He closed his eyes, and five years of shared days and nights crashed over him like a tide. In the beginning, we were two strangers under the same roof, cautious and distant, playing the part of husband and wife for appearances. Until that night. He came home drunk from a business dinner, reeking of liquor, and pulled me into his arms, calling my name over and over. Not Selene's. Mine. Lois. That night, I peeled away his cold mask, and he touched the softness buried deep inside me. Two lonely hearts, pressed together, however briefly.
After that, he began caring about me without realizing it. Between tending to Selene, he remembered which jewelry designs I loved. He shielded me from rivals in the industry who tried to sabotage my work. When I stayed up late sketching designs, he would quietly set a glass of warm milk on my desk. He prepared little surprises for me. He had always told himself it was just a promise kept to my late father, just guilt, just duty.
But now. Now that I was gone, now that the annulment agreement lay where I used to sleep, the truth struck him like a blow he couldn't dodge. Somewhere in those five years of waking beside me and falling asleep near me, he had fallen in love with me without ever knowing it. That love had been buried beneath his obsessions and selfishness, shackled by his identity and his so-called responsibilities. It took losing me for him to see it.
Years in Sicily's cutthroat business world had taught him to bury every emotion, to armor himself in ice and calculation. Yet somehow, in the quiet, unremarkable moments with me, his heart had betrayed him. He had fallen for the daughter of the very woman he'd destroyed. He had fallen for the woman he himself had dragged into hell.
Samuel squeezed his eyes shut, and all he could see was my face. My delight when I received new design materials. My gentleness when I brewed him a hangover cure. The way I leaned into him when he was kind. And then, after I learned the truth, the devastation in my eyes, cold and absolute. He thought of me crumbling, tears streaming down my face. He thought of the bright, sickening stain of blood spreading beneath me when I hit the floor. His eyes flew open. He gasped for air. It felt as though an invisible fist had closed around his heart and was crushing it, slowly, mercilessly.