“Take it off.” Victor Duca stopped his hand an inch from the silver necklace at my throat, and the alarm in his face frightened me more than his command.
“What?”
“The necklace.”
I had met my boyfriend’s older brother only that evening. Through dinner he had barely spoken, sitting in black with scarred hands beside his untouched glass. Whenever I looked up, his eyes were on me.
I had told myself that some families needed time to welcome someone new.
Now I stood alone with him in the hallway beyond the dining room, and he was looking at the delicate chain Adrien had given me two weeks earlier.
“Where did you get that?”
“Adrien gave it to me.”
Victor glanced toward the dining room. I could hear cutlery and a woman’s low laugh. Everything on the other side of that door sounded ordinary.
“You don’t know him as well as you think.”
I wanted to tell him he knew nothing about us. Adrien had walked into my yoga studio six months earlier with a back injury and a smile that made me feel safe. He had listened when I spoke. He remembered the little things. When he gave me the necklace, I believed the gift meant I had finally stopped being someone people left.
Victor knew how long we had been together. He had mentioned the six months before I did, and I could not forget it.
“How do you know about my studio?” I asked.
“Because Adrien told the family he had found someone there.”
That answer should have settled me. It did not explain why his voice had tightened at the sight of my necklace.
“Does it belong to someone else?”
He drew a slow breath.
“It doesn’t belong to Adrien.”
Footsteps sounded behind the door.
Victor moved past me, leaving enough room that I did not have to step back. His shoulder brushed mine, and he spoke so quietly I almost missed the words.
“Wrong brother, cara mia.”
Then he disappeared through a side door.
Adrien came into the hallway smiling. His hand settled gently at my waist.
“Everything okay?”
I looked at the man I loved, then at the place where his brother had been. The warmth of Adrien’s hand felt exactly as it always had. That was the terrible part. A warning had arrived, and my body still recognized comfort.
“Everything’s fine,” I whispered.
My fingers stayed at my throat.
Adrien noticed.
“Victor can be difficult. Don’t let him upset you.”
I turned toward the dining room but could not move. Behind the side door, I heard the scrape of a drawer, then Victor’s voice asking someone for a file.
Adrien’s smile held while his hand tightened against my waist.
“What file?” I asked.
For the first time in six months, he answered a simple question by looking away.
I stepped out of his hold.
Adrien let me go, but his fingers remained curved in the air for a moment, as though my body had left something he expected to keep.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Then let’s ask.”
He moved between me and the side door. “Victor likes making people nervous. That’s his idea of being interesting.”
“Move, please.”
The words surprised us both. I had never needed to say them to him. He hesitated, then stepped aside.
