window,” Amalia said, the silk rope falling loose. “Reading Proust. Very quietly.”
Gabriella’s freed hands came up to cover her face. She was grinning, she realized. A stupid, wide, helpless grin she was glad they couldn’t see. The threat was gone, replaced by a familiar, exhausting warmth. She was out of the ropes, but she knew she’d never really be free of them. And for the first time all day, the thought didn’t make her want to run. It just made her want to breathe, there in the golden light, flanked by the two people who knew every single one of her secrets, even the stupid ones about baristas and foam otters.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. A single, sharp vibration.
All three of them went still.
Raena slowly reached for it, her eyes wide with fresh, electric curiosity. She held it up. The screen glowed.
A single message, from an unsaved number. A picture of a latte, with a foam otter that looked distinctly lopsided and apologetic.
Below it, the text: Practice for tomorrow. It’s terrible. You should definitely still come.
A new kind of warmth spread through Gabriella’s chest, different from the sisterly siege. She said nothing. She just looked at the lopsided otter, and the grin beneath her hands grew wider.Amalia saw it. She finished untying the last ankle, her fingers gentle on the faint red marks. “Oh, boy,” she sighed, but there was a smile in her voice. “Here we go.”
“Here we go.”
Amalia’s smile was a knowing curve as she tossed the last coil of pink rope onto the dresser. The emotional calculus in the room had shifted, the playful aggression dissolving into something softer, more observational. Gabriella sat up, rubbing the faint, rosy lines on her wrists. The physical marks would fade in an hour.The feeling of being utterly known would not.
“Okay, but let me see the otter again,” Raena said, snatching the phone from where she’d dropped it. She squinted at the screen, holding it up for Amalia’s inspection. “It’s kind of blobby. Looks more like a wet hamster.”
“It’s an otter,” Gabriella insisted, grabbing the phone back.Her thumb hovered over the screen. To reply immediately would look desperate.To wait too long would look uninterested. Every second of hesitation was a defeat.Amalia watched her, reading the conflict in the tightness of her shoulders. “Just say ‘cute’.It’s neutral.It’s encouraging but not fawning. It maintains power.”
“I don’t want power. I want a coffee.”
“Then you definitely need power,” Raena chirped, flopping onto her back. “Or he’ll give you decaf by accident-on-purpose.”
Gabriella exhaled, a sharp puff of air. She typed cute.She stared at the single word in the text bubble.It looked bald.Insufficient. She added an exclamation point.That was worse.Desperate. She deleted it, put a period, sent it.The three of them looked at the phone in her hand. The silence stretched, filled only by the distant hum of a lawnmower somewhere down the block.
“Thrilling,” Amalia deadpaned.“A real meeting of minds.He sends art. You send a one-word review. The foundation of a great romance.”
“Shut up.” But Gabriella was smiling again, a private, irrepressible thing. She tucked her phone under her thigh, a tactile anchor.The afternoon sun had moved, the lace shadows elongating across the floorboards. The room felt different now. The site of her captivity had become a confessional, and now, a planning room.Raena propped herself on her elbows.“So tomorrow.Three PM. What’s the outfit?This is critical.”
“I don’t know. Clothes?”
Amalia stood and glided to the closet, sliding the door open with a practiced sweep. She surveyed the contents like a general assessing troops.“Nothing with owlish glasses or ironic patches. You’re not trying to be his manic pixie dream girl.You’re a Brignoni. You’re a nightmare of stubbornness and you steal mochi. He should see that coming.”
“The blue linen dress,” Raena declared, pointing. “The one that matches your eyes when you’re plotting something.”
“My eyes are brown.”
“Exactly.It’s subtle. He’ll think it’s blue but feel confused. Keeps him off-balance.”
Amalia nodded, pulling the dress from its hanger. It was a simple, sleeveless shift the color of a twilight sky.She laid it across the foot of the bed, a statement.“Sensible shoes. Not those towering death-traps you wore to Sofia’s wedding. You want to be able to walk away with dignity if the otter thing is his entire personality.”
“He reads Proust,” Gabriella muttered, but her protest was weak.She looked at the dress.It was a good choice. They were, annoyingly, always right about these things. A lump formed in her throat, a confusing mix of exasperation and profound love. They had tied her to a bed and tortured the truth out of her, and now they were curating her first-date outfit. It was the same coin, just different sides.“What if he’s…” Gabriella started, then stopped. The fear was too shapeless to give voice to.
“What if he’s a idiot?” Raena finished.“We’ll be at the window table. One raised hand, one signal from you, and I will ‘accidentally’ spill an entire Dutch coffee—that’s the iced one with the cold foam, it’s very sticky—all over his lap. Extraction guaranteed.”
“And if he’s not an idiot,” Amalia said, her voice dropping to its practical, planning octave. “If he’s sharp, and he makes you laugh, and he looks at you like you’re the only person in that overpriced coffee shop… then we will finish our drinks, pay our bill, and leave.Very quietly. And you will text us the minute you get home.”
Gabriella looked from one face to the other. Raena’s freckled, grinning promise of chaotic rescue. Amalia’s calm, brown-eyed promise of a clean exit.They had mapped the entire terrain of tomorrow’s possibility, from disaster to dream. They had, in their own invasive, infuriating way, built a net beneath her tightrope.
“Okay,” she said, the word simple and full.
Her phone buzzed again, twice, under her leg.She flipped it over.Two new messages.The first: Glad you approve. Terrible is my specialty.The second, sent a heartbeat later: Looking forward to tomorrow. For the coffee, obviously.Gabriella didn’t smile this time. A slow, deep breath filled her lungs. The anticipation was no longer a nervous flutter in her stomach; it was a steady, solid warmth.He was funny.He was a little self-deprecating. He’d clarified his interest without being slick about it.“Well?” Raena whispered, crawling closer.
Gabriella turned the screen toward them. Amalia read it, her eyes scanning the words once, then again.She gave a single, slight nod.A professional assessment. “Adequate.”
Raena pumped a fist in the air.“Yes! Okay, now you have to wear the blue dress. The universe has spoken.”
The momentum of the day was turning, spinning away from the childish bonds of silk rope and toward something unknown, something that existed outside this sunlit room and its complicated, perfect love.Gabriella felt the pull of it, the thrilling, terrifying forward tilt.
She typed her reply, her fingers sure this time.Obviously.See you then.
She placed the phone face-down on the nightstand.The decision was made.The course was set. Outside, the golden light was deepening into amber, gilding the dust motes that swirled in the quiet air. The three of them sat in the silent warmth, a momentary tableau before the world opened up.Tomorrow was coming. But for now, there was just this: the shared breath, the settled plan, the unbreakable, maddening peace of being utterly, completely seen.
The blue linen dress did not feel like a costume. It felt like armor, but a lighter, more breathable kind than she was used to. Standing outside The Artisan Bean at 2:58 PM, Gabriella took a deliberate breath. The air smelled of roasted coffee and exhaust from the bus that had just rumbled past. She could see them through the window—Amalia, poised with a book open, and Raena, spinning a spoon on the tabletop with intense, childish focus. Her safety net.Her embarrassing, unavoidable safety net.She pushed the door open, a chime announcing her.
Leo was not behind the counter. A girl with a silver septum ring was steaming milk with a bored expression.Disappointment, sharp and immediate, stabbed through Gabriella. He’d stood her up.The sisters had been right. She was an idiot—
“You came.”
The voice came from her left. He was sitting at a small two-top tucked between a shelf of retail bags of coffee and the bathroom door, half-hidden.He stood up. He was taller than she remembered, wearing a simple grey henley, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows.No Proust in sight. Just him, and two mugs already on the table.
“You said three,” she replied, aiming for cool and landing somewhere near mildly accusatory.“I was nervous. Seemed less formal if I was already sitting. Also, I wanted to get the drinks right without an audience.” He gestured to the chair opposite his.“Sit.Please.”
She slid into the chair. On the table, the two latte mugs featured foam art. One was a recognizable, even elegant, otter.The other was a lopsided, blobby attempt. He pushed the good one toward her.“Yours,” he said, then pointed to the blob.“My tragic failure. Proof of process.”
A laugh escaped her, nervous and real. “You practice on the job?”
“My manager says it’s ‘brand enrichment.’ I say it’s the only way to learn.” He watched her take a sip.“So.Gabriella.The middle Brignoni. I did some light Instagram stalking. You have two sisters who look like they could orchestrate a coup.”
She glanced at the window table.Amalia was now reading in earnest, or pretending to. Raena was staring directly at them, unblinking. “They’re just… enthusiastic.”
“The one with the chestnut hair looks like she’s planning our taxes. The redhead looks like she’s about to throw that spoon at me if I say the wrong thing.”
“That’s… accurate.”
He smiled, and it reached his eyes, which were a warm, dark hazel.“Good.I like knowing the rules. Are they going to sit there the whole time?”
“Yes.”
“And if this goes well, will they leave?”
“Eventually.”
“And if it goes badly?”
“Raena has a cold coffee prepared for your lap.”
Leo threw his head back and laughed, a full, unguarded sound that cut through the low hum of the cafe. A few people looked over.Gabriella felt her own tension begin to dissolve. He wasn’t slick.He was… present.“Noted,” he said, wiping his eye. “No being a jerk.Understood.So, let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way. I’m Leo.I’ve worked here for two years. I’m studying graphic design part-time at the community college. I like sad music, good typography, and I’m ambivalent about Proust. I only keep him around to impress literary girls with dark curls who steal glances at my Spotify queue.”
She felt her face flush. “It was a good queue.”
“It was a test.You passed.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Your turn.But skip the basic stuff. I already know you’re stubborn, you have a lethal set of sisters, and you have questionable judgment regarding frozen desserts. Tell me something true.”
The question disarmed her. She’d prepared for “what do you do?” or “where did you go to school?” Not this. She looked into her latte, the perfect otter beginning to melt into the crema.“I hate that my sisters were right about this dress,” she said quietly.
“About it being the right one?”
“About me needing to wear it.”
He considered her, his gaze thoughtful. “They know you.”
“Sometimes that’s the most terrifying thing in the world.”
For two hours, the world outside the small two-top faded. The sisters at the window became part of the scenery, like potted plants. They talked about terrible movies, about the vague guilt of not calling their mothers enough, about the specific smell of the air just before it rains. He made her explain the mochi theft in detail, his verdict being that Raena was a “sloppy lobbyist” for leaving her name on the box. He told her about growing up with three older brothers, the quiet, artistic one in a house of “chaotic jocks.” There was no performative depth, no trying to be profound.It was just easy.
When the Dutch coffee at the window table was long finished, Amalia finally stood, gathering her bag. She gave a small, almost imperceptible nod to Gabriella—a release—and steered a reluctant Raena toward the door.Raena mouthed “CALL ME” through the glass before being pulled away.
“The covert ops team has departed,” Leo observed. “Does that mean I’m no longer a threat?”
“It means you’ve been provisionally cleared. The full background check is still pending.”
“Naturally.” He paused.“I’d like to do this again. Without the surveillance.Maybe somewhere without foam-based art. An actual dinner.”
“I’d like that too.”
Walking home, the late afternoon sun painted everything in long, generous shadows. The air felt different in her lungs—lighter, charged. She replayed sentences, his laugh, the way he’d listened.She didn’t float; she walked with a solid, grounded warmth in her chest. It had gone well.It had gone unbelievably well.
She pushed open the front door of their house, the familiar scent of lemon polish and whatever Nonna was simmering in the kitchen wrapping around her. She dropped her keys in the ceramic dish by the door, the clink too loud in the quiet hallway.
“So?” Amalia’s voice came from the living room archway, calm and expectant.
“It was fine,” Gabriella said, a slow smile breaking through her attempt at nonchalance. She started to walk toward the stairs, needing to be alone with the feeling, to dissect it in private.
“Fine?” Raena popped up from behind the sofa.“You’ve been gone for three and a half hours. Your face is all soft and stupid-looking. That’s not ‘fine.’ That’s ‘disgustingly good.’”
“It was just coffee. We talked.” Gabriella took another step, her hand reaching for the banister.That was her mistake.Turning her back.
The tackle wasn’t a dramatic, flying leap.It was a coordinated, efficient maneuver. Amalia moved from the archway, a silent bolt of purpose, locking her arms around Gabriella’s waist from behind. At the same instant, Raena launched from the sofa, grabbing her legs.
“What are you doing—GET OFF!” Gabriella shrieked, but her laughter was already betraying her, bubbling up as they wrestled her off her feet. They were a chaotic, six-limbed creature stumbling down the hallway, a symphony of grunts and giggles.
“You think you can just walk in here with your ‘fine’ and your secret smile and go to your room?” Amalia huffed, her grip like iron as they half-carried, half-dragged her toward the stairs. “That’s not how this works.”
“You owe us details!” Raena chanted, grappling with a kicking leg.“Pay the tax! Pay the sister tax!”
They maneuvered her up the stairs, a clumsy, determined procession. Gabriella’s protests were weak, diluted by the sheer absurdity and the afterglow still warm in her veins. They burst into her bedroom, the blush-pink walls now bathed in the deep orange of sunset.
Amalia released her waist just long enough to yank back the duvet on the canopy bed. Raena shoved her down onto the soft, familiar sheets. Before Gabriella could scramble up, Amalia was already pulling the coiled pink silk ropes from the top drawer of the nightstand.“You are psychotic! You cannot tie me up again!” Gabriella gasped, but she was laughing too hard to fight effectively. Raena pinned her wrists above her head, sitting on her stomach with gleeful authority.
“We can,” Amalia stated, her fingers making quick, expert loops around Gabriella’s left wrist, then securing it to the bedpost.“And we are.You’re glowing. Glowing is a full-disclosure event.”
Raena bound her other wrist, then moved to her ankles, the silk cool and firm against her skin. In minutes, she was secured once more, breathless and spread-eagled on her own bed.The canopy above was a dark silhouette against the fading sky.
Amalia sat on the edge of the bed, a judge settling onto the bench.Raena knelt beside her, eyes wide and eager.
“Now,” Amalia began, her voice low and deliberate. “Let’s start with the first rule of interrogation. The subject is already vulnerable.” Her hand hovered over Gabriella’s ribs, fingers poised like a pianist’s over keys.
“He’s nice!” Gabriella squealed preemptively, straining against the ropes.“He’s funny! He’s studying graphic design!”
“Vague,” Amalia decreed. Her fingers descended, not to tickle, but to walk slowly, deliberately, up her side, tracing the line of her ribcage through the blue linen.Gabriella shivered, a giggle catching in her throat. “He laughed at the spoon thing!He called you the planner!”
“Better,” Raena encouraged. “But we need specifics. What did he say about the otters?”
“He made a good one and a bad one! He said the bad one was proof of process!” The words tumbled out, the sensory memory of the cafe mixing with the immediate, teasing threat of her sisters’ hands.
Amalia’s other hand joined the first, both now resting on Gabriella’s waist, thumbs pressing into the soft dip. “And what did you talk about for three and a half hours?”
“Movies!Brothers! The mochi—AH!”
Raena’s attack was sudden, her fingers digging into the sensitive spot just above Gabriella’s hip bone. The laughter burst out of her, uncontrolled and helpless.She jerked against the ropes, the silk biting sweetly into her skin.
“Mochi what?” Raena demanded, not letting up, her fingers wriggling.
“He said you were a sloppy lobbyist! He said you should have hidden it better!” Gabriella gasped between peals of laughter.Raena stopped, affronted. “He what?”
Amalia’s thumbs began to trace slow, maddening circles on her waist. “And after we left?What then?”
The touch was light, unbearable.A promise. Gabriella writhed, trying to escape the sensation that was everywhere and nowhere.“We just kept talking! He asked me to dinner!A real dinner!”
Both hands stilled. The room was silent except for Gabriella’s ragged, laughter-soaked breaths.Amalia and Raena exchanged a look over her prone body. A look of profound satisfaction, and a hint of something softer.
“Dinner,” Amalia repeated, a genuine smile touching her lips.“Good.”
“See? That’s all!” Gabriella pleaded, her body humming with the aftermath of the tickling and the confession. “Now untie me, you monsters.”
“Not quite,” Amalia murmured. Her gaze traveled over Gabriella’s flushed, smiling face, the dress rumpled, the hair spread out like a dark fan. “You’re happy.”
It wasn’t a question.It was an observation, stripped of all teasing. Gabriella’s breathing slowed. She met her sister’s eyes, the last of the defensive laughter dying away.She gave one small, almost imperceptible nod against the pillow.
Amalia’s hand came up, but not to tickle. She gently brushed a curl from Gabriella’s damp forehead. Raena, abandoning her post, curled up on the bed beside her, leaning her head against Gabriella’s bound shoulder.
For a long moment, they stayed like that, the three of them in the darkening room: the captive, the captors, the unbreakable tangle of love that bound them all.