On the fifth day, after dinner, I buried myself in paperwork in my office when Sterling summoned me to the kitchen. It was well past eleven o’clock, and Sterling knew better than to interrupt me in general, so I figured it was of critical importance.

Last thing I needed was hearing that Nemesis was planning an escape. It seemed like Francesca had finally realized she didn’t have an out from this arrangement.

I descended the stairs. When I reached the landing, the smell of sugar, baked dough, and chocolate wafted from the kitchen. Sweet, sticky, and nostalgic in a way that sliced through your body like a knife. I stopped at the threshold and examined tiny, fierce Sterling as she served a simple chocolate cake with forty-six candles on the long dining table. Her hands were shaking. She wiped them on her stained apron the minute I walked in, refusing eye contact.

We both knew why.

“Romeo’s birthday,” she mumbled under her breath, hurrying to the sink to wash her hands.

I ambled in, dragged over a chair, and sank into it, watching the cake as if it was my opponent. I wasn’t particularly sentimental and exceptionally bad with remembering dates, which was just as well as all my family members were dead. Their death dates, however, I remembered.

I also remembered the cause of their deaths.

Sterling handed me a plate on which she’d piled enough cake to clog a toilet bowl. I was torn between thanking her for paying her respects to the person I loved the most and yelling at her for reminding me that my heart had a hole the size of Arthur Rossi’s fist. I settled for stuffing my mouth with the cake without tasting it. Sugar consumption was not a habit of mine, but it seemed excessively spiteful not to take a bite after she went through so much trouble.

“He would have been proud of you if he were alive.” She lowered herself onto the seat in front of mine, wrapping her hands around a steamy cup of herbal tea. My back was to the kitchen door. She faced it—and me. I stabbed a fork into my cake, unfolding the layers of the chocolate and sugar like they were a human gut, digging harder with each motion.

“Wolfe, look at me.”

I dragged my eyes to her face, pacifying her for a reason beyond my grasp. It was not in my nature to be nice and cordial. But something in that demanded an emotion from me that wasn’t disdain. Her eyes widened, dotted sky-blue. She was trying to tell me something.

“Be gentle with her, Wolfe.”

“That would give her false hope that what we have is real, and that’s entirely too cruel, even by my standards,” I drawled, pushing the cake across the table.

“She’s lonely. She’s young, isolated, and frightened to the bone. You’re treating her like an enemy before she even lets you down. All she knows about you is that you’re a powerful man, you hate her family, and don’t want anything to do with her. Yet you made it clear that you’ll never let her go.

“She is a prisoner,” she finished simply. “For a crime she did not commit.”

“It’s called collateral.” I laced my fingers behind my head and sat back. “And it’s not very different from the life she would have led with anyone else. With the exception that unlike the majority of Made Men, I’d spare her the lies when I cheated on her.”

Sterling winced as though I’d struck her across the face. She then leaned across the table and took my hand in hers. It took everything in me not to withdraw. I hated touching people in any capacity in which my cock wasn’t in one of their holes, and Sterling was the last person on the entire planet I’d fuck. Not to mention, I particularly disliked it when she exhibited her feelings openly. It was inappropriate and way out of her job description.

“Choosing something doomed and being forced into it are two very different things. Showing her mercy will not weaken you. If anything, it will assure her you’re confident in your power.”

She sounded like Oprah.

“What do you have in mind?” I sneered. If I could throw money at Francesca and send her off on a shopping spree in Europe to spend some time with her cousin Andrea and get her out of my hair, I would do it in a heartbeat. At this point, I even considered Cabo as an option. It was still on the same continent, but far enough away from here.

“Take her to her parents.”

“Have you been drinking?” I stared at her blankly. I hoped not. Sterling and alcohol were a lethal combination.

“Why not?”

“Because the reason I’m celebrating Romeo’s birthday without Romeo’s presence is due to her father.”

“She is not her father!” Sterling darted up to her feet. Her palm crashed on the table, producing an explosive sound I didn’t know she was capable of. The fork on my plate rattled and flew across the table.

“His blood is running through her veins. That’s contaminated enough for me,” I said drily.

“But not enough to prevent you from wanting to touch her,” she taunted.

I smiled. “Tainting what’s his would be a nice bonus.”

I stood. A vase fell to the ground behind me, no doubt knocked down by my future wife. Bare feet jogged across the dark wooden floors, pitter-pattering as they slapped the stairs on her way back to her wing. I left Sterling in the kitchen to stew in her anger and followed my bride-to-be up with deliberate leisure. I stopped on the cleft between the west and the east wing when I reached the top floor, before deciding to retire back to my office. No point in trying to pacify her.

At three in the morning, after answering every email personally, including replying to concerned citizens about the state of Illinois’ tomatoes, I decided to check on Nemesis. I hated that she was a night owl since I had to wake up every day at four, but she seemed to like getting out of the coop at nighttime. Knowing my quirky bride-to-be, it was not out of question for her to try to escape her cage. She certainly made a habit of rattling the bars. I strolled to her room and pushed the door open without knocking. The room was empty.

Rage began to course inside my veins, and I bit down on a curse. I moved to her window, and sure enough, she was downstairs, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her pink, pouty mouth, weeding a vegetable garden that wasn’t there before I threw her in the east wing and left her to her own devices.

“With a little bit of hope, and a lot of love, you will make it to winter,” she told the…radishes? And was she talking about herself or them? Her conversing with vegetables was a new and disturbing twist in her already awkward personality.

“Be good for me, okay? Because he won’t.”

You hardly make the cut for fiancée of the year either, Nem.

“Do you think he’d ever tell me whose birthday it was?” She crouched down, fingering the lettuce heads.

No, he won’t.

“Yeah, I don’t think so, either.” She sighed. “But, anyway, you drink some water. I’ll come check on you tomorrow morning. For lack of anything better to do.” She chuckled, rising up and putting her cigarette out against a wooden passageway.

Nem had been sending Smithy to buy her a pack a day. I made a mental note to tell her the wife of a senator was not allowed to puff like a chimney in public.

I waited a few moments, then made my way to the corridor, expecting the balcony doors to slide open and to catch her going up the stairs. After waiting for long minutes—something I despised doing with every bone in my body—I descended the stairs, making my way to the terrace. Her disappearing act was grating on my nerves. First, she broke Romeo’s picture, and now, she snooped around and talked to her future salad. I pushed the balcony doors open, ready to roar at her to go to bed, when I found her at the far end of the garden. She was in the open, second shed where we kept our trash cans. Great. She was talking to garbage, now, too.

I made my way to her, noticing that leaves were no longer crunching under my loafers. The garden was in much better shape. She had her back to me, bending into one of the green recycling cans, surrounded by garbage. There was no way to sugarcoat what I was seeing here. She was going through the trash.

I walked in the open door, leaning against it with my hands stuffed inside my front pockets. I watched as she sorted through bags of trash, then cleared my throat, making myself known. She jumped, gasping.

“Looking for a snack?”

She placed a palm on her chest over her heart and shook her head.

“I just…Ms. Sterling said that the clothes that I…uh…”

“Ruined?” I offered.

“Yeah, they’re still here. Some of them, anyway.” She gestured to the heaps of clothes at her feet. “They’re going to send them to charity tomorrow. Most of the items are salvageable. So, I figured, if the clothes are still here, then maybe…”

The picture was still here.

She was trying to save Romeo’s picture without knowing who he was, after seeing Sterling and me celebrating his birthday. She didn’t know that she wouldn’t find it—I asked Sterling, who confirmed that the batch with the picture had been already taken away. I raked a hand over my face. I wanted to kick something. Surprisingly—she wasn’t that something. Heartache and regret etched her face as she turned around and looked at me with eyes raw with emotion. She understood she not only ripped fabric—fuck the fabric—but also something deep inside me. Tears hung on her eyelashes. It struck me as ironic that I’d spent my entire adult life choosing cold-blooded, unsentimental women for my flings, only to get married to a complete wuss.

“Leave it alone.” I waved her off. “I don’t need your pity, Nemesis.”

“I’m not trying to give you pity, Villain. I’m trying to give you comfort.”

“I don’t want that, either. I don’t want anything from you, other than your obedience, and maybe, down the road, your pussy.”

“Why must you be so crass?” Tears made her eyes shimmer. She was a crier, too. Could we be any less compatible? I didn’t think so.

“Why must you be such an emotional train wreck?” I responded curtly, pushing off the door and getting ready to leave. “We are who we are.”