Vera
I froze when I saw the gun aimed at me, but only for a few seconds. The shock faded quickly. Guns, drugs, blood… none of it was new to me. Those things were the background noise of the world Ettore, and I were both born into.
We are both familiar with them. We are both expected to feel normal around them.
And yet, despite growing up in the same kind of darkness, we turned out nothing alike. Maybe because my dark has always been darker than his. In every way that mattered, Ettore and I were strangers carved from opposite sides of the same rotten world.
The gun pointed at my face should have terrified me, but I felt alarmingly calm. I knew that if he pulled the trigger, that would be it, gone, finished, erased. And maybe, just maybe, that was the sweetest escape I could hope for. Painful, yes, but still an escape.
Sweat clung to the back of my neck, making my hair stick to my skin. My heart was still racing from the memory that had dragged me out of sleep. My lips felt dry, my breathing thin and hollow. Ettore stood there like he had walked into the room with the pure intention of killing me, but something in his expression betrayed him. He must have seen me thrashing in my sleep. He looked angry, but also confused. Determined to shoot me, but thrown off by the way I screamed in my nightmares.
But I could never let him see what hurt me. Never. So I forced a mask of arrogance over my fear, let it settle on my face like armor, and let out a small, mocking snigger.
My gaze flicked to the barrel of the gun, then slowly rose to meet his eyes, daring him, taunting him, turning his pathetic attempt to frighten me into something laughable.
"Hello to you too, husband," I mocked, my voice smooth and cutting. "Why the gun?" I asked, sounding bored as I slid off the bed.
He stayed silent, but his eyes tracked every step I took.
I walked toward the dresser where my ponytail tie lay. I did not need to turn around to know his gaze was burning into my back, into the exposed skin. I could feel it, heavy and possessive, but strangely, my skin did not crawl the way it should have. I almost hated myself for not minding it, for the way a quiet stillness settled over me instead of disgust. It wasn't his stare that disgusted me. It was the sickening truth that I didn't mind it… that I didn't rush to him to pluck his eyes out. And when I lifted my eyes to the mirror, I caught him staring exactly where I expected. The moment my reflection met his, he shifted his gaze up to mine.
I let out a soft snigger as I gathered my hair, tying it into a loose, messy low bun.
Then I turned to face him, leaning casually against the dresser.
"And if you're here to kill me, you should have done it before the wedding," I said with a roll of my eyes. "It would have spared me so much dread."
The bitterness coated my tongue like metal. Our wedding was yesterday. One day. Somehow, it already felt like an entire lifetime ago.
Silence stretched between us. He did not answer. He just kept staring, his eyes burning into me, heavy and unrelenting. That gaze, earthy, possessive, piercing, felt like it was stripping me bare, peeling my skin away layer by layer. I felt exposed, raw, yet I did not flinch. I did not run from him the way I had run from everyone else.
I shook my head, trying to shove the painful memory away. I gulped and forced myself to speak. I hated silence. When there were no voices, no distractions, I walked alone into the darkest corners of my past, and that was the last place I wanted to be after waking from a nightmare that still shook me to my core.
I exhaled slowly. "Your Nonno gave me ten thousand dollars," I said evenly, letting the words hang in the air. "An impressive sum, considering all he already gifted me just yesterday."
I noticed a slight twitch at the corner of his eye as he raised an eyebrow. "Ten thousand dollars is impressive to you?" he asked, his tone almost mocking.
I met his gaze, sharp and unyielding. "I value money, Moretti. It may not be much to people like us, but to others it could mean everything."
He did not respond, but something flickered in his eyes for a single heartbeat. Shock maybe. Confusion maybe. It was gone so fast I could not be sure it even happened. Maybe I imagined it.
I decided not to dwell on it and rolled my eyes as I turned away. In the mirror, his reflection stayed perfectly still. Silent. Watching.
I did not know much about Ettore, but everyone warned me about one thing, and one thing only: his silence. He was famous for it. A man who killed without raising his voice. A man whose quiet was more dangerous than most people's rage.
And that was exactly what he was now… silent in a way that made every instinct inside me brace for whatever came next. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, but I refused to let him think he had gotten under my skin. I wasn't going to give him fear. So I lifted my hands and casually fixed my bun, then reached for my lipstick. Maybe he would finally pull the trigger, or maybe he would just turn around and walk out.
He did neither.
He stood there instead, silent as death.
I told myself his silence meant nothing, but the longer it stretched, the heavier it pressed on me. Something small and cold settled in my stomach, a seed of fear I tried hard to ignore. I acted like his stare wasn't crawling across my skin, like the gun in his hand wasn't sending a tremor through my bones. I acted like none of it mattered… even though every part of me knew it did.
I ignored him for as long as I could, but eventually the weight of his silence forced my attention back. I picked up my nude lipstick, twisted it open, and lifted it to my lips. My gaze drifted to the mirror… and that's when I saw him move.
The strange flicker of safety I had felt earlier vanished instantly. Fear surged up, sharp and humiliating. Not fear for my life. Fear for my dignity.
My fingers tightened around the lipstick until the plastic creaked. I froze. He moved toward me with slow, deliberate steps, like a predator savoring the moment before the kill. The sickness that had clawed at my stomach when I woke from the nightmare came roaring back.
His eyes were narrowed, jaw locked, nostrils flared. Each step he took was quiet but heavy, and he didn't stop until he stood barely half a foot behind me. My back stayed turned to him, but our eyes met in the mirror… his gaze burning through me, mine refusing to look away.
The lipstick halted mid-stroke on my lower lip.
"Nonno is forcing me to take you to Italy," he hissed.
And then I felt it – the cold press of the gun's barrel against my lower back. A sharp gasp tore from me. Not because of the threat… but because of the cold metal touching my skin.
I swallowed hard. "And?" I asked, lifting an eyebrow as if the gun pressed to my spine was nothing.
I already knew his grandfather planned to force a honeymoon on us. I didn't want to go, but what say did I ever have? What say did either of us have? We were forced into this marriage, shoved into each other's lives as two loaded guns pointed in the wrong direction. Consent stopped being part of my vocabulary the moment they dragged me into the Moretti world.
So, I figured… why fight it? I would just go with the flow until death finally did us part. And God, I hoped it would be soon.
As for Italy… it actually sounded almost nice. I had never been there. No one in the Volkov family had, except the spies, and they rarely came back alive.
"My grandfather is planning everything. He actually wants this relationship to prosper. He wants a family to come out of this hoax of a marriage, and I refused." He ground the words through clenched teeth.
Bile crept up my throat at the mention of family. I would rather die.
"I would sooner see a Volkov lying in a pool of blood than share a bed with one," he spat, hitting the surname like a blade. His jaw flexed, fury cracking through every word. "Because unlike my grandfather, I don't make peace with the people who killed my brother."
He pushed the gun harder into my lower back, the cold metal digging into my spine until it hurt. His breath grazed my shoulder as he spoke.
"I would sooner put a bullet in you than lay a hand on you for anything other than killing you." His voice was calm, suddenly very unnervingly calm, but his eyes betrayed him. Rage flickered there, dark and raw, burning hot enough to scorch.
And I understood it. I understood him.
Because that was exactly how I felt about him, too.
If there was one thing we shared, one thing that bound us together in this forced, twisted marriage, it was the hate simmering between us… equal, sharp, and mutual.
I turned sharply, facing him now. The gun followed the movement, the barrel pressing hard against my stomach. "Do it, Moretti. Shoot me." I didn't blink. Didn't flinch. "I'd rather you pull the trigger than lay a single finger on me. I'd rather feel a bullet tear through me than your skin against mine."
I stepped closer, voice dropping to a low, hate-laced whisper. "Even if I knew death was the very next thing waiting for me, I still wouldn't want your touch. I refuse to let you be the last thing I ever feel."