Page 115 of Brutal Crown

“Tell me about you. Your mother. Your childhood,” he says again.

I glance at the fire, my eyes stinging. “My mother… she was the best.” I smile at the distant memory. “She used to make chocolate croissants for me when I couldn’t sleep. She’d hum old lullabies while my father read poetry out loud to me. He said words could armor the soul.”

Francesco looks at me, and his eyes soften.

“Tell me more.” His voice is quieter now.

So I do.

I tell him about late nights I spent in the kitchen with my mother, insisting I wanted to bake breakfast bread for the next morning with her. The music humming through the walls, the scent of citrus trees outside my window… it still feels vivid in mymemory. I tell him about what happiness used to look like before the world taught me that nothing was permanent.

We stay like that for what feels like hours. Just…being.Talking in low voices that barely disturb the air between us. For the first time, it doesn’t feel like there are walls, just two people sitting in the wreckage of who they used to be.

Francesco tells me about his childhood, fragments, mostly. Memories filtered through duty and loss. Things I never thought he’d say out loud. Things that sound like confessions, not stories. Like he’s handing over the pieces of a boy he once was, before the world taught him to put on armor and never take it off.

We don’t touch. We don’t even try to. But somehow, it’s the closest we’ve ever been. The space between us isn’t empty. It’s brimming with everything we can’t say, with choices we didn’t make, with the ghosts of futures we’ll never have.

It’s only when the silence stretches too long—when the weight of it feels unbearable—that I finally say it.

“I’m scared, Francesco.”

He doesn’t speak. Just watches me, his expression unreadable.

“Marco’s changed,” I go on. “I don’t know if it’s the new title or something else, but… he’s not the same. Hethreatenedme.” I pause. “Not directly. But it was enough. He wanted me to feel it. And I did.”

Francesco freezes. His fingers curl tighter around the glass in his hand. I watch the twitch in his jaw, the dark shift in his eyes. There’s something cruel on the edge of his tongue—I see it—but he swallows it back. Slowly. With effort. Then he exhales, steady and deliberate, and meets my eyes.

“For what it’s worth,” he says quietly, “I don’t think he’d hurt you.” He pauses, voice tightening. “But Idothink he likes knowing you’re afraid.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” I whisper.

He nods, jaw clenched so hard I think it might crack. “Marco’s… broken. We all are. But he wouldn’t lay a hand on you. I hate him more often than not, but I won’t lie to you about this. He’s lost, Lia. Trying to find where he fits in all this blood-soaked legacy. And you…” He shakes his head. “You’re the only thing he gives a damn about. The only real thing in his world. That makes you both his compass and his weakness.”

“And what does that make me?” I ask softly. “Collateral?”

He doesn’t answer.

Instead, I nod more to myself than to him. “So I guess this is my life now?” I try to hide the hurt in my voice, but it cracks anyway.

Please,I think.Tell me this isn’t it. Tell me you’ve been planning something, that you’ll take me away from this twisted life and we’ll burn it all down together. That you choose me despite it all. Just say it. Say anything.

But he doesn’t. He swallows, then looks down before raising his eyes to mine again.

“You have to complete a ceremonial rite at your engagement,” he says, voice flat. As if my plea wasn’t even spoken.

I blink. The rejection hits like cold water. “I’m aware,” I say quietly, struggling to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “I just don’t know if I’m ready.”

He looks at me sharply, then his features soften.

“It’s tradition. But… traditions can bend. If you truly don’t want this, tell me. I’ll find a way. I’ll make Marco release you.”

I shake my head, the disbelief burning in my throat.

“And if I can’t bend it? What if Marco refuses? What if they—” my voice cracks, “—what if they kill my baby?”

His jaw tightens.

“He can’t. That rite might be the only moment you’re ever given a choice—spelled out in their own written laws. Andonce you choose—once the words leave your lips—it’s sealed. Untouchable. Not by him. Not by me. Not even by the Elders.”