Page 2 of The Sicilian Billionaire’s Neglected Wife (A Painful Kind of Love #14)

S IENAH POSADA LEARNED the art of invisibility the day she and her mother moved into the Cannizzaro compound. Sixteen years old, all knees and elbows and dreams too big for a housekeeper’s daughter, she’d promised herself she’d be nothing but professional. A ghost who cleaned. A shadow who served.

That resolution lasted exactly forty-seven minutes.

Because that’s when Aivan Cannizzaro walked through the front door, still in his racing suit from practice, smelling like burnt rubber and expensive cologne and pure, distilled trouble. Twenty-five years old. Already making headlines. Already breaking hearts across three continents.

Already making her forget her own name.

“You’re new,” he said, those dark eyes sliding over her once before dismissing her entirely.

Not a question. Just an observation filed away with all the other household changes he’d catalog and forget by dinner.

“ Sì , signore . I’m Sienah. Lynnette’s daughter.”

He was already walking away, peeling off his gloves, tossing them on the console table she’d just polished. The leather left marks. She’d have to clean it again.

She didn’t mind. In fact, she spent an embarrassing amount of time later touching those exact marks, wondering if they were still warm from his hands.

Pathetic? Yes . Did she care? Not even a little.

What followed were three years of exquisite torture wrapped in Egyptian cotton sheets and served with perfectly brewed espresso.

Three years of watching him move through the world like he owned it, which he essentially did.

Three years of memorizing every detail about a man who looked through her like she was made of glass.

At first, she was just confused by her own reactions. Why did her stomach flip when he entered a room? Why did her hands shake when she collected his coffee cups? Why did she find herself volunteering for every task that might put her in his vicinity?

“You’re hovering,” Mama observed one day when Sienah had cleaned the same mirror three times because Aivan was on the phone in the next room.

“I just want to make sure...”

“The master’s son hasn’t found himself a date?”

Since that was exactly she had been worried about but would never admit to it, she had instead mumbled an excuse about having to clean in another room.

By seventeen, confusion had evolved into full-blown infatuation with a side of mortification. She’d started noticing things she had no business noticing. Like how his racing suits clung to his thighs. How his hands looked working on an engine. How his hair curled slightly when damp from the shower.

She learned his patterns with the dedication of a scholar studying for the most important exam of her life. He woke at 5:47 every morning, not 5:45 or 6:00 but 5:47 exactly. She knew because she’d started setting her alarm for 5:30 just to make sure his coffee would be perfect when he came down.

He took it strong enough to wake the dead but with exactly one sugar cube, never two. She’d spent a week testing different roasts until she found the one that made him pause mid-sip and actually look at the cup with something like approval.

“New coffee?” he’d asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep it.”

Two words. She’d floated on them for days like an idiot.

By the time she turned eighteen, she’d graduated from confused to infatuated to completely, desperately aware. Aware of him as a man. Aware of herself as a woman. Aware of the space between them that felt charged with electricity she didn’t quite understand.

The physical reactions were the worst part. Or the best part. She couldn’t decide.

Her body had developed curves that made Mama buy her shapeless uniforms and lecture her about keeping her hair braided tight.

But around Aivan, everything felt too tight, too hot, too much.

Every time she found herself in the same room with him, she would feel so inexpicably restless and so shamelessly aching.

And oh, the dreams...

She never quite remembered everything, but she would remember enough that she would wake up either crying for something that wasn’t real. Or blushing so hard because what she had dreamt of was a little too real.

But then...the whispers started.

As his fame grew, so did the rumors swirling around him, with the other servants exchanging excited whispers about the latest news they had heard from this source and that.

Models so tall and long-legged they made Sienah feel like shrinking away in comparison.

Actresses whose looks were so lovely they were like life-sized dolls.

And heiresses who seemed so perfectly posh that Sienah could easily imagine them still acting with grace and poise even in the midst of an alien attack.

Sienah knew she wasn’t helping anyone, least of all herself, by cataloging all the women Aivan dated like they were Pokemon to be collected and their information filed in her mental Pokedex.

And yet that was exactly what she found herself doing.

She would take note of who he was currently dating, try to figure out what attracted Aivan to the other woman, and later on, why he would break up with her.

Almost like she was strategizing her best moves for attacking—er, attracting—Aivan while at the same time preparing her defensive strategies to make sure that he would have no reason to dump her.

If he were to ever notice her, that was.

And it was a pretty big if, or at least it was so in her Mama’s eyes.

“You’re playing with fire, mija ,” Mama warned the night she caught Sienah altering all her cleaning routines to match his schedule. “The master’s son is no ordinary man.”

“I never said anything—”

“You don’t have to,” her mother said with a sigh. “It is all in your eyes, and I do not like it one bit. I’m sorry if this hurts you, but I need you to know what I feel about this...this infatuation—”

“Mama!”

“You can deny it all you want, but we both know the truth.”

In Lynnette’s eyes, she was reaching foolishly for the stars, and while Sienah loved and respected her mother too much to argue about this...

It was when she was alone with her thoughts that she couldn’t help but wonder.

Was it so foolish, really?

Because there was that time when she’d been reaching for a book on the high shelf in the library and he’d appeared behind her, pressing close to pull it down. She’d frozen, overwhelmed by his heat, his scent, the solid wall of his chest barely brushing her back.

“Wuthering Heights?” He’d read the spine, his breath stirring the hair at her temple. “Didn’t picture you as the romantic type.”

“I’m not,” she’d lied, proud when her voice didn’t shake. “It’s for a literature course I’m taking online.”

“You’re in school?”

The surprise in his voice made her turn, which was a mistake because it put her face inches from his chest. She had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.

“Part-time. Business administration.”

“So you plan to work once you graduate?” he pressed. “You’re not thinking of marrying and starting your own family?”

If it’s you, Sienah had thought, then you only have to say the word, and I shall be yours.

But since she obviously couldn’t say that—

“I’m not sure what the future holds for me,” she said finally, albeit in a voice that was just a little breathless, just a little tremulous, and all because of the fact that this was the longest conversation she had with him, like, ever.

“I just know it won’t hurt to be familiar with how businesses work. ”

“How surprisingly...pragmatic.”

His tone was cryptic, and when he nodded at her, she knew she was being politely dismissed, and so she simply nodded back, turned and walked away while her heart raced and ached at the same time.

Why did it feel like something important had just happened?

By nineteen, she’d perfected the art of being essential without being seen.

She knew he liked his morning run at 6:15, so she had fresh towels and water waiting.

She knew he listened to Mozart when happy and Rachmaninoff when troubled, so she always checked which was playing before entering his space.

She knew about his migraines, but she also knew he would rather have everyone at home act as if he wasn’t having them.

She knew him better than she knew herself.

Which is why she noticed the change that last month. The way his jaw stayed tense even during Mozart and how he’d started skipping his morning runs.

“Family troubles,” Mama said one evening, coming home from the main house with worry lines around her eyes. “Miguel’s been putting pressure on him about something.”

Sienah’s chest tightened. She’d seen what family pressure did in houses like this. Seen the way it crushed spirits and forced choices and broke things that couldn’t be fixed.

That night, she did something she’d never done before. She made him chamomile tea instead of his usual espresso nightcap. Added honey and a touch of vanilla the way her grandmother used to make it when worries kept sleep away.

She left it on his desk with a small note: “For better dreams.”

The next morning, the cup was empty and her note was gone. But there was a different note in its place, just two words in his sharp handwriting: “Thank you.”

She kept that note. Tucked it in her jewelry box next to her grandmother’s rosary and the movie ticket from the only film she’d ever seen in theaters. Pathetic? Probably. But those two words in his handwriting felt like a secret between them.

The next week, everything changed.

“Don’t forget what we’ve talked about,” she overheard Signor Miguel warn his son. “Choose one of those names on the list to be your bride...”

The laundry basket nearly slipped from Sienah’s numb fingers.

“Or you will not like the consequences.”

Sienah made it to the laundry room before the tears came.

Stupid, stupid Sienah!

Did you really not think this day would come?

He was like a prince in his homeland, just minus the royal blood. His marriage would naturally be arranged, and of course his bride...

Such a girl would likely be just as rich, just as well-connected.

She would be everything that Sienah was not and could never be.

Sienah folded his sheets through blurred vision, smoothing the Egyptian cotton with shaking hands. Someone else would be sleeping in these soon. Someone who belonged in his bed, in his life, in his world.

“Sienah?”

His voice made her jump. She spun around to find him in the doorway, still radiating tension from his father’s ultimatum.

“ Signor .” She quickly wiped her eyes. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

His gaze sharpened. “Are you crying?”

“Is there something you need?” she asked, desperate to deflect.

He studied her for a long moment, and she had the strangest feeling he was memorizing her face. Then: “Dinner. Tomorrow night. Flavier’s. Eight o’clock.”

Her brain short-circuited. “I...what?”

“You can take the night off, can’t you?”

“Yes, but...” Nothing made sense. Why would he want to have dinner with her? Unless... “Do you need me to make a reservation? Pick up something for your date?”

His mouth curved in what might have been amusement. “No, Sienah. I’m asking you to dinner. With me.”