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.