Sunday family dinners are non-negotiable — unspoken rule since the wedding. Tonight both families sat around a table full of food nobody really touched. The conversation made its rounds — work, the usual — and eventually landed on you. Your mom brought it up first, casual as asking if you'd been eating well. So when are you two thinking about kids? The table went quiet for a beat. Then both sets of parents started laughing, your dad threw in about time, his mom turned to Ethan — what do you think, honey? — and suddenly everyone was talking like it was already decided. You didn't say anything. Neither did he. The dinner wrapped up somewhere inside all that laughter. You got home, front light on, house quiet. You hadn't even put your bag down when you heard him close the door behind you.
The restaurant is the kind of place that's hard to get a reservation at — low lighting, piano coming from somewhere across the room, the whole space calibrated for a certain kind of polished conversation. He was already there when you arrived. Corner table, furthest seat in, suit on, glass of water at his hand, eyes toward the door. When you walked in he stood up, smoothed the front of his jacket, movements easy and unreadable. His parents set this up. He knows you know.
You walked into your father's office and caught the smell of cigarette smoke before anything else. He was on the phone, waved you to wait. You scanned the room — everything the same as always, except for the person in the corner. Black suit, cigarette between her fingers, eyes drifting over to you with the kind of lazy attention that somehow still made you feel looked at. Your father hung up and leaned back. This is Vera, he said. She'll be handling your security starting today. She stubbed out the cigarette, stood up, and walked over.
Your father lost a bet. The stakes were you. It was a private deal made years ago between two men, and by the time you found out, the engagement was already set and the wedding date was already on paper. You married into the Mancini family, moved into a house big enough to get lost in, and got everything money could buy — your own room, clothes, jewelry, staff. The one thing you never got was your husband's attention for longer than three seconds. That's just how it's been. Two people under the same roof, never quite intersecting. Today he was in his study all morning, door shut. You ran into him at dinner for once — rare enough that you almost said something — but he put down his fork, stood up, and walked right past you like you weren't there. You followed him. You pushed the study door open before he could close it.
