Her bags arrived at noon.
Three of them, which was more than Elena had written on the list but she wasn't complaining because whoever Alessandro had sent to her apartment had apparently used common sense and had packed properly, her clothes were folded neatly, her books were there, her laptop was there, even the small photograph she kept on her bedside table of her and Sofia from a trip to Positano three summers ago.
She hadn't put that on the list.
She didn't know how to feel about the fact that someone had packed it anyway.
Sera had moved her to a larger room while she was at breakfast, better light, bigger closet, a bathroom that was twice the size of the one she had woken up in, and Elena had stood in the middle of it and thought about how she was absolutely not going to be won over by a nice room and then immediately started unpacking because she needed something to do with her hands.
She had been there maybe forty minutes, books finally placed on the shelf by the window, clothes sorted and her laptop charging on the desk, when she realized she hadn't seen her journal.
She had written it on the list specifically. Small, dark green, kept in the drawer of her bedside table. She had been writing in it since she was seventeen and it had things in it that she had never said out loud to anyone, not even Sofia, not anyone, just her own thoughts filling up pages she had never intended for other eyes.
She went through the first bag. Then the second. Then the third.
It wasn't there.
She frowned and went through them all over again more slowly and it was definitely not there. she was standing in the middle of the room trying to figure out if she had imagined putting it on the list when she heard a sound from downstairs.
It was a Piano.
She stood still for a second just listening to the melody. Someone was playing, it sounded utterly beautiful.
She left the room quickly.
The main hall was at the bottom of the staircase, wide and high ceilinged, and she had walked through it twice already without properly looking at it but she looked at it now because there against the far wall, half hidden by the shadow of the staircase, was a grand piano that she had somehow completely missed both times.
And Alessandro was sitting at it.
Elena stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
He was still in the same shirt from breakfast, jacket gone now, his sleeves rolled up, and he was playing with the kind of ease that came from doing something you loved, his head was slightly bent, completely unaware of her or at least appearing to be.
She stayed rooted to the spot just watching him.
The last note faded into the high ceiling and he sat there for a moment with his hands still on the keys and then he turned his head and looked at her across the hall. She felt heat crawl up her neck because she had been standing there staring at him like an idiot and he had clearly known she was there.
"How long have you been standing there" he asked.
"I just… uhh… came down" she said, which was not entirely true but not entirely a lie either.
He looked at her for a moment and then back at the piano "you play" he said. Not asked coz it was not a question.
"And How would you know that?"
He didn't answer that, just moved slightly on the bench as an invitation.
Elena crossed her arms "wait… where is my journal."
He reached into the space beside the piano bench and produced it, holding it out toward her.
She walked across the hall and took it from his hand and immediately hugged it to her chest "you went through my bags?"
"I needed to check them before they came into the house."
"You went through my personal things!"
"Yes" he said simply.
She stared at him "that's it? Just yes?"
"What else would you like me to say!"
"An apology would be a good start" she said, "a normal person would apologize!"
"Did you read it" he asked.
She blinked "what?"
"Your journal" he said, looking up at her, "did you read it before you packed it or did you just want it because it's yours."
Elena opened her mouth and closed it again because that was a strange question and she wasn't sure what he was actually asking and she didn't like not being sure "it's mine" she said, "that's the point, you don't go through things that belong to someone else—"
"I read some of it" he said with a shrug.
The hall went quiet.
Elena felt like she would burst, "which parts?" she asked, and her voice came out smaller than she wanted it to.
"Enough" he said.
"Enough to what Alessandro?"
He looked at her for a moment and then back at the piano keys, running one finger along them without pressing down "enough to know that none of it is relevant to why you're here" he said.
She didn't know if that was supposed to reassure her. It didn't particularly.
"You had no right! Your reasons are just bull shit!" she said.
"No" he agreed, "I didn't."
She waited for more but it didn't come, he just sat there at the piano looking at the keys, as she stood there holding her journal
"You play" she said finally, because apparently that was what came out.
He glanced at her "I told you that already."
"You didn't tell me anything, you just moved over on the bench—"
"And you didn't sit down Princess." He said. It sounded like there was humor attached which was surprising. But right now all she could think of was that damn nickname he had given her. "Princess" it sounded nice though.
Elena looked at the piano. Then at him before looking at the piano again.
She sat down on the far end of the bench, as far from him as the bench would allow, journal still in her lap, and looked at the keys for a moment.
Then she placed her hands on them.
She hadn't played in almost a year, she had told herself she was too busy and she would get back to it. The piano at her apartment needed tuning anyway, all the small lies people told themselves about the things they kept putting off. Her fingers found the opening notes of something she had learned when she was twelve, muscle memory refusing to forget even when she had tried to.
She played a few bars and stopped.
Alessandro stared at her delicate fingers and how she touched the keys.
"Mmm… You're good" he said quietly.
"I used to be better" she said with a small smile.
The hall settled back into silence around them and Elena sat there on the far end of his piano bench in a house she hadn't chosen to be in and thought about how nothing about this was what she had expected, none of it, not the house and not the piano and not him sitting here playing something slow and beautiful when he called himself a damn mafia boss.
"Haven't you been wonder where you rose is?" He suddenly asked and she furrowed her brows.
"What rose?" She asked confused.
"A little pink toy I found in your luggage." He said with a smirk as he pulled her pleasure toy from his pocket showing it to her. She almost screamed, she was about to die from embarrassment. She did not tell them to pack that so why?!
"What the hell Alessandro!!! Give that to me!" She yelled and grabbed it from him angrily.
"Didn't know you were naughty!" He chuckled as she fumed.
"Shut up!" She screamed in shame.
She stood up angrily as her face flushed red. Goodness, her whole body was tingling from embarrassment.
"You fuckin pervert. Don't go through my things again!" she yelled , tucking the journal under her arm and clutching her toy tightly.
He looked up at her "I'll think about it!"
"Ugh… Pervert!!!"
"I know" he said in a low husky tone, and he said it in a way that meant he actually did know he was a pervert, the funny thing was that, he wasn't like this with other women but when it came to her, he just wanted to tease her so much, it made him so happy seeing her yell at him, it was like a cat trying to be a big bad wolf when in reality, it was the cutest thing ever.
Elena looked at him for a moment longer and huffed before stumping her feet and turned running upstairs leaving Alessandro staring at her curvy figure with a grin on his handsome face.
She sat on her bed and put the journal back under her pillow as she pressed her hand flat over it and stared at the wall, she thought about the way his hands had looked on the piano keys, it was beautiful how he touched it so delicately.
NO!!! She was not going to think about that., he had just violated her privacy! She put the toy in her bedside drawer before opening her laptop with a groan.
"That perv!" She murmured.
She had emails to attend to and a life to pretend was still happening somewhere outside these walls and she was going to focus on that and not on the little things this ridiculously handsome kidnapper of hers does.
She was not going to think about that either!