The Suarez Myth: Chapter 12

The year was 1968, and the war was called The Baltic Freeze.

During a labor crisis in Northern Spain, a man named Gott, a middle-aged Hausmann heir, exploited a temporary regulatory freeze surrounding some Suarez holdings to secure two North Sea freight routes Roman’s grandfather had been negotiating. Felipe Suarez never forgave the Hausmanns.

He responded with a brutal undercutting of Baltic steel rates, starving Hausmann margins for nearly five years. The families never declared hostility, but from that point forward, every joint venture was a chessboard.

In the 1990s, Fried Hausmann discreetly funded a minority stake in a Portuguese refinery bid Amancio had been courting. The bid failed, and the refinery went bankrupt two years later. Suarez acquired it at half the value. Hausmann lost nothing publicly but gained nothing either, so the war became quiet attrition.

Roman grew up on these stories. It was family history. He watched Amancio track Hausmann movements obsessively and knew from his acquaintanceship with Fried’s son that their party did the same. Allegra preached silence. His grandmother treated the Hausmanns like inevitable inconveniences.

And while the Hausmanns never attacked directly, they were always on the lookout for weakness. Weaknesses in dynastic warfare often arose through succession disputes, public scandals, and heirs who fractured under pressure.

Roman sometimes feared Saoirse’s incompatibility with his world, her mistaking their freedom and considerable means for independence, but most of all, he feared exposure. He knew how families fall. He knew the Hausmanns once acquired a majority stake in a Scandinavian freight company after an affair and divorce exposed liquidity strain. He knew every single heir the de Witts quietly pulled credit from because they appeared unstable.

He knew old families were patient.

So when Saoirse appeared vulnerable to anyone but him, when she had panic responses, became emotionally unpredictable, or made independent financial decisions, he saw liability, and liability invited predators even if he never said the word Hausmann aloud.

Like the times she forgot to wait for him to answer a question directed at her in public. Like the time in London before the twins. She may have been pregnant already. Regardless, she was always too forward when they were in her city. 

It was a luncheon in a private dining room at Somerset House overlooking the Thames with frosted glass, white linen, and a view engineered to imply discretion. Duplessis’s people were there with a minor sovereign delegate. Javier, precise as always, sat at Roman’s right. The conversation drifted toward the expansion of a logistics channel through Morocco, an idea still in its exploratory phase with nothing binding or official.

Saoirse had read the brief the night before. Roman had left it open on their sitting room table. She had asked a few questions, and he had answered them without paying too much attention.

When the Moroccan delegate turned to her, smiling lightly, it felt almost playful. “And would the foundation support education initiatives along the channel? It would make the optics… elegant.”

She knew the answer. Roman had dismissed the idea privately as premature “charitable noise before building structure,” but the proposal had stayed with her. She had considered how it might soften resistance locally. Before she could overthink it, she spoke. “We’ve been exploring something along those lines,” she said. “If the infrastructure aligns.”

The room shifted slightly with interest. People always wanted to hear what she had to say. Roman simply placed his fork down with quiet precision as Javier’s eyes flicked once toward him.

The Moroccan delegate brightened. “Ah. That would change the tone entirely.”

Roman smiled then. “We explore many things,” he said. “Execution is another matter.” And the temperature adjusted.

The conversation moved on, but in the backseat of the car afterward, he watched the river recede through the window until they were close to home. Without turning toward her, he said, “Don’t preempt me in rooms where capital is present.”

Her stomach tightened. “I wasn’t,” she said carefully. “I thought—”

“That’s the issue.” His voice was level. “You thought out loud.” Silence. “I would have aligned it properly. Now they expect something that doesn’t exist.” Expect. It hung heavier than a reprimand.

She stared at her hands. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you meant well,” which, somehow, made it worse.

When they reached the Belgravia house, he stepped out before her and extended his hand as usual. But that night, when she leaned toward him in bed, he remained still.

He knew the risks when he’d chosen to marry her, even without Bibiana’s constant reminders. He had been warned about dilution, but not in that word. No one in his family spoke crudely about blood anymore. They spoke only of alignment and shared systems, marriages that simplified maps.

He’d had other prospects, daughters of their circle. He’d dated at least 20 in the first 10 years of his adulthood. Long courtships, short ones, a few that only lasted a week and a half. When he turned 30, Bibiana had entertained a luncheon with the Lindholm girl from Copenhagen, educated in Lausanne, glacially composed, heiress to sovereign advisory contracts that could have braided neatly into Suarez infrastructure. She had observed, gently, that this Lindholm girl would have required no translation of the expectations of their world.

At 35, one of his aunts, Allegra’s sister, had floated the idea of a Hausmann niece. Hamburg-bred, maritime blood, the sort of marriage that ended wars. Marcela, who didn’t care much for family affairs, cared enough to point out that, with the Hausmann niece becoming a Suarez, the Baltic Freeze would disappear from history without a board vote. 

Even the Ferraras had made an oblique inquiry with one of their many daughters for a steel-seeking possibility.

Roman pretended to listen. Then he met Saoirse like serendipity at a bar, of all places. Then he declined them all without spectacle, although Amancio was very loud and clear about how out of the question the Hausmann niece was from the moment she was mentioned.

The women in his world dazzled constantly. They were trained to. But Saoirse never braced herself when he entered a room. There was no inheritance behind her. He didn’t have to appease some competing dynasty or face a mother calculating grandchildren’s surnames. She was unencumbered in all ways. And in a life constructed entirely of negotiations, she felt dangerously unstructured. She was both risk and no risk at all. He told himself that was why he married her, for efficiency.

There would be neither boardroom tension disguised as Christmas dinner nor subtle tug-of-war between capital streams. These were the things that plagued his childhood. Memories of Allegra’s parents, who held a coastal resorts monopoly, openly leveraging him for more and more Suarez stakes, still kept him up at night.

The dream always began with the same room, the long dining room in Liguria where his maternal grandparents hosted their summer councils. Even in sleep, he could smell the sea through the open shutters and the faint medicinal polish they used on the walnut table.

He was small again. Nine, perhaps ten. His feet didn’t reach the floor from the carved chair. The adults spoke as if he were furniture. His grandfather sat at the head of the table, thin fingers steepled over a folder of documents. His grandmother’s golden bracelets chimed softly each time she turned a page. Across from them sat Amancio, expressionless, already understanding exactly where the conversation was going.

“Of course,” his grandfather said calmly, as if discussing rainfall. “When Roman assumes position, your coastal portfolio should revert to our line.”

His grandmother nodded once, eyes sliding briefly toward the boy at the table as if acknowledging a chair that might someday be moved. “Half the resorts,” she added. “The Suarez fleet needs warm-water anchorages anyway.”

Amancio’s voice remained neutral. “Suarez does not exchange operating infrastructure for hospitality concessions.” Mariana had probably made him memorize those words.

“Not exchange,” the old man corrected mildly. “Integration.” The word hung in the air.

Roman remembered the strange stillness of that moment. The way the adults continued discussing percentages and easements and future grandchildren as if he were not sitting three chairs away listening to the value of his life being apportioned across a map. He remembered his grandmother’s hand reaching over to rest briefly on his shoulder, measuring him.

“You’ll understand one day,” she had said.

Roman woke abruptly.

The Barcelona bedroom was dark, the sea somewhere beyond the terrace glass. For a moment, the scent of salt and walnut polish still clung to the back of his throat. He sat up slowly, hand pressed against his ribs.

Thirty years, and the dream had not softened. He could still hear the word “integration” the way his grandfather had said it. He rose from the bed and crossed to the window. Below, the garden lamps traced quiet lines through the palms. Somewhere in the house, a door closed softly, staff finishing the night rounds.

Behind him, Saoirse slept curled into the white sheets, one hand tucked beneath her cheek, the faintest crease between her brows as if even in sleep she was thinking about something she couldn’t quite name.

He watched her for a long moment. There was no map behind her or grandparents calculating shoreline concessions through the spine of a child. No family waiting to braid her surname into a capital structure. She was just a girl who had walked into his life without an agenda and somehow believed that the rooms he inhabited belonged to him rather than to the networks surrounding them.

The thought steadied him.

Saoirse allowed him to build around her without resistance. How could he not fall in love with that? In marrying outside blood, he had given himself something none of the alliances his family proposed could ever provide, a house that belonged entirely to him. And in private, in moments he did not dissect, he admitted no woman raised inside old European corridors would have ever looked at him the way she did.

The Suarez name was old and solvent enough that it did not require strategic matrimony to survive. They were now consolidating outward, not upward. So when he married Saoirse, educated but unconnected, carrying no dynasty behind her, it caused a stir — the Hausmanns felt rebuffed because of their niece — but there was no open resistance.

The old families adjusted with grace. Invitations continued. Toasts were made. The wedding was well attended. Duplessis still sent couture to Barcelona before gala season. Lindholm still extended credit lines without hesitation. No one was unkind.

But they were precise. Saoirse was received politely, placed correctly, and left alone. No one sought her confidence because there were no shared grandmothers in Swiss boarding schools or inherited summers in Portofino or mutual cousins threading through Madrid and Milan. Old money excluded with familiarity.

And Saoirse had none.

Meanwhile, her own world receded with frightening efficiency.

Her few university friends’ texts often went unanswered once travel intensified, and they found the trip across the ocean and multiple countries to visit her exciting but difficult to balance with their demanding schedules of survival. Roman’s calendar did not accommodate casual drop-ins anyway. Even before the twins, when Roman would sometimes approve for Emilio to arrange for her to invite someone between her world and his for lunch — perhaps an art curator or a literary professor — they arrived dwarfed by the architecture, too careful and apologetic.

The two spheres simply failed to touch.

But Roman saw only alignment. His wife was protected, spared the pressures of interacting with the world. His world did not reach for her, and he did not offer her to them. And slowly, without confrontation or decree, Saoirse became a woman who existed primarily inside his Suarez walls.

He married her because she felt clean. He married her because he could contain her. He told himself those were the same thing.

Now, Capri was presented as an escape when, in truth, it was consolidation.

All the alliances his family had suggested would have come with their own councils, tables, and quiet conversations about what Roman Suarez could be traded for. Saoirse had arrived with nothing to trade, which meant no one would ever sit across from him again and speak about the future of the Suarez empire as if he were merely a corridor through which another dynasty might expand.

He turned back toward the bed and slid beneath the sheets beside her. In a life constructed almost entirely of negotiations, that absence still felt like the most radical decision he had ever made.

The next morning, he would take her to Capri, and for at least ten days, there would be no measuring the weight of his name. Just the two of them. And that’s precisely the point, he told himself as sleep finally returned.

+

Roman insisted on driving.

Saoirse had assumed the usual entourage would be waiting at the airstrip when they landed in Italy. Javier, Emilio, a driver in dark linen, perhaps even a discreet security tail. Instead, Roman waved the suited driver away before she could process it.

“I’ll take us,” he said, already opening her door.

The gesture startled her more than the words. It had been years since she’d seen him behind a wheel.

The car was silver, low, European, understated, and it moved like something engineered for escape. The road from Naples curled along the coast in a ribbon of sun-struck asphalt. The sea flashed between cliffs like broken glass. 

She watched his hands on the steering wheel, his bare wrists uncharacteristically watchless. He drove with quiet focus, one hand loose at twelve, the other occasionally resting on her thigh as if to confirm she was still there. It was like a blast from the past when they were unmarried. Once or twice, he’d driven her around Madrid at night just to see the city but not mingle with it.

The twins’ absence pressed against her ribs. She had kissed them too many times before leaving. She saw them now as they snuggled in their fluffy white cribs. Lisa assured her they would sleep through the night. Marta had promised to send hourly updates.

She told herself she needed this, but she sat in the passenger seat, her hands folded in her lap, stiff as stone. Roman’s presence was heavy beside her, too heavy, too quiet. Her stomach hadn’t stopped turning since they left Spain. 

The car sped on through the winding roads of the Campania countryside, sun bleeding orange across the large rocks ahead. A monastery rose in the distance, perched high and removed from everything.

Roman glanced at her once when she fell too quiet. “You’re thinking.”

“Just about our babies.” Her voice was so thin it almost broke.

“They’re fine.” The words were simple and final. “This weekend is for you. For us to recalibrate.”

She nodded too quickly, but she didn’t trust this version of herself anymore. She was just tired of feeling unsure and alone. The road curved ahead. The wind entered through the open windows, lifting strands of her hair. Roman reached out and tucked them behind her ear, eyes still on the horizon.

“You’ve forgotten what it feels like to not be needed by everyone,” he said lightly. She didn’t realize until later that he had not included himself in that sentence.

The villa was private in a way that felt intentional. It was a white stone with multiple terraces and a view that erased most of the rest of the mainland. No staff visible or hum of activity, only cicadas and distant water. 

Saoirse walked into the main hall barefoot through cool marble, touching nothing, as if afraid to disturb the stillness. Roman followed more slowly, and right there at the center of the open-plan living area was a giant bouquet of fresh white roses in a short and stout black vase.

“Do we own this place, too?” She turned to him, and he stopped in his tracks.

“Not outright.” 

She remembered the Galicia property his mother had gifted them on their wedding day, how they hadn’t returned there since the honeymoon.

That evening, the sea’s pulse rose and fell beneath the cliffs like the sound of breathing. Saoirse stood by the window, wrapped in her soft robe, thinking of the twins. Roman was at the desk, tablet open, light ghosting across his face. They ate outside later than usual. It was a simple meal of lemon, olive oil, and fresh fish. He watched her eat.

“You look different when you’re not tired,” he said.

She laughed softly. “I am tired.”

“No,” he corrected. “You’re tense.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then didn’t.

Later, inside, he stood behind her at the balcony doors and wrapped his arms around her waist. For a long moment, neither spoke.

“I hated that Marco got so close,” he said. She stiffened. “Because… it reminded me that I can’t control everything.” The word control sounded weary in his mouth. “My mother used to pretend she wasn’t afraid,” he said quietly. “She thought that was strength.” He rested his forehead on her temple. “I don’t want you pretending.”

This was new. He rarely spoke of Allegra without polish. He hadn’t mentioned her at all since she passed. Saoirse turned in his arms.

“What do you want?” she asked. The question lingered between them like an offering as he studied her face.

“I want you steady,” he said finally. “With me.” With. It felt generous and almost healing. Was it a promise that perhaps he would stay closer, longer? He kissed her slowly, and when he pulled back and said, “Come here,” she moved toward him without thinking, feeling the speed and reflex in her body before her mind caught up. When it did catch up, she paused for a moment. He noticed. “What?” he asked softly.

“Nothing.” And it was true. It felt like nothing, like the inevitability of gravity.

In their spacious bedroom with the frescoed ceilings, she undressed in silence, aware of his reflection watching her in the mirror. He rose, crossed to her, and stopped a breath away. His fingertips brushed the back of her neck once, lightly, like a conductor testing the air before the music began.

As he slept, she lay awake listening to the sea and felt something inside her shift into place. It was easier here with few staff, no babies or interruptions, no one needing me but him. Maybe this is what I’m meant for. It felt like relief. It frightened her, but she did not follow the fear. She rolled into him instead.

The next day, they left that villa for the main island, and it appeared like a hallucination rising out of the blue heat.

Once more, Roman insisted on driving. He drove their launch from their great white yacht to the island jetty, waving away the attendants at the marina with a casual flick of his fingers. The boat cut through the water cleanly, the engine low and steady, his posture relaxed in a way she rarely saw in Barcelona.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said once, meaning the steering, the unnecessary exertion.

“I want to,” he replied without looking at her, yet the distinction felt important.

By the time they reached the second, much smaller villa of white stone tucked into the cliffside, terraces stepping down toward an impossible sea, the mainland had disappeared entirely. The world reduced itself to horizon and salt.

This new silence was almost medicinal.

They ate outside again as the sky turned violet. Roman poured wine and watched her taste it. He found it interesting that she was tasting these things for the first, second, or third time, and not the millionth, like everyone else he knew. He asked nothing about Barcelona or schedules, yet he seemed dangerously present.

“You look different,” he said again.

She smiled faintly. “Different how?”

“Less surrounded.”

She didn’t ask what that meant. The cicadas rose and fell in waves.

She had promised herself she would not bring up the twins immediately this time. She had promised she would let herself exist here without counting the hours between feeds. But the promise frayed quickly.

“I keep thinking about whether they’ll sleep through tonight,” she murmured. “Lisa said they would. But she hasn’t called, and sometimes, they wake together, and then it’s chaos and—”

“They’re safe,” he said. “Don’t make them your whole identity, Saoirse.”

She nodded and blushed and tried to swallow the rest of the sentence. When he stood and walked to the terrace railing, she followed after him. The sea was black now, the sky torn with stars. He rested both hands on the stone.

“I didn’t tell you something,” he said after a long silence. She waited. “I don’t like not being there.”

“For the twins?” she asked.

“For anything.” The wind lifted her hair across her cheek. He brushed it away absently. “When you told me about that house,” he said quietly, tilting away. “about him… I thought I could fix it. As if that’s how the world works. You get strong enough and make sure nothing touches you or those you love.”

She watched his profile in the starlight.

“I watched my mother endure things she would never name,” he continued. “She called it discipline. I called it…” He exhaled. He did not look at her when he said it. “I learned very young that the only way to survive a room is to control it.” He turned then, finally. “But… I hate that…,” he added, almost to himself. “I hate that I can’t predict how something will land on you. I hate that I can’t stand between you and every variable.”

There it was, the fear and exhaustion of the boy who watched Allegra hold her wineglass steady while something cracked behind her eyes.

“I don’t want you pretending,” he said. “I don’t want you swallowing things the way she did.”

She felt something inside her soften when she whispered, “I’m not pretending.”

“I know,” he replied. “That’s the problem.” He stepped closer. “You steady me,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it. “You don’t… exhaust me.”

“And I don’t want to share that steadiness with anything,” he finished.

He kissed her slowly again that night, and undressed her like he was learning her again. When he finally pulled back, he rested his forehead against hers. “Come here,” he murmured.

She moved toward him instantly. It was a small movement, a shift of weight, but she felt it, that reflex. She could have stayed where she was, but she didn’t.

The days unfolded in pale light and salt. He touched her shoulder when she stood too long in the sun. He guided her waist as they descended stone steps. He brushed his knuckles against the back of her neck while she read. He took her swimming at dawn. In Barcelona, he never let them near the coast.

“You’re brilliant,” he said once, watching her trace something in the air as she explained a restructuring idea for the foundation she’d nursed for the last couple of months she spent struggling to sleep at night. “You see systems people miss.”

She laughed. “That’s your line.”

“It’s yours too,” he corrected.

He asked her opinion at dinner and listened, really listened, when she answered. She felt expansive. Something that had been compressed in Barcelona was unfolding here in Capri under clean air.

They walked barefoot through town one afternoon, and he let her choose the restaurant. They sat unassumingly among the crowd, and he watched her eat gelato, pistachio lingering on her lips until he cleaned them off with his thumb and licked.

For a whole day, it felt like she had married a man, not an empire.

“I wonder if they miss me,” she said in the morning, almost idly, as they lay in bed. It was a small sentence, a mother’s reflex, yet the air changed, the warmth receded a degree.

“They’re safe,” he said again.

She turned toward him. “I know. I just—”

“They’re safe,” he repeated, softer this time, but she felt the distance like a draft as she froze in his dark irises.

That afternoon, when she reached for his hand in town, he took it, but his grip was looser and less automatic. That night, when she curled toward him in bed, he did not pull her flush against him. The lesson arrived in a temperature that said Your longing competes with me.

So she did not consciously decide to mention the twins less. She simply started mentioning them less.

On the fourth night, the sea was restless. They had spent the day swimming and lying in the sun, her skin flushed peach. He had watched her carefully, his gaze almost reverent. She stood at the bedroom balcony doors in nothing but one of his shirts. He came up behind her, and she expected his hands to move. They didn’t. He stood close enough that she could feel his breath, but he did not touch her. The absence felt louder than contact.

“Roman,” she said quietly.

“Yes?” She waited for him to close the distance. Instead, he stepped back further. “Come here.” The words were soft.

She turned, and she went, again, before she asked herself why. When she reached him, he placed his hands on her hips and kissed her once, then stopped.

He climbed into bed. She stood there for a moment, heat pooling in her abdomen, unspent. It took her several seconds to realize he was doing it again. Withholding. Just as it had been before Marco. She lay awake longer than he did, listening to his breathing, feeling something in herself lean toward him, asking without words. At least he was with her.

She woke up the next morning alone in bed and still in his shirt. She stayed like that for a while, staring at the fresco and the wide windows and the calm sea beyond, listening to the birds sing and trees rustle. She grabbed her rosary from the nightstand, the only thing she'd unpacked herself when they first arrived, and said a few halfhearted Glory Bes until she was sick of it. Then, she stood and walked to the standing mirror, picking up a silver brush from the vanity beside it. Nina hadn’t called in weeks. Lisa hadn’t called since they got here, though she suspected Roman was behind that.

Gentle footsteps approached, and she smelled him step into their spa-like room. Her body shook a little when he walked up behind it, wrapped his arms around her waist, and met her gaze in the mirror. Even her voice shook when she said his name. She leaned back into him, but her eyes in the mirror remained watchful, waiting.

He took the silver brush from her hand and placed it perfectly on the vanity. His hair was damp, his torso shirtless, and she smelled the saltwater all over him from the sea.

His fingers caught the hem of the wool shirt draped over her shoulders—his shirt—and tugged it lightly, as if reminding her whose it was. Her chest rose and fell unevenly. She shook her head once, a reflex more than a refusal.

He placed his hand lightly on her throat, drawing the breath from her lungs, and tipped her chin upward so she had no choice but to meet his eyes.

“Do you love me truly?” he said softly.

Her breath faltered. Her brows furrowed. “I do,” like they were at the altar again, their wedding day that was a lifetime ago, in an entirely different world. 

“I know. Even when I hold back…” His thumb rested briefly against the pulse beneath her jaw. “...you love me. You can’t stop because I take care of you. I hold all your broken pieces together.”

Her eyes stung. A traitorous heat gathered low in her body, the way her thighs shifted before she could stop them, she hated it. Sometimes, she didn't like that he saw her so clearly and understood exactly how the machinery of her wanting worked, even when she wished it wouldn’t.

He kissed her hard enough that the world collapsed inward around the contact. She kissed him back before she could think better of it, her hands clutching at the waist of his drawstring pants as though she needed the anchoring.

He lifted her easily and set her on the edge of the vanity dressing table. The room smelled of the water cologne he wore when he traveled, mixed with the seawater, as his fingers moved toward the strings over his groin. This was new. They’d never done it like this before.

“Wait,” she said suddenly, sharper than she intended. She pushed once at his chest, breath still unsteady. “Stop.” Everything in her felt tangled, his accusation about Marco still humming between them like a live wire, the humiliation of having to insist there had been nothing there, and the equally humiliating truth that none of it had lessened the pull she felt toward him now, especially after the last couple of days.

He stilled. For a moment, he simply looked at her. Then his mouth curved.

“Is that what this is now?” he murmured, voice roughened. She swallowed. “You want to pretend you still get a say?” Her cheeks burned. His kiss had left heat across her neck, blotched and visible. He leaned closer again, deliberately slow, his body boxing hers against the sturdy table. “You push me again,” he said quietly, “and I’ll show you what it means to not hold back, Saoirse.”

Her breath caught. Her fingers curled into the edge of the wood behind her, knuckles whitening against the polished grain. She couldn’t break eye contact, and all she could see in his eyes was pain and need that mirrored hers. So she heard herself whisper, “Then, do it.”

His jaw tightened. He gripped her chin and kissed her again like he was starved. It pulled her downward into a place that existed only between them. And Saoirse went. Her body answered him before her thoughts could intervene, as it always did. The fear still knotted in her chest shifted into something darker and more familiar. She kissed him back simply because she did not know how not to.

He pulled her forward and guided her outside the bedroom without breaking contact, his hands steady on her hips. Her back met a wall, the impact stealing the breath from her lungs. The silence between them fractured under the urgency of his movements, the way his body pressed close as if reclaiming territory he believed had briefly been threatened.

His hand slid slowly up her thigh, and his mouth brushed the curve of her ear. “You don’t need to want it,” he murmured. The words were almost gentle. “You just need to need me.”

A tremor ran through her. She did need him, but for the first time, as her fingers clutched the back of his shirt and the room narrowed to the heat of his body, a small and terrifying thought moved somewhere beneath the surface of everything she felt.

She wasn’t sure she could survive him.

It all ended on the bed under the lofty, cloud-like sheets, and they stayed in it for most of the day, in and out of sleep. Portia, the Capri housekeeper, served them a light lunch there, and somewhere in between, Roman read her Virgil from a dusty old first edition in Italian. Tears streamed down her face as she rested on the white, breathable pillows, listening to his soft voice. She couldn’t understand a word, maybe that explained the tears, or maybe she was exhausted again.

Soon, the bedroom went dim in a quietness that was also perfectly still. Moonlight slanted through the shutters, casting fractured stripes over the bed. Saoirse lay on her side, her knees drawn in slightly, Roman behind her close enough for his breath to graze the back of her neck. Her eyes wide open, she’d never felt so quiet. Like someone finally found the switch in her brain and turned the world’s volume down.

When Roman’s low voice came back on, she flinched. “I want to rebuild what life stripped from you. I want to see you walk into every room like you belong there. I want to teach you what power feels like.”

She swallowed, and another silent tear slipped down her temple. She didn't say anything for a long time.

Then, “Will I still be me?”

“No.” He paused. “You’ll be more mine than ever.” He leaned forward, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. She closed her eyes.

The Suarez Myth: Chapter 11

Saoirse was fifteen.

Her grandmother had just died. She met Sinead for the first time at the long, dreary funeral that followed, a fuzzy-haired ginger in dark jeans and a black oversized t-shirt who refused to enter the actual church building and didn’t look that much older than her. 

She said to her just outside the church doors, “You can stay with us until school ends.” Us was Sinead, her husband Dermot, and a brother whose name Saoirse never spoke aloud again.

She was sixteen the winter she moved into Sinead’s house, but calling it a house felt generous. Newcastle had been manageable with its grey skies, school corridors, her grandmother's gentle fussing, but Saoirse couldn’t live in her house alone, and Sinead, as her only living legal guardian, refused to move in. 

That year in Sinead’s flat felt like a shift into something colder. It was more like a narrow hallway pretending to be a home. It was old, its carpets smelled of damp twilight and old curry, its windows were always closed because they got stuck when you tried to open them. The radiators clanked at odd hours like something was trapped inside. 

The first week passed quietly. Saoirse went to school a bus ride away during the day. Sinead worked nights at Tesco. Dermot slept odd hours. The brother, whom she hated to remember his name, was twenty-six. Too old to be leeching off his younger sister, yet still too confident to be unthreatening. 

He liked to “help” Saoirse carry things and to stand too close when she washed dishes. He drifted around the house like a draft, appearing and disappearing without sound. He had a way of standing too close behind you without touching, just close enough that you could feel your skin pull upward in warning.

Saoirse learned the rules quickly, the way quiet girls do.

Rule one: Don’t close the bedroom door.

Rule two: Don’t shower after dark.

Rule three: Don’t wake Dermot.

Rule four: Don’t cry where anyone can hear it.

She kept her head down, went to school, handed over her lunch card quietly when Sinead asked for it, folded Sinead’s work uniforms before leaving for class. She kept away from her schoolmates, who all thought her name and accent were weird, and her face was too pale. They called her “Angel Face” or “Ghost Face”, mostly the latter. She stayed small, polite, grateful, the shape of a girl living on borrowed hospitality.

But the brother kept watching her.

He often lingered in doorways, leaning against the frame like he owned the air around her. Sometimes, he’d speak soft, strange comments that made her stomach tighten.

“You’re growing fast.”

“You look older with your hair down.”

“You’re quiet. Quiet girls know things.”

Sinead ignored it. Dermot didn’t see it. Saoirse tried not to breathe when he was in the same room.

One evening, Sinead left her in the house alone with him.

Saoirse was putting away laundry when he appeared at the doorframe, leaning against it casually, his smile too slow.

“You’re a quiet little thing, aren’t you?” he said. “Quiet things don’t make trouble.”

She stepped back. He stepped forward, took a T-shirt from the basket, lifted it, inhaled it… and smiled again. Her blood froze. She tried to leave, but he caught her wrist.

“Don’t run,” he murmured. “You don’t want to seem afraid.”

She remembered her grandmother’s advice. Don’t scream unless someone can hear you. Don’t fight unless you can win. So she went still, stone-still.

He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, fingers lingering.

“You’ll grow up beautiful,” he whispered. “Dangerously so. Men will want to ruin you.”

She prayed he would let go. He did, eventually, but the message was clear. 

The night it happened again wasn’t any more special. Sinead was at work. Dermot was drunk. The brother knocked on her open door. She was sitting cross-legged on the cold carpet, doing a composition worksheet under the yellow light of a dying lamp. Her pencil shook a little. She always shook a little back then.

He stepped inside and sat on the bed, close enough that she felt the mattress dip and his breath warm the back of her neck.

“You shouldn’t be alone in here, you know,” he murmured. “Dangerous neighborhood. People don’t lock their doors around here.”

She pressed her nails into her thigh, hard, but said nothing. Predictable girls are easy, he told her once. Quiet girls.

When she didn’t respond, he leaned forward, his hand brushing the crook of her elbow like a test, a question. Her whole body went rigid. A kind of cold rose through her bones, and he smiled as if he could tell.

She stood abruptly after a while, like someone yanked her upright by invisible strings.

“I have to shower,” she said, voice flat. “I have school.” She didn’t wait for permission. She walked out, her legs numb, her heart pounding so loudly she thought it might wake Dermot through the walls.

She locked herself in the bathroom — breaking rule two — and turned on the tap. Hot water roared into the tub. Steam filled the room. She sat on the closed toilet seat fully clothed, covering her ears with both hands, shaking so hard her fingers hurt. She stayed until the water turned cold, until her skin prickled, until her breathing slowed.

He didn’t follow, but the unnamed fear lived in her body now, permanent as bone.

When Sinead came home at dawn and found the bathroom light still on, she snapped, “Are you trying to drown the house, girl? Why’s it always something with you?”

Saoirse apologized. She always apologized. She learned that if you stayed very quiet, very still, very small, sometimes danger moved through you, past you. She carried that rule for years, into adulthood and university, into Roman’s world and their marriage. Silence meant safety. Stillness meant survival. Submission meant escape. She learned to become a ghost in that house, and she never told Sinead what happened, or Nina, not fully. She never even really told herself.

And when she finally told Roman one trembling night in Madrid in their early months together, she said it quickly, lightly, as if describing a dream, eyes turned away, hands trembling again. Roman had held her hand, jaw tense.

“I won’t let anything like that happen to you again,” he said. He swore to protect her. He gathered her into his arms and vowed, “No one will ever touch you again.”

+

Saoirse’s memory of Sinead’s house was little more than a vague outline now, but Roman carried the full, sharp truth she’d whispered to him years ago, in the beginning, before she learned to be quieter even in her confessions. He was in Singapore again, this time on an extended stay that had somehow turned into two months in and out between the country, Madrid, and Geneva, when the memory returned to him.

It hit him like a blade, and suddenly he wasn’t in his Tanglin temporary office complex anymore. He was back in his Madrid penthouse, early winter, three years ago.

Saoirse was still twenty-one, barefoot on his hardwood floor, her hair still wet from the shower because she was too shy to use his blow dryer without being shown how it worked. She wore one of his shirts, sleeves rolled twice over her wrists. The hem nearly brushed her knees. She sat curled on the sofa, knees to her chest, eyes too bright. They had been talking about nothing — books, London, her sister’s cruelty — when her voice suddenly thinned, went quiet, like something inside her slipped.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” she whispered.

He’d turned toward her, expecting something small like an unpaid bill, an old boyfriend, perhaps the shame of having grown up without a family. She always apologized for things she never should.

But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at her hands.

“There was a man in her house,” she said softly. “Her brother.” She swallowed. Her throat moved delicately, like a bruise blooming. “He… he used to come into my room.”

Roman’s back went rigid.

She kept going, as if she had rehearsed the words and they were now falling out of her faster than she could catch them.

“He touched me. Not once. Not just once. I never told her. Or anyone. I thought… I thought it was my fault because I was quiet. Because I didn’t push him away. Because I froze.”

Roman felt something crack open inside him. At the time, he didn’t know what it was, but now, he understood that it was the end of innocence, of his own capacity to love her lightly.

She kept talking, voice faltering but unbroken, “I didn’t know how to scream. I didn’t know how to stop it. I just— felt my body leave me. And afterward… I couldn’t remember parts of it. I still can’t. That’s why I hate dark hallways, and touching people’s arms, and closed doors.”

She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. “I don’t want you to think I’m damaged. I don’t want you to think I’m… weak.”

Weak. The word detonated something ancient in him that smelled like Allegra's quiet terror and the way she held her wineglass steady while the world crashed around her. He closed the space between them in two steps. He knelt in front of her and took her face in both hands, his thumbs brushing the wetness beneath her eyes.

“Look at me,” he said. She did, her eyes were enormous, terrified, trying to be brave. “You were a child,” he said. His voice was low, so low she had to lean forward to hear it. “You hear me? A child. There is no fault, no blame, only me now.” Her breath shuddered. 

“And if he were alive,” Roman added, “I would kill him myself.”

She whispered something like a protest, but he silenced it gently, pressing his forehead to hers.

“You survived,” he said. “You survived something no one should survive. And you are here with me now.”

She had cried then, quietly, almost apologetically, into his chest. And he had held her so tightly she could barely breathe. That was the night she gave him everything. She gave him trust, and the rawest, truest version of herself. And that was the night Roman made a silent, irrevocable vow that no one would ever touch her again.

He decided, without noticing he had decided, that she belonged inside an unshakeable circle of protection. His protection. His walls. His rules. His silence. His house.

It was the nine-year-old boy watching Allegra bleed into lace and thinking, I will keep my woman safe. From that night onward, everything in him reorganized itself around her safety. The “stay here.” The “don’t worry about outside.” The “let me handle it.” The “you don’t need to go.” The “rest.” The “be calm.” He was saving her.

In Singapore now, staring at the elevator wall while that faint jasmine clung to the air, Roman felt something cold crawl up his spine. He remembered every detail she’d told him, the shape of her shoulders when she spoke, the tremor in her voice.

He remembered pressing her hands to his chest and promising, “You never have to be afraid again.”

So now, he had discreet, AI-assisted surveillance on all their homes. Barcelona was like Fort Knox. Every season, he had Marco and the other security guys make private security enhancements based on advancing technology. Smart-watch access for facial recognition triggers, movement mapping, and biometric logs, things Saoirse knew existed, but not to what extent. 

Marco oversaw the physical reinforcements. The house secretary, Fernando, coordinated the digital summaries so Roman received weekly anomaly reports, compressed and filtered. That night, between virtual meetings in the hotel suite, he opened the security digest once more out of habit. He’d been doing it a lot more in the last couple of months. 

There had been a delivery truck misrouted near the western gate. A gardener triggering a false perimeter alert after hours. A brief software recalibration. He scrolled.

A thumbnail caught his eye only because of its timestamp: 18:42. Sunset. The lemon grove path. He expanded it. At first, it meant nothing. Two figures at the far edge of the property. One in a pale shape that resolved into Saoirse’s dressing gown. He leaned slightly closer to the screen.

Marco stood in front of her, bent at the waist. His hand near her ankle, adjusting something, the strap of her sandal, perhaps. Her hand rested on his shoulder. The frame held for two seconds before the AI auto-paused to mark proximity. There was no audio, escalation, or further contact, but still, Roman did not blink.

The angle was imperfect, picked up only because the perimeter AI had widened its sweep after a recent firmware update. The main house cameras did not extend that far into the grove. She was outside the usual visual grid.

He replayed it. The physicality was minor, innocent even. But the expression…

Her face tilted slightly upward. It was open, and she was laughing, or nearly laughing. There was something unguarded in the line of her mouth. He tried to remember when he had last seen that expression directed toward him, but could not place it. He hadn’t even been back in Barcelona for the last two months. The days had just flown by.

Marco straightened, stepped back, and the moment dissolved. The clip ended.

Roman closed the window without flagging it. He did not call Fernando. He did not message Marco. There was, technically, nothing to reprimand. Security protocol did not forbid the staff from assisting his wife on uneven ground. Physical proximity was sometimes unavoidable. Still.

Marco should have called for Marta or one of the female staff members. Saoirse should not have been that far from the house alone. She was in some flimsy robe, unacceptable in his mind. The perimeter AI had only caught it because the system was functioning correctly, because he had improved it.

He reopened the clip and watched her hand again, watching the warmth in her face. The contact was brief, but the warmth lingered. Roman sat back in the crushed mohair armchair slowly as business associates chattered somewhere in the background.

He told himself the discomfort was procedural and about boundaries, not about the fact that she looked alive in a way that did not involve him. He minimized the footage and opened the Aberdeen refinery audit instead, giving himself five minutes to end the unnecessary meeting.

He did not sleep for another hour, not until after he’d restructured the staff schedule, quietly transferring Marco to Madrid. He had Javier review recent house staff reports before morning.

“And please have Emilio schedule me to be in Barcelona tomorrow evening,” Roman said to his chief of staff, who was still in Geneva. Tianglin had grown too comfortable, but it was time to return home to his family. “...and at least once a week next month.”

+

A warm dusk settled over the Barcelona estate. 

The lemon grove smelled like sun-sweetened citrus and watered soil as Saoirse walked slowly along the stone path, the soft silk belt of her dressing robe fluttering at her waist. The matching nightdress within clung to her skin thanks to the sun and how it made her pores cry. The twins were finally asleep. Lisa was on a call inside. It was the first time all day Saoirse had been alone.

One of her sandals slipped off, the leather catching at the buckle. She muttered something under her breath and crouched to fix it, but her balance wavered.

“Señora, careful.” The voice came up from behind her. “Let me help you.”

She was startled a little but smiled. “It’s just the strap. It got caught.” Marco was reliable, kind, and always just out of the way… except when Roman was catching her on camera, touching his arm. She sighed.

He bent quickly, adjusting the buckle while she steadied herself with a hand on his shoulder for a second. She laughed at herself, at the absurdity of losing a sandal in her own garden, at her paranoia about accepting his help.

He nodded politely and stepped back. “All set. I’ll leave you to it.”

She thanked him softly, and he walked on. She exhaled and continued down the path, the moment already forgotten.

The next night, Roman returned without ceremony. She thought she’d be upset with him, but that part of her took a backseat and watched as her body leapt into his arms as he crossed the inner threshold of their home. It had been two months, and she missed him like he was a soldier returned from war. He embraced her, kissed her cheek, and lingered there for some moments before releasing her and taking her in with unusual scrutiny.

Dinner was quiet. The twins were fed, swaddled, and asleep in their cribs. A candle flickered between her and Roman at their smaller dining table. He was unhurried, slicing through grilled squid, a glass of crisp wine at his elbow. He hadn’t said much since he returned.

Saoirse had made an effort as usual. Her hair washed, a white organic cotton dress on, a soft touch of mascara. She wanted to feel like herself again, the self before milk stains and night feeds. 

“I was thinking of taking the twins to the coast this week just for a few hours,” she finally broke the ice. “Lisa says sea air’s good for their lungs,” she murmured. He nodded but didn't look up from his cutting. “Would you come?”

A pause. “Maybe.” He set down his cutlery and took a slow sip of wine. “Do you usually walk the lemon grove in a robe?” He met her gaze, his steady and unreadable.

Her spine stiffened as her brain sorted through the last couple of days for a clue as to what he was referring to. “I wanted air.”

He nodded, as if that satisfied something. “And Marco? He was helping with your shoe?”

She was quiet for a while before saying, “I didn’t ask him to. He saw me wobble and offered. It took ten seconds.”

“I’ve seen the footage.” 

She swallowed. Suddenly, she felt absurd in her dress, in this house, in the game she didn’t know she was still playing. Her voice was a slow thread now, “I wasn’t flirting. I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” her eyes on her half-eaten food. 

“I didn’t say you were,” he replied flatly and leaned back, folding his hands together. “But I noticed something.”

She asked even though she didn’t want to, “What?”

“The way you looked at him. That softness, that instinct to smile, you used to give that to me.”

She exhaled. “You think I’m cheating on you, months after childbirth, when I barely leave this property, and the only thing I want more than sleep is you.”

He stood and walked away from the table, leaving his food and her too shaken to react.

Eventually, she retired to bed, but she didn’t take her sleeping pills. Instead, she grabbed the rosary from her vanity and tried to pray, but it wasn’t working, her brain refused to remember all the words she should know like the alphabet by now. It was her heartbeat. All her brainpower was going into speeding it up.

The lights were dim, and at least five hours had passed since dinner when he joined her. Saoirse sat on the tufted bench at the foot of their bed, brushing out her hair as she counted every hour. Her robe was pale blue, loose, and comfortable.

Roman walked straight into the walk-in, and Saoirse listened distractedly to his shuffling within as she brushed on and on, long after her hair achieved neatness. He stepped back into the room and placed his watch on the vanity. When she looked up at him, he had only his briefs on. 

“You’ve been sleeping earlier lately,” he said. She knew he knew because all the staff sent him reports of her every move. She knew he knew Bibiana brought her sedatives. Was their annoying Marco argument over?

“It’s the twins,” she murmured, still brushing. “I try to lie down when they do.”

He nodded and sat on the edge of the bed close to her. “I moved Marco to Madrid.” Her brushing hand froze, the brush still against her hair, and she turned slowly to him. “They need someone familiar with perimeter systems.”

Her body tensed, but she stayed still. “Did you tell him why?”

He looked at her like she said something ridiculous. “I didn’t need to.”

She set the brush down, finally. “You really think something happened.”

He stood and moved to his nightstand, setting his phone down. “I don’t think. I observe. You know that.”

“You have cameras on me.”

“On the property, not on you,” he corrected calmly.

She exhaled, long and slow, suddenly hyperventilating for reasons she couldn’t immediately discern. “I was outside for air. Lisa had just gone in. My sandal slipped. He helped me. That was all.”

He nodded. “You laughed.”

“At myself.”

“You touched him.”

“I touched him for balance. Roman, I had just breastfed twins. I hadn’t eaten. I was lightheaded.”

He chuckled as he walked to her side of the room to pick up one of the baby monitors, and for a split second, she was unsure if she was still telling the truth, if she’d done anything more with Marco that she didn’t remember. 

“You don’t need to breastfeed them. We have nurses specifically for that, Saoirse! And they’re eight months already!” She hated it most when he was able to acquire a frightening sharpness without ever raising his voice. He walked to the glass double doors that led to their bedroom terrace, parted the thick curtains, opened the doors wide, letting cold waves of air in, walked out, then walked back in, in quick succession. “In two years, I never once saw you look at a staff member like that. It wasn’t the act. It was the tone of it… just like last time,” he said that last part more softly than the rest.

“You’ve stopped touching me for almost a year,” she cried out, but the tears in her eyes refused to fall. “I give a sliver of warmth to someone who adjusts my shoe, and suddenly... what?”

He stared at her for a moment, flung their white eiderdown down, and climbed into bed. “Come to bed.”

She froze at the edge of the bed, her breath shallow and uneven, facing him like time itself had frozen. His gaze trailed from her eyes to her mouth to the pulse fluttering at her throat.

“Come here,” he said again, softly this time.

She hesitated before inching toward the bed and lifting herself onto it. When she was close enough to feel his breath, he reached toward her, grazing his fingers across her collarbone, tracing upward until they cradled the side of her face. Her skin was cold, or maybe his hand was too warm. She closed her eyes against it, remembering him asking all those months ago, But are you mine?

“Do you know what it does to me?” he said, his voice low and hoarse. “You don’t understand yet that you don’t have to waste so many words on the perimeter guy?” She flinched at his condescending tone long before she caught on to what he meant. “You didn’t have to say a word. I’d always take your side.” She opened her eyes and frowned at his chest, trying to compute what he was saying.

“I was scared,” she whispered after a long pause. “I thought you really believed something happened.”

He leaned in and touched his forehead against hers. “What if he… tried something? How could I have forgiven myself?” He whispered with his eyes closed. A strong shiver emerged from the depths of her veins to the very top of her skin as his words sank in. She’d never even considered that. What if Marco was another… brother?

Then… then he kissed her. A real kiss, and not gentle either. She froze first, but soon, her fingers bunched into the fabric of the sheets beneath them because it’d been too long. And she cried again, silently, as her lips opened under his and her body pressed into him with months of suppressed confusion, longing, and love, and newfound fear.

He kissed her jaw, her neck, untying her robe. His palm flattened at her lower back, pulling her flush against him. 

“Look at me,” he murmured against her lips. And when she did, “Don’t give that to anyone else.” She nodded, barely.

“Even if I lose everything tomorrow, there’s no version of this world where you walk away from me.” He pulled back to look at her fully. “Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take care of you.” The fire in his eyes dimmed slightly. His mouth returned to hers. His hands moved, and hers followed, pulling each other apart just enough to fall into one another. He barely undressed her before the first thrust, his grip iron, his rhythm unrelenting, his eyes never leaving hers.

Afterward, they lay tangled together, both panting, her cheek pressed against his chest, his hand spread wide across the dip of her back.

“Sleep,” he said into the silence as his thumb rubbed slow circles over her spine. Her eyes stayed fixed on the shadows above their heads, trying to understand what just happened, but the force of release after months of waiting lulled her too quickly.

The first strange thing about when she finally woke up late the next morning was the weight of his hand, resting against the dip of her waist. Her back was to him, her body warm but motionless. Light poured in through gauzy curtains, but she couldn't reach for it. Instead, she listened to the sound of his breath, strange but welcome behind her, the quiet ticking of the brass wall clock, and to her own racing thoughts.

The world had cracked open and reset itself. She felt disarmed and devoured yet protected at the same turn. She shifted, and Roman stirred behind her. Had she ever woken up before him before? The bed creaked with his slight movement, and his hand tightened instinctively around her. He’s awake.

In a low voice still thick with sleep, he said, “Mi amor.” The words went through her like heat, and her heart lurched. She rolled over slowly to face him, their eyes meeting on the pillows. He looked exhausted, like something had been ripped from him. His eyes scanned her face, and she wondered what they were looking for.

Silence stretched, and something almost tender stirred between them. The night had been… intense. Something had shifted. She felt it in her ribs, the tender ache between her thighs, and the strange stillness of the room. But why did he withhold himself from her for so long? And was it over?

He sat up and stretched his arms overhead. His phone buzzed on the nightstand, and he reached for it instinctively. She watched his face as he read. Nothing changed at first. Then his jaw shifted, a tightening so subtle she would have missed it months ago. He slowly flipped his legs off the side of the bed to stand.

"I’m firing Marco," he said and faced her. She sat up too quickly. The sheet slipped from her naked chest as he watched her. "You care if he lives."

She blinked, startled. "What?"

"You care," he repeated, advancing toward her. "You’re scared of what I might do to him. You flinched just now."

"Roman—"

"You gave him our money. You let him close."

She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the anonymous payment she’d arranged to keep Marco’s daughter in school just before she’d gone into labour, a discreet scholarship through the foundation. 

She never told Roman because she knew he’d consider it inappropriate to get so involved in a staff member’s private life. But Marco didn’t even know either, she thought. It all happened so quickly, after she’d found his wife crying alone just inside their gates one day. They'd spoken woman-to-woman and arranged everything.

She made her voice as little as possible. "You say you love me, but you don’t trust me…"

He laughed once, low and humorless. "I don’t trust anyone!" He growled for perhaps the first time since she knew him. "That’s how I survived this long."

Survived what? she almost asked. The tears streamed down her eyes finally, and she wasn’t sure if it was sadness, fear, or utter confusion from the disorienting tenderness of the night compared to this.

Had she really put herself in danger by getting close to Marco? She thought hard about her last few interactions with him. Was that what she was doing, getting close to him without realizing? Her brows creased.

"What are you going to do to him?"

"Why do you care?" He walked to her and gripped her chin gently but firmly. "I already did it."

His eyes held hers. For a moment, something darker moved there, and the silence that followed was seismic, but she didn’t dare let her eyes leave his.

“Let me be clear. If you lie to me again…” He stopped. She saw the thought travel through him, change shape, retreat, and instead of finishing the sentence, he pulled her forward into his chest. The shift was so sudden her body forgot which emotion to hold. His arms wrapped around her tightly, his breath pressing into her hair.

“Just think,” he said into her crown, as though the rest had never formed. “Think before you act next time.”

He began rocking her gently, the movement rhythmic, almost paternal.

“Stay right here,” he murmured. “This is where you make sense.” Her heart pounded against his ribs.

“You feel that?” he continued softly. “How everything settles when you’re with me.”

And disturbingly, shamefully, it did. The fear that had spiked through for the last several minutes began to dissolve under the steadiness of his hold. The certainty in his voice felt like scaffolding. The adrenaline drained from her limbs, leaving her exhausted and pliable. She did not know whether she had just been threatened or forgiven. Perhaps both. Her body chose for her. She sagged against him and, still cradled there, slipped back into sleep.

“We’re leaving Barcelona this weekend,” he said, as if continuing a conversation they had never started.

Disoriented mid-sleep, she replied with what little strength she could muster, “Where?”

“You need a reset, mi amor,” he murmured into her ear, then his lips brushed her temple. “Capri. I want you where I can see you,” he said quietly. The location sounded like sunlight and something clean, like a gift. “No one asking anything from you but me.”

She nodded before she understood what she was agreeing to. And somewhere beneath the warmth of his arm and the promise of blue water and marble terraces, something in her folded itself smaller, grateful to be held.

The Suarez Myth: Chapter 10

When the twins turned six months old, Roman was in Barcelona with them again.

He’d been away for exactly one month. In that time, Saoirse and the babies still hadn’t returned to Madrid, the city where Roman lived most of the time now, even though he said they would months ago. The city waited for them in silence while this one, his family’s cradle, remained their cage.

In that time, Bibiana also visited more often, always with old Fr. Pedro in his beeswax cassock, sometimes with her younger daughter who was Saoirse’s age and polite enough, but always always with those yellow-brown prescription parcels of diazepam. And they taught Saoirse how to balance devotion with simply longing for Roman less.

A fountain murmured nearby as Saoirse walked into the central courtyard where Roman sat on the evening of his arrival. She held two glasses of wine in each hand, one faded gold, one dark. Roman preferred red during spring.

He was seated beneath the olive tree, the faintest breeze rustling his light shirt collar. A small tablet rested on the low stone table beside him, its light reflecting faintly against the glass, as he casually scrolled through it. She handed him his wine, and he took it without looking up at her.

“I thought we’d sit together tonight, before Lisa brings them down,” she said.

A pause, and then, he nodded once. He didn’t need words to fill the silence, something Saoirse had once admired.

She watched him as she lowered herself onto the cushion across from him, folding one leg under the other. She’d dressed deliberately in a soft beige silk wrap dress, no makeup, hair pulled back and loosely pinned, simple, exactly how he liked it. She felt completely healed now, whole, and she was trying, she always tried, to be the version of herself that calmed him, that warmed him. 

Her eyes remaining on his bent head, she counted the pearls of the rosary around her left fingers, letting the prayers keep her mind from straying too far. When she prayed, it steadied enough to not ask for more. Fr. Pedro, his lush silver curls rustling, had suggested this on his last visit days ago. Pray incessantly, he’d said as they sat in this very courtyard as Bibiana stood nearby eating cucumber slices, pretending not to monitor them. Saoirse felt used to praying once again, like she was back in that old house in Newcastle, begging God to keep her grandmother alive.

“You seemed distracted earlier with Marco,” Roman said at last.

Her eyes lifted, and she responded immediately, “We were talking about the gate sensors. They’re still glitching.”

He finally met her eyes and smiled faintly. “I know. He filed it in the report.” His gaze remained mild as he took a sip of the wine. “It’s not what you said. It’s the way you touched his arm.”

For a moment, she didn’t breathe. What? “What do you mean?”

“You touched his arm. Why?” He held her gaze, and Saoirse realized with a start that he expected a serious response. 

“I was half-asleep,” she said. “I was trying to soften my ‘no.’”

He hummed lightly like he agreed with her. But he didn’t agree. It was just noise. “Marco isn’t paid to be softened,” he said finally. She leaned back, slowly, into the cushioned outdoor seat, the evening breeze sending a light shiver through her. It took her a moment to realize what he meant. “I’ll speak to him,” he continued, almost absently. “He’s become too familiar.”

Something in her chest cracked at that, small and invisible. “I’ve barely been outside this house,” she said softly. “There’s nowhere to be familiar.”

He looked at her longer now, studying the shift in her tone. “You’ve been restless.”

The word ‘restless’ felt like a diagnosis, and it broke her composure before she could stop it. “Because I haven’t been touched.” It came out barely audible. “You stopped touching me months ago. Even before the twins were born.” As if trying to remind him, in case he’d forgotten. She remembered Nina’s voice when she’d mentioned this casually over the phone, how her husband hadn’t touched her since she’d become too big and swollen with pregnancy, right before Nina’d suggested that he might be getting what he wanted… elsewhere. 

Saoirse felt foolish thinking about that old conversation now, like all conversations felt when she thought of them through Roman’s mind, through his logical words. She hadn’t called Nina since then, or taken any of her fewer and fewer calls.

He smiled the kind of smile that dismissed storms. “You’re still fragile. You need space.”

“No,” she whispered. “You need space. From me.” The words surprised her as much as him. “I bled, Roman. I was torn open and sewn shut… and you won’t even look at me.” Her voice shook as she thought, despite all of Bibiana and Fr. Pedro’s counselling, about his longer, more frequent trips without her. “You’re punishing me for not being—” she faltered, “for not being beautiful anymore.”

The breeze moved through the olive branches. Roman’s expression didn’t change. Instead, he let the silence drag as he gazed at her. She wanted to look away, feeling ashamed of herself and her words, but she couldn’t with his eyes on her.

“I’m not punishing you,” he said evenly. “That’s a childish thing to say. You honestly think all I’m thinking about is sex and attention and how to keep it from you?” He leaned back, the movement measured, civil, casually dangling his wine glass in one hand, watching her intently. She felt stupid. Of course he had a whole world of concerns more important than she could even fathom. “It’s about trust. I thought you understood that by now.”

She blinked, unsure what he meant. “Trust?”

“You’ve changed again,” he said, and there was something weary in his tone, like a teacher correcting a student who’d once promised to do better.

Her eyes watered and burned. “I grew two lives inside me. Of course, I’ve changed.”

“I know. So we’re recalibrating,” he said. He always said that word when something about her displeased him, when she reached for air. Recalibrating sounded like a meeting note, a clinical way to tidy what had gone wrong.

She exhaled. “You’ve drafted a thesis around your distance, but it’s still distance.”

He looked genuinely confused. “Why are you speaking to me like that?” Her throat tightened. She already regretted it, but the words wouldn’t leave her head. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, finally looking away.

He finished his wine slowly. “We’ll figure it out,” he said finally, like closing a file.

She nodded, but she couldn’t look at him. 

She wanted to believe him. She thought of the man from before they married, who went with her to her residency sessions and was always there to pick her up when it was over, who curated special scents, special sounds for her just to make her happy, who always brought her coffee even before she woke, who once traced Whitman on her belly in the early months of her pregnancy, who wept when they first heard the twins’ hearts, who swore they’d protect each other from the world after his parents died. 

But it seemed now like those very deaths had calcified something in him. 

Bibiana’s visits were almost regular now. But her assessments disguised as care ironically kept her sane because performing functionality to her sister-in-law at least gave Saoirse something to occupy her mind, and the pills let her sleep off the remaining time, helped her forget that Roman hadn't looked at her naked in almost a year, helped her forget to fully unpack Nina’s words. 

And now, because she touched a man’s arm at the wrong moment, he was talking about trust.

She took his empty glass, left hers untouched, and rose. 

“I’ll check on them,” she said, and he nodded, eyes back on the tablet, the soft glow painting his wrist in light. But before she could step away, she hesitated. “You never ask how I feel,” she said quietly. “Or how lonely it gets.”

That made him look up again, the light catching the edges of his face. The faintest trace of surprise, or maybe annoyance, crossed his face before he hid it behind tired composure. “You’re not lonely,” he said. “You’re surrounded by everything you need.”

She shook her head, something tired flickering through her voice. “Everything but you.”

Something else shifted in his expression, the smallest awareness of her body in his space, and it was enough to make her step closer.

“Roman,” she whispered. “When will you touch me again? When will I be—” her voice broke, “—enough for that?” He held her gaze, steady and unreadable. She was trembling now, although she stood only a breath away. “You said once, you preferred when I let you lead,” she said. “So I did. I’ve been waiting. I’m still waiting.”

He set the tablet aside, slowly, as if considering her words. 

She asked again, her voice thin with disbelief, almost embarrassment, “When will you… want me again?”

“You think I don’t?” He stood tall, immaculate, almost painfully calm. When he reached her, she lifted her chin instinctively, as if bracing for impact. His hand came up to rest against her face, his thumb tracing the faintest line along her jaw. It wasn’t tender so much as reverent. “I always want you,” he said, and she felt her body go still, her breath hitch. He spoke so evenly that it almost sounded like truth. “But wanting and having are different things.”

Her eyes stung. “You decide when I’m allowed to be wanted?”

He smiled faintly, the kind of smile that made her feel childish for asking. “I decide when I should want you. I decide when it’s safe to. You’re still fragile, and I won’t break what’s mine.”

That word, ‘mine’, lodged in her like a hook. She wanted to hate it, but it steadied her, too.

“I’m not fragile,” she whispered.

“But are you mine?” he asked, his voice lower now, close to her ear. She couldn’t speak. He leaned in, brushed his lips against her temple like an anointing. When he pulled back, she was trembling. “Go and rest,” he said softly. “You’ve lost too much sleep.”

She nodded, because it was easier than answering.

As she walked toward the villa, she pressed her hand to the spot his mouth had touched and felt both soothed and suffocated. He’d given her almost nothing, and yet it would carry her for weeks.

Behind her, the fountain murmured, the olive leaves stirred, and Roman’s gaze followed her through the dark glass for a long while. She’s trembling again. He watched the slight unsteadiness in her shoulders as she moved through the doorway, the hem of her dress brushing the tile like a whisper. The softness of her, the way she folded into his words even when she tried to resist them, calmed him. It restored the order he had felt slipping since he arrived to find her distracted from him.

She’s tired, overwrought, too conscious of herself tonight. And that was dangerous, for her and for the stillness he depended on. He watched her press her fingers to her temple where he had kissed her, and he felt something complicated stir in him. A kind of possession that had its own gravity and logic. He watched her until she disappeared inside, then sat back down and picked up his screen again.

He let the air settle again.When will you touch me again? Her question had pierced him in a way he didn’t like. It made her sound needy, too aware of absence. Neediness in a woman always preceded instability. He’d seen it in Allegra. He’d seen it break her. She didn’t understand that he was protecting her from the very chaos she begged for. He watched the shadows swallow her as she disappeared down the hall and felt neither guilt nor anger.

He had given her exactly what she could hold. He had pulled her back from the verge of hysteria without raising his voice, without breaking the fragile peace he’d built around her. She’ll sleep now, and the tremor will pass.

He looked down at his screen finally because numbers were a good place to store the parts of himself that still throbbed when she became emotional. She’s still mine, he thought, with the calm certainty of a man stating the laws of physics. And she still knows it. He scanned another page but didn’t absorb a line. Tomorrow, I’ll adjust her schedule. She needs less distraction, less stimulus, less of herself. She’ll be fine, he concluded, leaning back against the cushion. Once she remembers her place in the balance of things, once she quiets again, she’d see that this is the most disciplined form of love. 

His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He thought of the months before the birth, then her body splitting open to produce the twins, her breath shallow and erratic, her pain so loud it drowned out the room. He remembered the blood, the pale sweat, the tremor in her legs.

His mother’s silhouette rose unbidden. Allegra at the dining table, too still, too composed, covering wounds with lace.

Sex had broken Allegra. Desire had destroyed her quiet. His father’s appetites had made her into marble. Women don’t survive men’s wanting, something in Roman’s bones said. Which meant that if he wanted Saoirse too much, if he touched her too soon, if he let desire dictate anything… he would ruin her.

His hand tightened subtly around the tablet. There was another thought, darker, quieter, the one he buried immediately, that her postpartum body frightened him, the expansion of it, the fragility after such strain. If I touch her now, I might lose control of myself… and become my father. This thought, though unspoken and irrational, was the axis of everything. Allegra’s quiet suffering. Amancio’s violent appetites. The way Roman had watched his mother shrink around the force of a man’s desire. In his father’s household, desire was cruelty, and restraint was virtue.

Touching Saoirse now, when she was already his, felt like a trespass, even if she begged for it. Especially when she begged. His chest tightened faintly, and he closed the tablet. Saoirse’s voice still clung to the air: When will you touch me again? When will I be enough?

Somewhere in him, something answered: When I can trust myself not to want too much. But even that wasn’t fully true. He could never touch her again without seeing her body stretch and expand up until the moment she almost died to give him babies. He could not reconcile desire with death, so he let desire starve, and he told himself it was care.

+

Roman was nine the night the crystal shattered.

Dinner had stretched close to midnight, the air thick with cigar smoke and the low hum of his father’s voice, precise and measured like a weapon. Allegra sat opposite Amancio, her posture perfect, her wine untouched. Her lipstick was the only color in the room.

Roman sat at the far end of the table, a small prince at a banquet he didn’t understand, his feet not even touching the floor. His half-sisters were in school and married, respectively. They weren’t there to provide buffer against whatever stray bullet might let loose. He knew not to speak unless spoken to, knew the exact moment servants would appear with another course, and knew the rhythm of his father’s temper before it ever arrived.

It began, as it always did, with something small, like a misplaced remark, an unfinished deal, a half-smile mistaken for defiance. Amancio set down his glass too sharply, the sound cracking the air. Allegra turned her head slightly, just enough that the light struck her tiny ruby earrings.

“Why do you always look away when I speak?” Amancio asked, voice bellowing enough to make the servants freeze mid-step then leave as quickly yet inconspicuously as they could.

“I was listening,” she said.

“You were hiding.” He reached across the table and tipped her untouched glass down hard toward her. The "Hofburg" glassware with the imperial crest etched into the sides fell over the table. Red wine bled across the white tablecloth, spreading like a slow bruise.

Roman watched the stain travel toward his mother’s wrist. It was the first time he ever wondered if his father even thought before acting out in anger or if he simply obeyed his every impulse. Allegra lifted her napkin, pressed it lightly to the spill, and smiled that impossible, delicate smile she wore only when things were breaking.

His father leaned back, assessing her with that cold, studious gaze Roman would inherit. “Our son has to learn something.”

“What’s that?” She said.

“How to hold a table steady when everything else acts out of line.” For a long time, no one breathed. Then Amancio rose, straightened his cuffs, and left.

Allegra sat very still. The stain had reached the edge of her lap, blooming through the white lace. Her hands were immaculate. When she finally looked at Roman, her expression was serene, so serene it terrified him.

“Fetch Isabella,” she said quietly. The staff knew to never hover or step into a room unprompted. “Tell her to change the tablecloth.”

He stood, but she stopped him with a glance. “Roman,” she added, “Next time, don’t look so frightened. We keep the room beautiful, always.”

He nodded.

That night, when the servants cleared the dining room, he stayed behind. He ran his fingers over the edge of the table where the wine had spilled and dried, tracing the faint residue on the Baroque hardwood until it disappeared.

The house was always quieter after midnight. Even the servants learned to move differently once Amancio retired to his study; quieter, smaller, as though sound itself might cost them.

Roman had been sent to bed hours earlier, but sleep wouldn’t come. The images from dinner still haunted him, the wine spreading like blood, his mother’s stillness as it reached her wrist.

He padded barefoot through the long corridor, the marble cold beneath his feet, drawn by the faint hum of his father’s gramophone. The door to his parents’ suite was half-closed. Light spilled through the crack, thin and golden.

He should have turned back, but a child’s curiosity is stronger than instinct.

Inside, Allegra stood near the dressing mirror, her nightgown the color of smoke. Amancio was behind her, shirt unbuttoned, his hand at the back of her neck. It wasn’t rough, not exactly. It was something worse, possessive. His touch moved with the same precision as his voice, claiming without question.

“You think I don’t see the way you correct me in front of him?” Amancio murmured.

“I wasn’t correcting,” she said. Her tone was calm, practiced.

“Don’t lie.” He pressed his fingers more firmly against her throat, measuring the circumference of it. Allegra’s reflection met him in the mirror, her spine straight, her face composed.

Roman held his breath.

Amancio bent lower, mouth near her ear. “You’ve turned silence into defiance. You think that’s clever?”

Her lips parted slightly, but she said nothing.

Then came the sound that would stay with Roman for years. The soft thud of crystal against marble as Amancio swept her perfume bottles from the table, one by one. They shattered like punctuation. The scent of jasmine and powder filled the air. Allegra didn’t move. When he turned her to face him, his hands on her arms were steady.

“I made you into this,” he said. “You forget who you belong to.”

She smiled faintly, almost tenderly, and whispered, “I made you presentable. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

For a moment, Amancio faltered. Then he kissed her, hard, almost reverent, a collision of power and worship that made Roman flinch. Allegra didn’t resist. She let him have the moment, the illusion of control, as he lifted her nightdress and fucked her clumsily against the vanity.

When it was over, Amancio straightened his cuffs again and walked out, leaving the air thick with perfume and humiliation. Roman shuffled into an alcove less than a foot away as his father staggered past, then crept back to the door.

Allegra stayed at the mirror. The glass trembled where the bottles had fallen, but one remained whole, its stopper crooked. She fixed it, turned it upright, then looked at her reflection.

“Roman,” she said softly, without turning. He froze. “Come out.”

He stepped inside, his heart pounding. The shards glittered around her bare feet.

She looked at him through the mirror. “You saw?” He nodded. Her expression didn’t change. “When men touch in anger, they destroy. When they touch in love, they surrender. Either way, they lose control,” she said, voice level.

Allegra turned then, cupped his face briefly in her cold, perfumed hand. “You must never lose control,” she whispered. He nodded again, because that was what sons did when their mothers made commandments. She kissed his forehead, her lipstick faint against his skin. “Go to bed, tesoro. Forget this.”

But he never did.

The next morning, he found the dining table reset, lilies centered, silver polished, imperial crystal drinking set replaced. The wine stain was gone, as if it had never happened.

Only Roman remembered.

+

The house was asleep now. Only the sea outside moved, its breath against the terrace glass in slow, indifferent pulses.

Roman had been in his study since he had dinner alone after the episode with Saoirse in the courtyard, the lamp casting a controlled circle of gold over stacked reports and the glow of three open screens. Zurich’s liquidity sheet lay layered over Milan’s acquisition redlines; a Geneva advisory memo waited half-signed in his drafts.

He was not building anything himself. There were CFOs and portfolio managers for that. He was simply checking the bones of it all. Things like margin exposure, voting structures, and a minor clause in a custodial trust for the twins that he had adjusted twice already this quarter.

Roman was always looking for patterns others missed. Amancio had taught him that the numbers were never about money but about obedience. He learned that lesson young, watching his father throw a ledger across a table because someone miscalculated a margin by half a percent. Amancio did not tolerate imprecision.

Roman never shouted but he also noticed things, and he acted surgically. He’d learned that that was more terrifying.

Work was clean. Work obeyed him, never looked at him with longing or bled or needed reassurance. It certainly never threatened to dissolve in the way it might for others.

Saoirse did.

After confronting her about Marco, he couldn’t go to bed immediately. He needed equilibrium. Numbers gave him that. Financial models did not tremble when he touched them. Numbers were honest. They did not misinterpret touch.

In the corner of one screen, however, minimized but not closed, that feed replayed from earlier that afternoon. A timestamp, sunlight, Saoirse’s soft blush sleeve, Marco leaning slightly closer than protocol required, and her hand resting too casually against his arm.

Why did she feel comfortable enough to touch him?

Roman watched it once more, lingering just long enough.

His father would have raged. Amancio believed in correction through spectacle. Roman believed in quiet removal of error.

He closed the feed and returned to the Geneva board minutes. The Foundation, La Fundación Suarez, secretary had forwarded a draft of Saoirse’s “re-engagement strategy” he’d been stalling for weeks. He skimmed the language yet again, deleting a reference to her “creative background.” He replaced it with “Mrs. Suarez continues the family’s legacy of cultural patronage” then moved to the philanthropic disbursement breakdown.

He leaned back, rubbing at his temple as the numbers began to blur from repetition. He could feel the empire humming in layers beneath him: Madrid portfolios, Tuscan land holdings, their bigger football club’s revenue projections after another win. Bibiana would want Easter seating revised. Marcela would call about Paris optics. They all relied on him. They all always had.

Allegra had once told him, when he was seventeen and already taller than his father, that a house survived by the discipline of its quietest room. She had meant the chapel.

He had applied it to everything including his marriage.

He did not forbid Saoirse anything. He simply structured the conditions in which certain things no longer felt necessary. The live-in nurses for the twins had been practical. She needed rest and stability. She was young, Irish, soft around the edges in a way that had first struck him as clean and almost devout. He had liked that about her, the inherited Catholic gravity beneath her gentleness, the subdued weight that sometimes settles on those who have endured just enough difficulty to be marked by it, but not hardened. It was a kind of restraint he recognized. Allegra called it character. She approved of her very quickly.

He had worried, briefly, about her position, her SES, the careful economy of a girl who lived within limits.

She had not come from nothing. When he met her, she was newly out of university, holding a merit-based residency, surviving on the remains of a modest but sensible inheritance her grandmother had left her, funds she had only accessed after fleeing her half-sister’s house and starting again on her own. The rest of which he left untouched, still in her old bank account today.

She had carried herself like someone accustomed to managing what she had, stretching it quietly, determined to build something real.

It had reassured him more than he admitted. She was not destitute. She was not desperate. She had chosen him. And that, to Roman, had mattered. She was simply unanchored. She was also independent enough to believe she chose him, but not so much that her world was fixed beyond alteration. Her life was still in draft form, flexible, untethered to legacy, property, a lineage that might compete with his own.

He had not sought to change her. He had only offered structure. And she had stepped into it willingly. He had never meant to make her unnecessary, but systems preferred redundancy.

He stood finally, shutting the screens down one by one. The house exhaled into deeper silence. Somewhere down one hallway, a night nurse shifted. Javier and Emilio had already retired.

Since Saoirse had begun staying longer and longer in Barcelona — and he, everywhere else — their bedroom wing felt less like theirs and more like hers. He moved toward it without thinking. Drawn down the corridor that already smelled too much of her, like roses and something soothing.

The hallway lights glowed dimly along the floor, motion-activated but gentle, so as not to wake anyone. The security grid pulsed invisibly behind the walls, Marco’s domain. Roman paused outside the main bedroom door for half a second longer than necessary.

He imagined her asleep, or pretending to be. He imagined her pulse under his thumb when he touched her wrist at their last breakfast together before he left and stayed longer than planned between Madrid and Paris. He imagined the way she had said, “Stay a little longer,” as if time were negotiable.

It wasn’t.

He opened the door quietly.

She was asleep this time, finally. One arm draped loosely over the sheet, light ginger hair spilled across the pillow like something unguarded. For a moment, he simply stood there.

He liked her best like this. She looked younger when she slept. Younger than the woman in the courtyard or the wife in the foundation briefings. Just the girl he had once watched read aloud in Madrid, earnest and luminous and unstructured.

The door to her dressing room was half-open. He walked to it and paused there.

Inside, everything gleamed: ivory drawers, mirrored surfaces, the faint shimmer of silk. The air smelled of powder and something floral, maybe jasmine, soft but insistent, like a ghost that knew its way around the walls.

Her vanity was immaculate. Custom bottles aligned by height, silver caps turned to catch the same angle of light. It was too perfect, but still he reached out and straightened one that was already straight.

He had commissioned all the scents, developed over time by a perfumer in Grasse he had retained exclusively after their first year of marriage. He remembered the brief he’d given: nothing sweet and nothing loud; notes of iris, roses, salt, faint smoke, something that felt like dusk in a chapel. Something that would never enter a room before she did.

Each bottle had been calibrated seasonally. Lighter in Barcelona summers. Warmer in Madrid. A touch of myrrh added after the twins were born, to switch her sensory identity to maternal.

He had watched her try on the earliest ones, wrists lifted obediently, asking softly which he preferred. It had felt deeply intimate. Knowing how she should smell and linger was a form of devotion. He remembered suddenly what she used to wear, how it had smelled sweet but cheap, citrusy, bought over the counter in London.

He adjusted one bottle again, though it had not moved, and for a fleeting second he imagined another man recognizing that fragrance somewhere, attaching it to her skin.

He disliked the thought.

The vanity remained symmetrical.

For a second, he couldn’t breathe. The scent, the symmetry, it pulled a thread through years. He saw candlelight trembling on broken glass, a woman’s still hands, a child hiding behind a door.

The image came and went before he could name it. He exhaled, rubbed his temples. Tired, that’s all.

Still, the scent lingered. He stepped back, closing the door quietly, careful not to disturb a single bottle. He left the dressing room exactly as he had found it, except for the molecule-thin correction only he would ever see. But as he walked back into the bedroom, his pulse stayed uneven, and he couldn’t have said why.

He stepped closer to the bed, adjusted the edge of the milky silk sheet over her lean pale shoulder, a small, almost imperceptible act, yet Saoirse stirred in her sleep, turning toward the empty space beside her. He moved away, back toward the main threshold, looked once more into the darkened room at her slight figure, then turned away again and closed the door softly behind him.

He would tell himself, later, that it was respect, letting her rest. But the faint jasmine followed him all the way back to his study where the screens had gone black.

The sea kept breathing. The empire remained intact. Upstairs, the twins slept, regulated and protected. And in the quietest room of the house, discipline held.