"It does." I pushed myself up against the carved headboard, the silk of my nightgown whispering against the sheets. "If they're for me, then she doesn't need them."
His denial came swift and practiced. "You're my promised bride. She's merely family—blood of the same house."
"Then keep them for her." I turned my face toward the window, where moonlight bled through the heavy drapes. "She'll appreciate them more than I ever could."
His expression hardened, the mask of the patient suitor finally slipping to reveal something colder beneath. "You're too paranoid, Elena. That's exactly why everyone finds it easier to accept her. Why the Capos' wives invite her to their lunches while you sit alone. Why my mother speaks of her warmth while questioning your devotion."
That sentence.
I remember it with perfect clarity—each word branded into memory like a mark of ownership.
That's exactly why everyone finds it easier to accept her.
As though my vigilance were a character flaw. As though seeing clearly in a house full of shadows made me the one who could not be trusted.
I said nothing.
There was nothing left to say.
Back in the present, he stood before me like a man awaiting tribute—as if my submission were already owed, already overdue.
"No matter what you think," Giorgio said, his voice carrying that particular edge of authority bred into sons of the Corleone bloodline, "the arrangement will not change."
I finally met his gaze. My eyes held nothing of the desperate bride he perhaps expected—only the clear, distant calm of a woman who had already made her peace with ghosts.
"The arrangement was never the issue." My words fell between us like coins on marble. "The issue is that you already made your choice."
"She is not a replacement." The denial came too quickly, too practiced.
"Is that so?" I tilted my head, studying him as one might study a painting whose flaws had only just become visible. "Then why do you carry traces of her everywhere you go? Her perfume on your collar. Her name in your mouth before you catch yourself. Why do you draw closer to her with each passing day, while I stand here like furniture in your father's parlor—decorative, silent, and utterly irrelevant?"
His jaw tightened. "You're jealous. That's all this is."
I nodded slowly, offering him no argument. What was the point of fighting a verdict already rendered?
"Think whatever you want."