Grace held her tighter and felt tears sting her own eyes.
No five-year-old should carry memories like that. No child should have nightmares that replayed murder as casually as weather.
“I don’t want Daddy to get shot too,” Mia said into her shoulder. “I don’t want you to get shot either.”
“You’re not going to lose me tonight,” Grace said. “Or your father.”
“But what if bad men come?”
“They won’t get to you.”
“How do you know?”
Because I have to believe somebody can still protect innocence in this world, Grace thought.
Aloud she said, “Because your father would burn the whole earth down first.”
Mia was quiet, considering that. Then she gave a small watery nod and let Grace rock her until sleep took over again.
Grace remained in the bed the rest of the night, sitting propped against the headboard while Mia slept curled against her side. Dawn found them that way.
Later that morning, after Elena took Mia to breakfast, Grace went in search of coffee and nearly broke one of Marcus’s rules without meaning to.
She was passing the east wing when she heard voices through a door left slightly ajar.
Vincent’s voice.
But not the one she knew.
This voice was cold enough to freeze marrow.
“I’m giving you one chance to explain,” he said.
Another man spoke next, words tripping over fear. “Mr. Moretti, I have children. Please—”
“So do I.”
The silence that followed was worse than shouting.
Then Vincent again, quieter now, which made it more terrifying.
“My daughter was nearly taken because somebody spoke out of turn. If that somebody is you, I suggest you pray very quickly.”
Grace stopped dead.
Every instinct told her to move away, but dread rooted her in place for a second too long. She heard a thud. A groan. A chair scrape hard across the floor. Marcus’s voice low and unreadable. Then Vincent said something she could not make out.
That was enough.
Grace backed away soundlessly and didn’t breathe properly again until she was safely in the kitchen.
So this was the other side of him.
Not the father at bedtime. Not the man who lingered in doorways listening to his daughter laugh. This was the feared man from the articles. The one who inspired silence in enemies and loyalty in armed men.
That day she moved through the house with a new tension inside her. She still smiled at Mia, still read stories, still supervised lunch, still kissed scraped knuckles after a tumble in the garden. But beneath it all ran the knowledge that somewhere in the same house, a man she was beginning to trust might be deciding whether another man lived or died.
That evening Vincent joined them for dinner as if nothing had happened.
Mia chattered about butterflies in the rose garden. Grace answered where she had to. Vincent asked whether Mia had practiced her reading. He passed Grace the salt when she reached for it. His manners were impeccable. His cufflinks gleamed. There was not a trace of violence in him—unless one knew where to look.
Grace knew now.
And yet when Mia yawned after dessert and Vincent lifted her into his arms to carry her upstairs, the child tucked her head beneath his chin with total faith. He kissed her temple as naturally as breathing.
Watching them, Grace felt her certainty begin to split.
Later that night, as she came out of Mia’s room, Vincent was just entering the hallway from the staircase.
“She had a nightmare,” Grace said before she could stop herself.
His whole body sharpened. “About Isabella?”
Grace nodded.
He looked away for a moment. “Did she say anything else?”
“She’s afraid of losing you.”
He went still.
Then, after a long pause, he asked, “And you?”
Grace blinked. “What about me?”
“Are you afraid?”
The question hung between them.
She could have lied. It would have been easy to say no and preserve the strange careful peace growing in the house.
But Grace had never been good at lying where truth mattered.
“I’m afraid of your world,” she said quietly. “Not of how you look at your daughter.”
His gaze held hers.
“And not of how you look at me?” he asked.
It was the first openly personal thing he had said to her.
Grace felt heat rise beneath her skin. “I don’t know yet.”
A ghost of a smile touched his mouth, sad and knowing. “Fair answer.”
After that, things changed in subtler ways.
Vincent came home earlier when he could. He lingered at dinner instead of disappearing into whatever business ruled the rest of his life. Sometimes, once Mia slept, he would find Grace in the library or on the terrace and sit nearby without asking permission, as if both of them had silently agreed that companionship had become less dangerous than solitude.
They spoke more.
About Maggie.
About medicine.
About Brooklyn neighborhoods.
About books Mia liked.
About Isabella, once, in a tone so low Grace almost felt she was listening to prayer rather than conversation.
“She loved yellow roses,” he said, looking out at the moonlit garden. “Every spring the estate looked like sunlight because of her.”
Grace followed his gaze. “And now?”
“I can’t stand yellow roses.”
She understood. Beauty can become unbearable once grief moves into it.
Another time he asked about Grace’s parents, and she told him about the fire, the way loss rearranged a childhood so thoroughly that afterward you never again believed ordinary days were guaranteed.
“You understand more than most people,” he said.
“So do you.”
Their eyes met, and for a second the air seemed to hold too much.
Grace learned then that danger did not always feel like fear.
Sometimes it felt like recognition.
At the end of the third week, Maggie said as much.
Grace had gone to visit her on a rainy Sunday, partly because she missed her grandmother and partly because she needed the grounding of familiar wisdom. They sat by the window with tea between them while Grace tried to describe the impossible.
“He frightens me and he doesn’t,” Grace said. “He’s kind and cruel. Gentle and dangerous. I don’t know where to put him in my mind.”
Maggie smiled into her cup. “Maybe stop trying to put him anywhere. People are rarely one shelf or another.”
“You make everything sound simple.”
“No,” Maggie corrected. “I make it sound human.”
Grace looked down at her hands. “Sometimes when he’s with Mia, he seems… lonely.”
“Lonely people often recognize each other.”
Grace lifted her eyes.
Maggie smiled a little wider. “Careful, sweetheart. That’s how hearts get involved.”
Grace should have denied it.
Instead she fell silent, which was answer enough.
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