The study door opened behind him. Marco stopped walking but didn't turn. Bare feet on marble, soft and quick, catching up. Her hand appeared at his elbow first, then the glass—whiskey, two fingers, warm from her palm. Her fingers pressed against his as he took it, and they stayed.
"You forgot this." Her voice was wrong. Breathless, deliberate, like she'd rehearsed the line and still hadn't gotten it right. He looked at her. The dim hallway caught the gold at her throat, the loose black waves falling past her shoulders. She'd fixed her strap. That was the first thing he noticed. The second was that she was barefoot, and she'd followed him into the dark without thinking twice.
He lifted the glass. The whiskey smelled expensive, the same bottle Salvatore had been pouring from. Marco drank, and she watched his throat move as he swallowed. He felt her watching. The heat of her gaze on his skin, a pressure he didn't dare name.
"You shouldn't be out here." His voice came out lower than he meant. Rough. He cleared his throat. "He'll notice you're gone."
"He knows." She didn't look away. "He told me to bring it to you."
Marco lowered the glass. The ice clinked once, then settled. Of course. A test inside a test, the whiskey a delivery and a permission and a trap all at once. He wondered if she understood that. He wondered if she'd been told which part to play.
"Did he tell you anything else?"
"He said to watch you drink it." Her voice dropped, huskier now. "That you'd need it."
The distance between them was barely a hand's width. He could smell her perfume—floral, the same scent that had hit him the moment he'd walked into the study. Jasmine, he thought. Or gardenia. Something that lingered the way she did, pressing into his space without asking permission.
He took another sip. Slower this time. Let her watch. Let her report back whatever Salvatore wanted to hear. "And did I?"
"Did you what?"
"Need it."
Isabella's mouth curved, just slightly, a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I think you need more than a drink, Marco." She stepped back, one bare foot finding the marble, then the other. The space between them widened. Cold air rushed in where her warmth had been. "Tomorrow night. Nine o'clock. Don't be late."
She turned and walked back toward the study, her hips moving to music only she could hear. The door closed behind her—soft, final, a click that settled into the hallway's silence like a second heartbeat.
The whiskey sat warm in Marco's chest, spreading through him like the slow burn of a fuse. He lifted the glass again, tilting the last of it onto his tongue, and let the ice settle against his lips. The hallway was dark and quiet, the only light a thin amber line beneath the study door where Salvatore sat waiting. Waiting for her. Waiting for his report.
Marco lowered the glass, his thumb finding the rim where Isabella's fingers had pressed. The glass was still warm from her palm. He could still smell her—jasmine, gardenia, something that clung to his collar like a question he didn't know how to answer. He should set the glass down. Walk away. Find the perimeter, check the gates, disappear into the part of the estate where he belonged.
He didn't move.
His reflection stared back from the dark window at the end of the hall—a ghost in a black shirt, a man who'd followed orders for seven years without asking why. He'd never asked why. That was the point. Salvatore gave commands, and Marco obeyed, and somewhere in that obedience he'd convinced himself he was safe. But safety wasn't the test. Obedience wasn't the test. The test was watching Marco gut himself with his own hunger, then asking him to smile.
He pressed the glass against his forehead. The cold bit into his skin, grounding him in the present. Tomorrow at nine. He would drive her. He would sit beside her in the dark of the car, her perfume filling the space between them, and pretend he didn't notice how she looked at him. How she watched his throat when he swallowed.
The study door stayed closed. No footsteps. No whisper of silk. She was in there now, sitting across from Salvatore, telling him everything. He drank. He watched me watch him. His voice went rough. And Salvatore would nod, pour himself another whiskey, and file that information away like a stone in a wall he was still building.
Marco set the empty glass on the narrow table beside the hallway chair. The shape of it settled against the wood, a perfect circle of condensation already beading beneath it. Evidence. He'd left evidence everywhere tonight—in the way he'd hesitated at her question, in the way his voice had cracked when she'd asked if he needed more than a drink.
He turned and walked down the hall. His steps were quiet, disciplined, a man returning to the shape of his duty. But at the end of the corridor, where the old grandfather clock ticked in the dark, he stopped. His hand found the doorframe. His mother's superstition. The wood was cool and worn, and he pressed his palm flat against it before stepping through, as if asking a god he didn't believe in to let what was already broken stay hidden one more night.