The Suarez Myth: Chapter 11

Saoirse was fifteen.

Her grandmother had just died. She met Sinead for the first time at the long, dreary funeral that followed, a fuzzy-haired ginger in dark jeans and a black oversized t-shirt who refused to enter the actual church building and didn’t look that much older than her. 

She said to her just outside the church doors, “You can stay with us until school ends.” Us was Sinead, her husband Dermot, and a brother whose name Saoirse never spoke aloud again.

She was sixteen the winter she moved into Sinead’s house, but calling it a house felt generous. Newcastle had been manageable with its grey skies, school corridors, her grandmother's gentle fussing, but Saoirse couldn’t live in her house alone, and Sinead, as her only living legal guardian, refused to move in. 

That year in Sinead’s flat felt like a shift into something colder. It was more like a narrow hallway pretending to be a home. It was old, its carpets smelled of damp twilight and old curry, its windows were always closed because they got stuck when you tried to open them. The radiators clanked at odd hours like something was trapped inside. 

The first week passed quietly. Saoirse went to school a bus ride away during the day. Sinead worked nights at Tesco. Dermot slept odd hours. The brother, whom she hated to remember his name, was twenty-six. Too old to be leeching off his younger sister, yet still too confident to be unthreatening. 

He liked to “help” Saoirse carry things and to stand too close when she washed dishes. He drifted around the house like a draft, appearing and disappearing without sound. He had a way of standing too close behind you without touching, just close enough that you could feel your skin pull upward in warning.

Saoirse learned the rules quickly, the way quiet girls do.

Rule one: Don’t close the bedroom door.

Rule two: Don’t shower after dark.

Rule three: Don’t wake Dermot.

Rule four: Don’t cry where anyone can hear it.

She kept her head down, went to school, handed over her lunch card quietly when Sinead asked for it, folded Sinead’s work uniforms before leaving for class. She kept away from her schoolmates, who all thought her name and accent were weird, and her face was too pale. They called her “Angel Face” or “Ghost Face”, mostly the latter. She stayed small, polite, grateful, the shape of a girl living on borrowed hospitality.

But the brother kept watching her.

He often lingered in doorways, leaning against the frame like he owned the air around her. Sometimes, he’d speak soft, strange comments that made her stomach tighten.

“You’re growing fast.”

“You look older with your hair down.”

“You’re quiet. Quiet girls know things.”

Sinead ignored it. Dermot didn’t see it. Saoirse tried not to breathe when he was in the same room.

One evening, Sinead left her in the house alone with him.

Saoirse was putting away laundry when he appeared at the doorframe, leaning against it casually, his smile too slow.

“You’re a quiet little thing, aren’t you?” he said. “Quiet things don’t make trouble.”

She stepped back. He stepped forward, took a T-shirt from the basket, lifted it, inhaled it… and smiled again. Her blood froze. She tried to leave, but he caught her wrist.

“Don’t run,” he murmured. “You don’t want to seem afraid.”

She remembered her grandmother’s advice. Don’t scream unless someone can hear you. Don’t fight unless you can win. So she went still, stone-still.

He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, fingers lingering.

“You’ll grow up beautiful,” he whispered. “Dangerously so. Men will want to ruin you.”

She prayed he would let go. He did, eventually, but the message was clear. 

The night it happened again wasn’t any more special. Sinead was at work. Dermot was drunk. The brother knocked on her open door. She was sitting cross-legged on the cold carpet, doing a composition worksheet under the yellow light of a dying lamp. Her pencil shook a little. She always shook a little back then.

He stepped inside and sat on the bed, close enough that she felt the mattress dip and his breath warm the back of her neck.

“You shouldn’t be alone in here, you know,” he murmured. “Dangerous neighborhood. People don’t lock their doors around here.”

She pressed her nails into her thigh, hard, but said nothing. Predictable girls are easy, he told her once. Quiet girls.

When she didn’t respond, he leaned forward, his hand brushing the crook of her elbow like a test, a question. Her whole body went rigid. A kind of cold rose through her bones, and he smiled as if he could tell.

She stood abruptly after a while, like someone yanked her upright by invisible strings.

“I have to shower,” she said, voice flat. “I have school.” She didn’t wait for permission. She walked out, her legs numb, her heart pounding so loudly she thought it might wake Dermot through the walls.

She locked herself in the bathroom — breaking rule two — and turned on the tap. Hot water roared into the tub. Steam filled the room. She sat on the closed toilet seat fully clothed, covering her ears with both hands, shaking so hard her fingers hurt. She stayed until the water turned cold, until her skin prickled, until her breathing slowed.

He didn’t follow, but the unnamed fear lived in her body now, permanent as bone.

When Sinead came home at dawn and found the bathroom light still on, she snapped, “Are you trying to drown the house, girl? Why’s it always something with you?”

Saoirse apologized. She always apologized. She learned that if you stayed very quiet, very still, very small, sometimes danger moved through you, past you. She carried that rule for years, into adulthood and university, into Roman’s world and their marriage. Silence meant safety. Stillness meant survival. Submission meant escape. She learned to become a ghost in that house, and she never told Sinead what happened, or Nina, not fully. She never even really told herself.

And when she finally told Roman one trembling night in Madrid in their early months together, she said it quickly, lightly, as if describing a dream, eyes turned away, hands trembling again. Roman had held her hand, jaw tense.

“I won’t let anything like that happen to you again,” he said. He swore to protect her. He gathered her into his arms and vowed, “No one will ever touch you again.”

+

Saoirse’s memory of Sinead’s house was little more than a vague outline now, but Roman carried the full, sharp truth she’d whispered to him years ago, in the beginning, before she learned to be quieter even in her confessions. He was in Singapore again, this time on an extended stay that had somehow turned into two months in and out between the country, Madrid, and Geneva, when the memory returned to him.

It hit him like a blade, and suddenly he wasn’t in his Tanglin temporary office complex anymore. He was back in his Madrid penthouse, early winter, three years ago.

Saoirse was still twenty-one, barefoot on his hardwood floor, her hair still wet from the shower because she was too shy to use his blow dryer without being shown how it worked. She wore one of his shirts, sleeves rolled twice over her wrists. The hem nearly brushed her knees. She sat curled on the sofa, knees to her chest, eyes too bright. They had been talking about nothing — books, London, her sister’s cruelty — when her voice suddenly thinned, went quiet, like something inside her slipped.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” she whispered.

He’d turned toward her, expecting something small like an unpaid bill, an old boyfriend, perhaps the shame of having grown up without a family. She always apologized for things she never should.

But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at her hands.

“There was a man in her house,” she said softly. “Her brother.” She swallowed. Her throat moved delicately, like a bruise blooming. “He… he used to come into my room.”

Roman’s back went rigid.

She kept going, as if she had rehearsed the words and they were now falling out of her faster than she could catch them.

“He touched me. Not once. Not just once. I never told her. Or anyone. I thought… I thought it was my fault because I was quiet. Because I didn’t push him away. Because I froze.”

Roman felt something crack open inside him. At the time, he didn’t know what it was, but now, he understood that it was the end of innocence, of his own capacity to love her lightly.

She kept talking, voice faltering but unbroken, “I didn’t know how to scream. I didn’t know how to stop it. I just— felt my body leave me. And afterward… I couldn’t remember parts of it. I still can’t. That’s why I hate dark hallways, and touching people’s arms, and closed doors.”

She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. “I don’t want you to think I’m damaged. I don’t want you to think I’m… weak.”

Weak. The word detonated something ancient in him that smelled like Allegra's quiet terror and the way she held her wineglass steady while the world crashed around her. He closed the space between them in two steps. He knelt in front of her and took her face in both hands, his thumbs brushing the wetness beneath her eyes.

“Look at me,” he said. She did, her eyes were enormous, terrified, trying to be brave. “You were a child,” he said. His voice was low, so low she had to lean forward to hear it. “You hear me? A child. There is no fault, no blame, only me now.” Her breath shuddered. 

“And if he were alive,” Roman added, “I would kill him myself.”

She whispered something like a protest, but he silenced it gently, pressing his forehead to hers.

“You survived,” he said. “You survived something no one should survive. And you are here with me now.”

She had cried then, quietly, almost apologetically, into his chest. And he had held her so tightly she could barely breathe. That was the night she gave him everything. She gave him trust, and the rawest, truest version of herself. And that was the night Roman made a silent, irrevocable vow that no one would ever touch her again.

He decided, without noticing he had decided, that she belonged inside an unshakeable circle of protection. His protection. His walls. His rules. His silence. His house.

It was the nine-year-old boy watching Allegra bleed into lace and thinking, I will keep my woman safe. From that night onward, everything in him reorganized itself around her safety. The “stay here.” The “don’t worry about outside.” The “let me handle it.” The “you don’t need to go.” The “rest.” The “be calm.” He was saving her.

In Singapore now, staring at the elevator wall while that faint jasmine clung to the air, Roman felt something cold crawl up his spine. He remembered every detail she’d told him, the shape of her shoulders when she spoke, the tremor in her voice.

He remembered pressing her hands to his chest and promising, “You never have to be afraid again.”

So now, he had discreet, AI-assisted surveillance on all their homes. Barcelona was like Fort Knox. Every season, he had Marco and the other security guys make private security enhancements based on advancing technology. Smart-watch access for facial recognition triggers, movement mapping, and biometric logs, things Saoirse knew existed, but not to what extent. 

Marco oversaw the physical reinforcements. The house secretary, Fernando, coordinated the digital summaries so Roman received weekly anomaly reports, compressed and filtered. That night, between virtual meetings in the hotel suite, he opened the security digest once more out of habit. He’d been doing it a lot more in the last couple of months. 

There had been a delivery truck misrouted near the western gate. A gardener triggering a false perimeter alert after hours. A brief software recalibration. He scrolled.

A thumbnail caught his eye only because of its timestamp: 18:42. Sunset. The lemon grove path. He expanded it. At first, it meant nothing. Two figures at the far edge of the property. One in a pale shape that resolved into Saoirse’s dressing gown. He leaned slightly closer to the screen.

Marco stood in front of her, bent at the waist. His hand near her ankle, adjusting something, the strap of her sandal, perhaps. Her hand rested on his shoulder. The frame held for two seconds before the AI auto-paused to mark proximity. There was no audio, escalation, or further contact, but still, Roman did not blink.

The angle was imperfect, picked up only because the perimeter AI had widened its sweep after a recent firmware update. The main house cameras did not extend that far into the grove. She was outside the usual visual grid.

He replayed it. The physicality was minor, innocent even. But the expression…

Her face tilted slightly upward. It was open, and she was laughing, or nearly laughing. There was something unguarded in the line of her mouth. He tried to remember when he had last seen that expression directed toward him, but could not place it. He hadn’t even been back in Barcelona for the last two months. The days had just flown by.

Marco straightened, stepped back, and the moment dissolved. The clip ended.

Roman closed the window without flagging it. He did not call Fernando. He did not message Marco. There was, technically, nothing to reprimand. Security protocol did not forbid the staff from assisting his wife on uneven ground. Physical proximity was sometimes unavoidable. Still.

Marco should have called for Marta or one of the female staff members. Saoirse should not have been that far from the house alone. She was in some flimsy robe, unacceptable in his mind. The perimeter AI had only caught it because the system was functioning correctly, because he had improved it.

He reopened the clip and watched her hand again, watching the warmth in her face. The contact was brief, but the warmth lingered. Roman sat back in the crushed mohair armchair slowly as business associates chattered somewhere in the background.

He told himself the discomfort was procedural and about boundaries, not about the fact that she looked alive in a way that did not involve him. He minimized the footage and opened the Aberdeen refinery audit instead, giving himself five minutes to end the unnecessary meeting.

He did not sleep for another hour, not until after he’d restructured the staff schedule, quietly transferring Marco to Madrid. He had Javier review recent house staff reports before morning.

“And please have Emilio schedule me to be in Barcelona tomorrow evening,” Roman said to his chief of staff, who was still in Geneva. Tianglin had grown too comfortable, but it was time to return home to his family. “...and at least once a week next month.”

+

A warm dusk settled over the Barcelona estate. 

The lemon grove smelled like sun-sweetened citrus and watered soil as Saoirse walked slowly along the stone path, the soft silk belt of her dressing robe fluttering at her waist. The matching nightdress within clung to her skin thanks to the sun and how it made her pores cry. The twins were finally asleep. Lisa was on a call inside. It was the first time all day Saoirse had been alone.

One of her sandals slipped off, the leather catching at the buckle. She muttered something under her breath and crouched to fix it, but her balance wavered.

“Señora, careful.” The voice came up from behind her. “Let me help you.”

She was startled a little but smiled. “It’s just the strap. It got caught.” Marco was reliable, kind, and always just out of the way… except when Roman was catching her on camera, touching his arm. She sighed.

He bent quickly, adjusting the buckle while she steadied herself with a hand on his shoulder for a second. She laughed at herself, at the absurdity of losing a sandal in her own garden, at her paranoia about accepting his help.

He nodded politely and stepped back. “All set. I’ll leave you to it.”

She thanked him softly, and he walked on. She exhaled and continued down the path, the moment already forgotten.

The next night, Roman returned without ceremony. She thought she’d be upset with him, but that part of her took a backseat and watched as her body leapt into his arms as he crossed the inner threshold of their home. It had been two months, and she missed him like he was a soldier returned from war. He embraced her, kissed her cheek, and lingered there for some moments before releasing her and taking her in with unusual scrutiny.

Dinner was quiet. The twins were fed, swaddled, and asleep in their cribs. A candle flickered between her and Roman at their smaller dining table. He was unhurried, slicing through grilled squid, a glass of crisp wine at his elbow. He hadn’t said much since he returned.

Saoirse had made an effort as usual. Her hair washed, a white organic cotton dress on, a soft touch of mascara. She wanted to feel like herself again, the self before milk stains and night feeds. 

“I was thinking of taking the twins to the coast this week just for a few hours,” she finally broke the ice. “Lisa says sea air’s good for their lungs,” she murmured. He nodded but didn't look up from his cutting. “Would you come?”

A pause. “Maybe.” He set down his cutlery and took a slow sip of wine. “Do you usually walk the lemon grove in a robe?” He met her gaze, his steady and unreadable.

Her spine stiffened as her brain sorted through the last couple of days for a clue as to what he was referring to. “I wanted air.”

He nodded, as if that satisfied something. “And Marco? He was helping with your shoe?”

She was quiet for a while before saying, “I didn’t ask him to. He saw me wobble and offered. It took ten seconds.”

“I’ve seen the footage.” 

She swallowed. Suddenly, she felt absurd in her dress, in this house, in the game she didn’t know she was still playing. Her voice was a slow thread now, “I wasn’t flirting. I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” her eyes on her half-eaten food. 

“I didn’t say you were,” he replied flatly and leaned back, folding his hands together. “But I noticed something.”

She asked even though she didn’t want to, “What?”

“The way you looked at him. That softness, that instinct to smile, you used to give that to me.”

She exhaled. “You think I’m cheating on you, months after childbirth, when I barely leave this property, and the only thing I want more than sleep is you.”

He stood and walked away from the table, leaving his food and her too shaken to react.

Eventually, she retired to bed, but she didn’t take her sleeping pills. Instead, she grabbed the rosary from her vanity and tried to pray, but it wasn’t working, her brain refused to remember all the words she should know like the alphabet by now. It was her heartbeat. All her brainpower was going into speeding it up.

The lights were dim, and at least five hours had passed since dinner when he joined her. Saoirse sat on the tufted bench at the foot of their bed, brushing out her hair as she counted every hour. Her robe was pale blue, loose, and comfortable.

Roman walked straight into the walk-in, and Saoirse listened distractedly to his shuffling within as she brushed on and on, long after her hair achieved neatness. He stepped back into the room and placed his watch on the vanity. When she looked up at him, he had only his briefs on. 

“You’ve been sleeping earlier lately,” he said. She knew he knew because all the staff sent him reports of her every move. She knew he knew Bibiana brought her sedatives. Was their annoying Marco argument over?

“It’s the twins,” she murmured, still brushing. “I try to lie down when they do.”

He nodded and sat on the edge of the bed close to her. “I moved Marco to Madrid.” Her brushing hand froze, the brush still against her hair, and she turned slowly to him. “They need someone familiar with perimeter systems.”

Her body tensed, but she stayed still. “Did you tell him why?”

He looked at her like she said something ridiculous. “I didn’t need to.”

She set the brush down, finally. “You really think something happened.”

He stood and moved to his nightstand, setting his phone down. “I don’t think. I observe. You know that.”

“You have cameras on me.”

“On the property, not on you,” he corrected calmly.

She exhaled, long and slow, suddenly hyperventilating for reasons she couldn’t immediately discern. “I was outside for air. Lisa had just gone in. My sandal slipped. He helped me. That was all.”

He nodded. “You laughed.”

“At myself.”

“You touched him.”

“I touched him for balance. Roman, I had just breastfed twins. I hadn’t eaten. I was lightheaded.”

He chuckled as he walked to her side of the room to pick up one of the baby monitors, and for a split second, she was unsure if she was still telling the truth, if she’d done anything more with Marco that she didn’t remember. 

“You don’t need to breastfeed them. We have nurses specifically for that, Saoirse! And they’re eight months already!” She hated it most when he was able to acquire a frightening sharpness without ever raising his voice. He walked to the glass double doors that led to their bedroom terrace, parted the thick curtains, opened the doors wide, letting cold waves of air in, walked out, then walked back in, in quick succession. “In two years, I never once saw you look at a staff member like that. It wasn’t the act. It was the tone of it… just like last time,” he said that last part more softly than the rest.

“You’ve stopped touching me for almost a year,” she cried out, but the tears in her eyes refused to fall. “I give a sliver of warmth to someone who adjusts my shoe, and suddenly... what?”

He stared at her for a moment, flung their white eiderdown down, and climbed into bed. “Come to bed.”

She froze at the edge of the bed, her breath shallow and uneven, facing him like time itself had frozen. His gaze trailed from her eyes to her mouth to the pulse fluttering at her throat.

“Come here,” he said again, softly this time.

She hesitated before inching toward the bed and lifting herself onto it. When she was close enough to feel his breath, he reached toward her, grazing his fingers across her collarbone, tracing upward until they cradled the side of her face. Her skin was cold, or maybe his hand was too warm. She closed her eyes against it, remembering him asking all those months ago, But are you mine?

“Do you know what it does to me?” he said, his voice low and hoarse. “You don’t understand yet that you don’t have to waste so many words on the perimeter guy?” She flinched at his condescending tone long before she caught on to what he meant. “You didn’t have to say a word. I’d always take your side.” She opened her eyes and frowned at his chest, trying to compute what he was saying.

“I was scared,” she whispered after a long pause. “I thought you really believed something happened.”

He leaned in and touched his forehead against hers. “What if he… tried something? How could I have forgiven myself?” He whispered with his eyes closed. A strong shiver emerged from the depths of her veins to the very top of her skin as his words sank in. She’d never even considered that. What if Marco was another… brother?

Then… then he kissed her. A real kiss, and not gentle either. She froze first, but soon, her fingers bunched into the fabric of the sheets beneath them because it’d been too long. And she cried again, silently, as her lips opened under his and her body pressed into him with months of suppressed confusion, longing, and love, and newfound fear.

He kissed her jaw, her neck, untying her robe. His palm flattened at her lower back, pulling her flush against him. 

“Look at me,” he murmured against her lips. And when she did, “Don’t give that to anyone else.” She nodded, barely.

“Even if I lose everything tomorrow, there’s no version of this world where you walk away from me.” He pulled back to look at her fully. “Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take care of you.” The fire in his eyes dimmed slightly. His mouth returned to hers. His hands moved, and hers followed, pulling each other apart just enough to fall into one another. He barely undressed her before the first thrust, his grip iron, his rhythm unrelenting, his eyes never leaving hers.

Afterward, they lay tangled together, both panting, her cheek pressed against his chest, his hand spread wide across the dip of her back.

“Sleep,” he said into the silence as his thumb rubbed slow circles over her spine. Her eyes stayed fixed on the shadows above their heads, trying to understand what just happened, but the force of release after months of waiting lulled her too quickly.

The first strange thing about when she finally woke up late the next morning was the weight of his hand, resting against the dip of her waist. Her back was to him, her body warm but motionless. Light poured in through gauzy curtains, but she couldn't reach for it. Instead, she listened to the sound of his breath, strange but welcome behind her, the quiet ticking of the brass wall clock, and to her own racing thoughts.

The world had cracked open and reset itself. She felt disarmed and devoured yet protected at the same turn. She shifted, and Roman stirred behind her. Had she ever woken up before him before? The bed creaked with his slight movement, and his hand tightened instinctively around her. He’s awake.

In a low voice still thick with sleep, he said, “Mi amor.” The words went through her like heat, and her heart lurched. She rolled over slowly to face him, their eyes meeting on the pillows. He looked exhausted, like something had been ripped from him. His eyes scanned her face, and she wondered what they were looking for.

Silence stretched, and something almost tender stirred between them. The night had been… intense. Something had shifted. She felt it in her ribs, the tender ache between her thighs, and the strange stillness of the room. But why did he withhold himself from her for so long? And was it over?

He sat up and stretched his arms overhead. His phone buzzed on the nightstand, and he reached for it instinctively. She watched his face as he read. Nothing changed at first. Then his jaw shifted, a tightening so subtle she would have missed it months ago. He slowly flipped his legs off the side of the bed to stand.

"I’m firing Marco," he said and faced her. She sat up too quickly. The sheet slipped from her naked chest as he watched her. "You care if he lives."

She blinked, startled. "What?"

"You care," he repeated, advancing toward her. "You’re scared of what I might do to him. You flinched just now."

"Roman—"

"You gave him our money. You let him close."

She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the anonymous payment she’d arranged to keep Marco’s daughter in school just before she’d gone into labour, a discreet scholarship through the foundation. 

She never told Roman because she knew he’d consider it inappropriate to get so involved in a staff member’s private life. But Marco didn’t even know either, she thought. It all happened so quickly, after she’d found his wife crying alone just inside their gates one day. They'd spoken woman-to-woman and arranged everything.

She made her voice as little as possible. "You say you love me, but you don’t trust me…"

He laughed once, low and humorless. "I don’t trust anyone!" He growled for perhaps the first time since she knew him. "That’s how I survived this long."

Survived what? she almost asked. The tears streamed down her eyes finally, and she wasn’t sure if it was sadness, fear, or utter confusion from the disorienting tenderness of the night compared to this.

Had she really put herself in danger by getting close to Marco? She thought hard about her last few interactions with him. Was that what she was doing, getting close to him without realizing? Her brows creased.

"What are you going to do to him?"

"Why do you care?" He walked to her and gripped her chin gently but firmly. "I already did it."

His eyes held hers. For a moment, something darker moved there, and the silence that followed was seismic, but she didn’t dare let her eyes leave his.

“Let me be clear. If you lie to me again…” He stopped. She saw the thought travel through him, change shape, retreat, and instead of finishing the sentence, he pulled her forward into his chest. The shift was so sudden her body forgot which emotion to hold. His arms wrapped around her tightly, his breath pressing into her hair.

“Just think,” he said into her crown, as though the rest had never formed. “Think before you act next time.”

He began rocking her gently, the movement rhythmic, almost paternal.

“Stay right here,” he murmured. “This is where you make sense.” Her heart pounded against his ribs.

“You feel that?” he continued softly. “How everything settles when you’re with me.”

And disturbingly, shamefully, it did. The fear that had spiked through for the last several minutes began to dissolve under the steadiness of his hold. The certainty in his voice felt like scaffolding. The adrenaline drained from her limbs, leaving her exhausted and pliable. She did not know whether she had just been threatened or forgiven. Perhaps both. Her body chose for her. She sagged against him and, still cradled there, slipped back into sleep.

“We’re leaving Barcelona this weekend,” he said, as if continuing a conversation they had never started.

Disoriented mid-sleep, she replied with what little strength she could muster, “Where?”

“You need a reset, mi amor,” he murmured into her ear, then his lips brushed her temple. “Capri. I want you where I can see you,” he said quietly. The location sounded like sunlight and something clean, like a gift. “No one asking anything from you but me.”

She nodded before she understood what she was agreeing to. And somewhere beneath the warmth of his arm and the promise of blue water and marble terraces, something in her folded itself smaller, grateful to be held.

The Suarez Myth: Chapter 10

When the twins turned six months old, Roman was in Barcelona with them again.

He’d been away for exactly one month. In that time, Saoirse and the babies still hadn’t returned to Madrid, the city where Roman lived most of the time now, even though he said they would months ago. The city waited for them in silence while this one, his family’s cradle, remained their cage.

In that time, Bibiana also visited more often, always with old Fr. Pedro in his beeswax cassock, sometimes with her younger daughter who was Saoirse’s age and polite enough, but always always with those yellow-brown prescription parcels of diazepam. And they taught Saoirse how to balance devotion with simply longing for Roman less.

A fountain murmured nearby as Saoirse walked into the central courtyard where Roman sat on the evening of his arrival. She held two glasses of wine in each hand, one faded gold, one dark. Roman preferred red during spring.

He was seated beneath the olive tree, the faintest breeze rustling his light shirt collar. A small tablet rested on the low stone table beside him, its light reflecting faintly against the glass, as he casually scrolled through it. She handed him his wine, and he took it without looking up at her.

“I thought we’d sit together tonight, before Lisa brings them down,” she said.

A pause, and then, he nodded once. He didn’t need words to fill the silence, something Saoirse had once admired.

She watched him as she lowered herself onto the cushion across from him, folding one leg under the other. She’d dressed deliberately in a soft beige silk wrap dress, no makeup, hair pulled back and loosely pinned, simple, exactly how he liked it. She felt completely healed now, whole, and she was trying, she always tried, to be the version of herself that calmed him, that warmed him. 

Her eyes remaining on his bent head, she counted the pearls of the rosary around her left fingers, letting the prayers keep her mind from straying too far. When she prayed, it steadied enough to not ask for more. Fr. Pedro, his lush silver curls rustling, had suggested this on his last visit days ago. Pray incessantly, he’d said as they sat in this very courtyard as Bibiana stood nearby eating cucumber slices, pretending not to monitor them. Saoirse felt used to praying once again, like she was back in that old house in Newcastle, begging God to keep her grandmother alive.

“You seemed distracted earlier with Marco,” Roman said at last.

Her eyes lifted, and she responded immediately, “We were talking about the gate sensors. They’re still glitching.”

He finally met her eyes and smiled faintly. “I know. He filed it in the report.” His gaze remained mild as he took a sip of the wine. “It’s not what you said. It’s the way you touched his arm.”

For a moment, she didn’t breathe. What? “What do you mean?”

“You touched his arm. Why?” He held her gaze, and Saoirse realized with a start that he expected a serious response. 

“I was half-asleep,” she said. “I was trying to soften my ‘no.’”

He hummed lightly like he agreed with her. But he didn’t agree. It was just noise. “Marco isn’t paid to be softened,” he said finally. She leaned back, slowly, into the cushioned outdoor seat, the evening breeze sending a light shiver through her. It took her a moment to realize what he meant. “I’ll speak to him,” he continued, almost absently. “He’s become too familiar.”

Something in her chest cracked at that, small and invisible. “I’ve barely been outside this house,” she said softly. “There’s nowhere to be familiar.”

He looked at her longer now, studying the shift in her tone. “You’ve been restless.”

The word ‘restless’ felt like a diagnosis, and it broke her composure before she could stop it. “Because I haven’t been touched.” It came out barely audible. “You stopped touching me months ago. Even before the twins were born.” As if trying to remind him, in case he’d forgotten. She remembered Nina’s voice when she’d mentioned this casually over the phone, how her husband hadn’t touched her since she’d become too big and swollen with pregnancy, right before Nina’d suggested that he might be getting what he wanted… elsewhere. 

Saoirse felt foolish thinking about that old conversation now, like all conversations felt when she thought of them through Roman’s mind, through his logical words. She hadn’t called Nina since then, or taken any of her fewer and fewer calls.

He smiled the kind of smile that dismissed storms. “You’re still fragile. You need space.”

“No,” she whispered. “You need space. From me.” The words surprised her as much as him. “I bled, Roman. I was torn open and sewn shut… and you won’t even look at me.” Her voice shook as she thought, despite all of Bibiana and Fr. Pedro’s counselling, about his longer, more frequent trips without her. “You’re punishing me for not being—” she faltered, “for not being beautiful anymore.”

The breeze moved through the olive branches. Roman’s expression didn’t change. Instead, he let the silence drag as he gazed at her. She wanted to look away, feeling ashamed of herself and her words, but she couldn’t with his eyes on her.

“I’m not punishing you,” he said evenly. “That’s a childish thing to say. You honestly think all I’m thinking about is sex and attention and how to keep it from you?” He leaned back, the movement measured, civil, casually dangling his wine glass in one hand, watching her intently. She felt stupid. Of course he had a whole world of concerns more important than she could even fathom. “It’s about trust. I thought you understood that by now.”

She blinked, unsure what he meant. “Trust?”

“You’ve changed again,” he said, and there was something weary in his tone, like a teacher correcting a student who’d once promised to do better.

Her eyes watered and burned. “I grew two lives inside me. Of course, I’ve changed.”

“I know. So we’re recalibrating,” he said. He always said that word when something about her displeased him, when she reached for air. Recalibrating sounded like a meeting note, a clinical way to tidy what had gone wrong.

She exhaled. “You’ve drafted a thesis around your distance, but it’s still distance.”

He looked genuinely confused. “Why are you speaking to me like that?” Her throat tightened. She already regretted it, but the words wouldn’t leave her head. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, finally looking away.

He finished his wine slowly. “We’ll figure it out,” he said finally, like closing a file.

She nodded, but she couldn’t look at him. 

She wanted to believe him. She thought of the man from before they married, who went with her to her residency sessions and was always there to pick her up when it was over, who curated special scents, special sounds for her just to make her happy, who always brought her coffee even before she woke, who once traced Whitman on her belly in the early months of her pregnancy, who wept when they first heard the twins’ hearts, who swore they’d protect each other from the world after his parents died. 

But it seemed now like those very deaths had calcified something in him. 

Bibiana’s visits were almost regular now. But her assessments disguised as care ironically kept her sane because performing functionality to her sister-in-law at least gave Saoirse something to occupy her mind, and the pills let her sleep off the remaining time, helped her forget that Roman hadn't looked at her naked in almost a year, helped her forget to fully unpack Nina’s words. 

And now, because she touched a man’s arm at the wrong moment, he was talking about trust.

She took his empty glass, left hers untouched, and rose. 

“I’ll check on them,” she said, and he nodded, eyes back on the tablet, the soft glow painting his wrist in light. But before she could step away, she hesitated. “You never ask how I feel,” she said quietly. “Or how lonely it gets.”

That made him look up again, the light catching the edges of his face. The faintest trace of surprise, or maybe annoyance, crossed his face before he hid it behind tired composure. “You’re not lonely,” he said. “You’re surrounded by everything you need.”

She shook her head, something tired flickering through her voice. “Everything but you.”

Something else shifted in his expression, the smallest awareness of her body in his space, and it was enough to make her step closer.

“Roman,” she whispered. “When will you touch me again? When will I be—” her voice broke, “—enough for that?” He held her gaze, steady and unreadable. She was trembling now, although she stood only a breath away. “You said once, you preferred when I let you lead,” she said. “So I did. I’ve been waiting. I’m still waiting.”

He set the tablet aside, slowly, as if considering her words. 

She asked again, her voice thin with disbelief, almost embarrassment, “When will you… want me again?”

“You think I don’t?” He stood tall, immaculate, almost painfully calm. When he reached her, she lifted her chin instinctively, as if bracing for impact. His hand came up to rest against her face, his thumb tracing the faintest line along her jaw. It wasn’t tender so much as reverent. “I always want you,” he said, and she felt her body go still, her breath hitch. He spoke so evenly that it almost sounded like truth. “But wanting and having are different things.”

Her eyes stung. “You decide when I’m allowed to be wanted?”

He smiled faintly, the kind of smile that made her feel childish for asking. “I decide when I should want you. I decide when it’s safe to. You’re still fragile, and I won’t break what’s mine.”

That word, ‘mine’, lodged in her like a hook. She wanted to hate it, but it steadied her, too.

“I’m not fragile,” she whispered.

“But are you mine?” he asked, his voice lower now, close to her ear. She couldn’t speak. He leaned in, brushed his lips against her temple like an anointing. When he pulled back, she was trembling. “Go and rest,” he said softly. “You’ve lost too much sleep.”

She nodded, because it was easier than answering.

As she walked toward the villa, she pressed her hand to the spot his mouth had touched and felt both soothed and suffocated. He’d given her almost nothing, and yet it would carry her for weeks.

Behind her, the fountain murmured, the olive leaves stirred, and Roman’s gaze followed her through the dark glass for a long while. She’s trembling again. He watched the slight unsteadiness in her shoulders as she moved through the doorway, the hem of her dress brushing the tile like a whisper. The softness of her, the way she folded into his words even when she tried to resist them, calmed him. It restored the order he had felt slipping since he arrived to find her distracted from him.

She’s tired, overwrought, too conscious of herself tonight. And that was dangerous, for her and for the stillness he depended on. He watched her press her fingers to her temple where he had kissed her, and he felt something complicated stir in him. A kind of possession that had its own gravity and logic. He watched her until she disappeared inside, then sat back down and picked up his screen again.

He let the air settle again.When will you touch me again? Her question had pierced him in a way he didn’t like. It made her sound needy, too aware of absence. Neediness in a woman always preceded instability. He’d seen it in Allegra. He’d seen it break her. She didn’t understand that he was protecting her from the very chaos she begged for. He watched the shadows swallow her as she disappeared down the hall and felt neither guilt nor anger.

He had given her exactly what she could hold. He had pulled her back from the verge of hysteria without raising his voice, without breaking the fragile peace he’d built around her. She’ll sleep now, and the tremor will pass.

He looked down at his screen finally because numbers were a good place to store the parts of himself that still throbbed when she became emotional. She’s still mine, he thought, with the calm certainty of a man stating the laws of physics. And she still knows it. He scanned another page but didn’t absorb a line. Tomorrow, I’ll adjust her schedule. She needs less distraction, less stimulus, less of herself. She’ll be fine, he concluded, leaning back against the cushion. Once she remembers her place in the balance of things, once she quiets again, she’d see that this is the most disciplined form of love. 

His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He thought of the months before the birth, then her body splitting open to produce the twins, her breath shallow and erratic, her pain so loud it drowned out the room. He remembered the blood, the pale sweat, the tremor in her legs.

His mother’s silhouette rose unbidden. Allegra at the dining table, too still, too composed, covering wounds with lace.

Sex had broken Allegra. Desire had destroyed her quiet. His father’s appetites had made her into marble. Women don’t survive men’s wanting, something in Roman’s bones said. Which meant that if he wanted Saoirse too much, if he touched her too soon, if he let desire dictate anything… he would ruin her.

His hand tightened subtly around the tablet. There was another thought, darker, quieter, the one he buried immediately, that her postpartum body frightened him, the expansion of it, the fragility after such strain. If I touch her now, I might lose control of myself… and become my father. This thought, though unspoken and irrational, was the axis of everything. Allegra’s quiet suffering. Amancio’s violent appetites. The way Roman had watched his mother shrink around the force of a man’s desire. In his father’s household, desire was cruelty, and restraint was virtue.

Touching Saoirse now, when she was already his, felt like a trespass, even if she begged for it. Especially when she begged. His chest tightened faintly, and he closed the tablet. Saoirse’s voice still clung to the air: When will you touch me again? When will I be enough?

Somewhere in him, something answered: When I can trust myself not to want too much. But even that wasn’t fully true. He could never touch her again without seeing her body stretch and expand up until the moment she almost died to give him babies. He could not reconcile desire with death, so he let desire starve, and he told himself it was care.

+

Roman was nine the night the crystal shattered.

Dinner had stretched close to midnight, the air thick with cigar smoke and the low hum of his father’s voice, precise and measured like a weapon. Allegra sat opposite Amancio, her posture perfect, her wine untouched. Her lipstick was the only color in the room.

Roman sat at the far end of the table, a small prince at a banquet he didn’t understand, his feet not even touching the floor. His half-sisters were in school and married, respectively. They weren’t there to provide buffer against whatever stray bullet might let loose. He knew not to speak unless spoken to, knew the exact moment servants would appear with another course, and knew the rhythm of his father’s temper before it ever arrived.

It began, as it always did, with something small, like a misplaced remark, an unfinished deal, a half-smile mistaken for defiance. Amancio set down his glass too sharply, the sound cracking the air. Allegra turned her head slightly, just enough that the light struck her tiny ruby earrings.

“Why do you always look away when I speak?” Amancio asked, voice bellowing enough to make the servants freeze mid-step then leave as quickly yet inconspicuously as they could.

“I was listening,” she said.

“You were hiding.” He reached across the table and tipped her untouched glass down hard toward her. The "Hofburg" glassware with the imperial crest etched into the sides fell over the table. Red wine bled across the white tablecloth, spreading like a slow bruise.

Roman watched the stain travel toward his mother’s wrist. It was the first time he ever wondered if his father even thought before acting out in anger or if he simply obeyed his every impulse. Allegra lifted her napkin, pressed it lightly to the spill, and smiled that impossible, delicate smile she wore only when things were breaking.

His father leaned back, assessing her with that cold, studious gaze Roman would inherit. “Our son has to learn something.”

“What’s that?” She said.

“How to hold a table steady when everything else acts out of line.” For a long time, no one breathed. Then Amancio rose, straightened his cuffs, and left.

Allegra sat very still. The stain had reached the edge of her lap, blooming through the white lace. Her hands were immaculate. When she finally looked at Roman, her expression was serene, so serene it terrified him.

“Fetch Isabella,” she said quietly. The staff knew to never hover or step into a room unprompted. “Tell her to change the tablecloth.”

He stood, but she stopped him with a glance. “Roman,” she added, “Next time, don’t look so frightened. We keep the room beautiful, always.”

He nodded.

That night, when the servants cleared the dining room, he stayed behind. He ran his fingers over the edge of the table where the wine had spilled and dried, tracing the faint residue on the Baroque hardwood until it disappeared.

The house was always quieter after midnight. Even the servants learned to move differently once Amancio retired to his study; quieter, smaller, as though sound itself might cost them.

Roman had been sent to bed hours earlier, but sleep wouldn’t come. The images from dinner still haunted him, the wine spreading like blood, his mother’s stillness as it reached her wrist.

He padded barefoot through the long corridor, the marble cold beneath his feet, drawn by the faint hum of his father’s gramophone. The door to his parents’ suite was half-closed. Light spilled through the crack, thin and golden.

He should have turned back, but a child’s curiosity is stronger than instinct.

Inside, Allegra stood near the dressing mirror, her nightgown the color of smoke. Amancio was behind her, shirt unbuttoned, his hand at the back of her neck. It wasn’t rough, not exactly. It was something worse, possessive. His touch moved with the same precision as his voice, claiming without question.

“You think I don’t see the way you correct me in front of him?” Amancio murmured.

“I wasn’t correcting,” she said. Her tone was calm, practiced.

“Don’t lie.” He pressed his fingers more firmly against her throat, measuring the circumference of it. Allegra’s reflection met him in the mirror, her spine straight, her face composed.

Roman held his breath.

Amancio bent lower, mouth near her ear. “You’ve turned silence into defiance. You think that’s clever?”

Her lips parted slightly, but she said nothing.

Then came the sound that would stay with Roman for years. The soft thud of crystal against marble as Amancio swept her perfume bottles from the table, one by one. They shattered like punctuation. The scent of jasmine and powder filled the air. Allegra didn’t move. When he turned her to face him, his hands on her arms were steady.

“I made you into this,” he said. “You forget who you belong to.”

She smiled faintly, almost tenderly, and whispered, “I made you presentable. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

For a moment, Amancio faltered. Then he kissed her, hard, almost reverent, a collision of power and worship that made Roman flinch. Allegra didn’t resist. She let him have the moment, the illusion of control, as he lifted her nightdress and fucked her clumsily against the vanity.

When it was over, Amancio straightened his cuffs again and walked out, leaving the air thick with perfume and humiliation. Roman shuffled into an alcove less than a foot away as his father staggered past, then crept back to the door.

Allegra stayed at the mirror. The glass trembled where the bottles had fallen, but one remained whole, its stopper crooked. She fixed it, turned it upright, then looked at her reflection.

“Roman,” she said softly, without turning. He froze. “Come out.”

He stepped inside, his heart pounding. The shards glittered around her bare feet.

She looked at him through the mirror. “You saw?” He nodded. Her expression didn’t change. “When men touch in anger, they destroy. When they touch in love, they surrender. Either way, they lose control,” she said, voice level.

Allegra turned then, cupped his face briefly in her cold, perfumed hand. “You must never lose control,” she whispered. He nodded again, because that was what sons did when their mothers made commandments. She kissed his forehead, her lipstick faint against his skin. “Go to bed, tesoro. Forget this.”

But he never did.

The next morning, he found the dining table reset, lilies centered, silver polished, imperial crystal drinking set replaced. The wine stain was gone, as if it had never happened.

Only Roman remembered.

+

The house was asleep now. Only the sea outside moved, its breath against the terrace glass in slow, indifferent pulses.

Roman had been in his study since he had dinner alone after the episode with Saoirse in the courtyard, the lamp casting a controlled circle of gold over stacked reports and the glow of three open screens. Zurich’s liquidity sheet lay layered over Milan’s acquisition redlines; a Geneva advisory memo waited half-signed in his drafts.

He was not building anything himself. There were CFOs and portfolio managers for that. He was simply checking the bones of it all. Things like margin exposure, voting structures, and a minor clause in a custodial trust for the twins that he had adjusted twice already this quarter.

Roman was always looking for patterns others missed. Amancio had taught him that the numbers were never about money but about obedience. He learned that lesson young, watching his father throw a ledger across a table because someone miscalculated a margin by half a percent. Amancio did not tolerate imprecision.

Roman never shouted but he also noticed things, and he acted surgically. He’d learned that that was more terrifying.

Work was clean. Work obeyed him, never looked at him with longing or bled or needed reassurance. It certainly never threatened to dissolve in the way it might for others.

Saoirse did.

After confronting her about Marco, he couldn’t go to bed immediately. He needed equilibrium. Numbers gave him that. Financial models did not tremble when he touched them. Numbers were honest. They did not misinterpret touch.

In the corner of one screen, however, minimized but not closed, that feed replayed from earlier that afternoon. A timestamp, sunlight, Saoirse’s soft blush sleeve, Marco leaning slightly closer than protocol required, and her hand resting too casually against his arm.

Why did she feel comfortable enough to touch him?

Roman watched it once more, lingering just long enough.

His father would have raged. Amancio believed in correction through spectacle. Roman believed in quiet removal of error.

He closed the feed and returned to the Geneva board minutes. The Foundation, La Fundación Suarez, secretary had forwarded a draft of Saoirse’s “re-engagement strategy” he’d been stalling for weeks. He skimmed the language yet again, deleting a reference to her “creative background.” He replaced it with “Mrs. Suarez continues the family’s legacy of cultural patronage” then moved to the philanthropic disbursement breakdown.

He leaned back, rubbing at his temple as the numbers began to blur from repetition. He could feel the empire humming in layers beneath him: Madrid portfolios, Tuscan land holdings, their bigger football club’s revenue projections after another win. Bibiana would want Easter seating revised. Marcela would call about Paris optics. They all relied on him. They all always had.

Allegra had once told him, when he was seventeen and already taller than his father, that a house survived by the discipline of its quietest room. She had meant the chapel.

He had applied it to everything including his marriage.

He did not forbid Saoirse anything. He simply structured the conditions in which certain things no longer felt necessary. The live-in nurses for the twins had been practical. She needed rest and stability. She was young, Irish, soft around the edges in a way that had first struck him as clean and almost devout. He had liked that about her, the inherited Catholic gravity beneath her gentleness, the subdued weight that sometimes settles on those who have endured just enough difficulty to be marked by it, but not hardened. It was a kind of restraint he recognized. Allegra called it character. She approved of her very quickly.

He had worried, briefly, about her position, her SES, the careful economy of a girl who lived within limits.

She had not come from nothing. When he met her, she was newly out of university, holding a merit-based residency, surviving on the remains of a modest but sensible inheritance her grandmother had left her, funds she had only accessed after fleeing her half-sister’s house and starting again on her own. The rest of which he left untouched, still in her old bank account today.

She had carried herself like someone accustomed to managing what she had, stretching it quietly, determined to build something real.

It had reassured him more than he admitted. She was not destitute. She was not desperate. She had chosen him. And that, to Roman, had mattered. She was simply unanchored. She was also independent enough to believe she chose him, but not so much that her world was fixed beyond alteration. Her life was still in draft form, flexible, untethered to legacy, property, a lineage that might compete with his own.

He had not sought to change her. He had only offered structure. And she had stepped into it willingly. He had never meant to make her unnecessary, but systems preferred redundancy.

He stood finally, shutting the screens down one by one. The house exhaled into deeper silence. Somewhere down one hallway, a night nurse shifted. Javier and Emilio had already retired.

Since Saoirse had begun staying longer and longer in Barcelona — and he, everywhere else — their bedroom wing felt less like theirs and more like hers. He moved toward it without thinking. Drawn down the corridor that already smelled too much of her, like roses and something soothing.

The hallway lights glowed dimly along the floor, motion-activated but gentle, so as not to wake anyone. The security grid pulsed invisibly behind the walls, Marco’s domain. Roman paused outside the main bedroom door for half a second longer than necessary.

He imagined her asleep, or pretending to be. He imagined her pulse under his thumb when he touched her wrist at their last breakfast together before he left and stayed longer than planned between Madrid and Paris. He imagined the way she had said, “Stay a little longer,” as if time were negotiable.

It wasn’t.

He opened the door quietly.

She was asleep this time, finally. One arm draped loosely over the sheet, light ginger hair spilled across the pillow like something unguarded. For a moment, he simply stood there.

He liked her best like this. She looked younger when she slept. Younger than the woman in the courtyard or the wife in the foundation briefings. Just the girl he had once watched read aloud in Madrid, earnest and luminous and unstructured.

The door to her dressing room was half-open. He walked to it and paused there.

Inside, everything gleamed: ivory drawers, mirrored surfaces, the faint shimmer of silk. The air smelled of powder and something floral, maybe jasmine, soft but insistent, like a ghost that knew its way around the walls.

Her vanity was immaculate. Custom bottles aligned by height, silver caps turned to catch the same angle of light. It was too perfect, but still he reached out and straightened one that was already straight.

He had commissioned all the scents, developed over time by a perfumer in Grasse he had retained exclusively after their first year of marriage. He remembered the brief he’d given: nothing sweet and nothing loud; notes of iris, roses, salt, faint smoke, something that felt like dusk in a chapel. Something that would never enter a room before she did.

Each bottle had been calibrated seasonally. Lighter in Barcelona summers. Warmer in Madrid. A touch of myrrh added after the twins were born, to switch her sensory identity to maternal.

He had watched her try on the earliest ones, wrists lifted obediently, asking softly which he preferred. It had felt deeply intimate. Knowing how she should smell and linger was a form of devotion. He remembered suddenly what she used to wear, how it had smelled sweet but cheap, citrusy, bought over the counter in London.

He adjusted one bottle again, though it had not moved, and for a fleeting second he imagined another man recognizing that fragrance somewhere, attaching it to her skin.

He disliked the thought.

The vanity remained symmetrical.

For a second, he couldn’t breathe. The scent, the symmetry, it pulled a thread through years. He saw candlelight trembling on broken glass, a woman’s still hands, a child hiding behind a door.

The image came and went before he could name it. He exhaled, rubbed his temples. Tired, that’s all.

Still, the scent lingered. He stepped back, closing the door quietly, careful not to disturb a single bottle. He left the dressing room exactly as he had found it, except for the molecule-thin correction only he would ever see. But as he walked back into the bedroom, his pulse stayed uneven, and he couldn’t have said why.

He stepped closer to the bed, adjusted the edge of the milky silk sheet over her lean pale shoulder, a small, almost imperceptible act, yet Saoirse stirred in her sleep, turning toward the empty space beside her. He moved away, back toward the main threshold, looked once more into the darkened room at her slight figure, then turned away again and closed the door softly behind him.

He would tell himself, later, that it was respect, letting her rest. But the faint jasmine followed him all the way back to his study where the screens had gone black.

The sea kept breathing. The empire remained intact. Upstairs, the twins slept, regulated and protected. And in the quietest room of the house, discipline held.

The Suarez Myth: Chapter 9

At dawn, Saoirse’s feet were numb. 

She pressed her palm to the glass of the window she found herself standing before, watching the sun climb. The warmth against her skin almost felt like touch. And for the briefest moment, she imagined what it would be like if he came home now, just walked in unannounced, as he used to before the silence grew between them. 

But the house stayed still, obedient, and the only breath she heard was her own.

Sunlight soon edged across the curtains, catching the corners of gilt frames, the roses on the nightstand now brittle at their tips. The hum of the house resumed with distant footsteps, water running somewhere, the faint clatter of breakfast trays, for whom, Saoirse didn’t know.

Her head ached, and when she entered the nursery again, the air was still at 22°. The twins were already fed, their tiny forms wrapped in matching linen. Lisa looked up from arranging bottles. “You were awake again last night, Señora?”

Saoirse paused. “Yes.”

Lisa hesitated, fiddling with a sterilized cap. “Marta said she thought she heard you in the hall around three.” Her tone was careful, deferential, but it made Saoirse’s skin prickle.

She smiled faintly. “I couldn’t sleep. I was just checking on them.”

Lisa nodded, but her eyes flicked briefly toward the window. “Marco was on patrol then.”

Saoirse’s fingers tightened around the crib rail. “Did he… say something?”

“No, señora,” she said quickly, looking down. “Of course not. He wouldn’t.”

But the seed was planted now, the image of Marco somewhere in the dark, maybe seeing her wandering barefoot through the corridor, maybe thinking her strange or pitiful.

Saoirse looked down at the twins, both sleeping again, the fragile peace of their faces like a mercy she didn’t deserve. She smoothed David’s hair, then Mariana’s, and told herself she didn’t care what anyone saw. But she did.

+

The staff always knew everything before she did. 

There were voices in the hall by midday, the sound of heels against marble. When Marta appeared at Saoirse’s door, her expression was that careful blend of reverence and forewarning. “Señora,” she murmured. “Doña Bibiana has arrived.”

Saoirse blinked, surprised. “Bibiana?”

“Sí, señora. She is alone.”

Within minutes, Saoirse was standing in the sitting room, the one lined with old portraits of Suarez ancestors. The scent of her sister-in-law’s favorite tuberose plant had already replaced the faint ghost of white roses. Saoirse was forever in awe of how fast the staff worked, how quickly they changed things to suit whoever they deemed superior in any given room.

Bibiana was all tweed and symmetry, her greying hair pinned perfectly, her jewelry restrained but unmistakably ancestral. She kissed both of Saoirse’s cheeks, her lips barely grazing skin. Saoirse could not help inhaling her faint peppermint essence.

“You look pale,” Bibiana said with an air of concern that didn’t quite mask appraisal, and immediately reminded her of Roman’s last words to her before he left over a week ago. “I thought I’d come see my nephew and niece with their father out of the way. It’s been too long.”

“I’m glad you did,” Saoirse said softly.

They sat. Tea was brought with china, silver, and lemon slices cut thin as petals. Bibiana declined sugar. Her gaze, steady and composed, lingered on Saoirse’s face a moment too long.

“You’re alone,” Bibiana asked.

“Roman is traveling again,” Saoirse answered simply, though she knew Bibiana knew this.

“Of course,” Bibiana said, as if it explained everything. “He does so much. We all rely on him.”

Saoirse smiled faintly. “Yes.”

“He does too much himself. I keep telling him to delegate more.” Bibiana stirred her tea, though she hadn’t added anything to it. “And how are you keeping busy?”

The question caught Saoirse off guard. “I have the twins,” she managed to reply.

“Yes,” Bibiana said slowly. “Such beautiful children. But children sleep often at this age, don’t they? What do you do when they sleep?”

Saoirse blinked, caught off guard again. She hadn't had direct conversations that lasted this long in a while… with anyone. “I read. I write… sometimes.”

Bibiana tilted her head. “Oh? Roman mentioned you’re very private about it.”

Saoirse nodded, although something in her chest tightened. “I used to write all the time,” she admitted quietly. “Before. But lately… it doesn’t come.” 

Bibiana studied her. “You mean you’ve lost the habit.”

“Maybe. The silence here is too… complete. It makes my head feel full but empty at the same time.”

Bibiana didn’t rush to fill the pause. “That’s how large houses are meant to feel. Stillness is very valuable.”

“Sometimes it feels like it’s swallowing me, Saoirse said before she could stop herself.

Bibiana’s eyes lifted, sharp and unblinking. “Careful with that kind of talk,” she said, her tone still light but her meaning precise. “People misunderstand it. They start asking questions that are better left unasked.”

Saoirse flushed. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant.” Bibiana leaned back. “Roman married you because you were different. Fresh air in an old house. Don’t confuse that for permission to open all the windows.”

The words landed like a measured slap. It was controlled, not cruel but final, and Saoirse tried to recover. “I only meant…” A silence stretched between them, polite, taut.

“I’ve heard you’ve been having trouble sleeping,” Bibiana said at last, her tone conversational, but her eyes searching. “The staff worry, you know. They care for you.”

Saoirse’s throat went dry. “They shouldn’t worry.”

“No, of course not.” Bibiana smiled, sipping her tea. “You must miss your own family. England feels very far from here.”

“I’m used to distance,” Saoirse said quickly, then hesitated, fingers tightening around her teacup. Bibiana studied her then, eyes sharp beneath the softness. Saoirse forced a smile. Bibiana returned the smile, perfectly polite, perfectly unconvinced. “It’s just… quiet here, when he’s away. Sometimes too quiet. I don’t think I was made for this kind of silence.”

Bibiana’s spoon paused mid-stir. “You mean loneliness?”

Saoirse exhaled. “Yes. Maybe. I keep thinking I should be grateful. Everything’s so beautiful, so well-ordered… but sometimes, it feels like I’m watching my own life from the outside.” She looked down quickly, as if ashamed of saying it aloud. “I sound ungrateful.”

“Not ungrateful. Just young.” She placed her spoon neatly on the saucer, her movements exact, almost ceremonial. “You mustn’t let sadness make you visible. The world notices cracks, and when they do, they tear at it.”

Saoirse’s eyes lifted, startled by the frankness. “I’m not trying to be visible.”

Bibiana straightened, smoothing her skirt with her palms. “You’re a Suarez now. What happens inside these walls has to stay immaculate.” The words felt like both reassurance and threat.

“Okay,” was all Saoirse could manage.

“Everyone is lonely in our world,” Bibiana continued her lecture, and Saoirse looked down at her hands. “It’s the cost of continuity. You have your children now. That should be enough. Make it enough,” she said softly. “The rest of us did.”

Saoirse nodded, feeling a strange, sudden urge to cry.

Bibiana’s teacup clicked neatly against its saucer. “Roman will be home before long. Keep the house in order, keep yourself in order. The rest is noise.”

Saoirse swallowed. “You make it sound easy.”

“It’s not easy. It’s expected.” Bibiana gave a faint, humorless smile. “By the way,” she said, her tone brisk again, “The Foundation board meets next month. You should begin participating again. The birth is far behind you now.”

Saoirse blinked. “Roman didn’t mention it.”

Bibiana adjusted the button at her wrist, unbothered. “He wouldn’t. He thinks he’s protecting you, but public absence becomes gossip. I’ll have the Secretariat send you the minutes. Something, anything, under your name would be useful.”

“I’ll try,” Saoirse said.

“Don’t try. Do. The family looks better when its women are industrious.” She met Saoirse’s eyes. “Good,” she said finally, as if sealing the conversation shut. “I won’t trouble you long.” She rose then, smoothing down her long tweed skirt, every movement deliberate and economical. “May I see the twins before I go?”

“Of course,” Saoirse mumbled.

Bibiana crossed the long hall with her into the nursery, admired the babies with clinical precision, touched none of them, and pronounced them, “Perfect”.

Before leaving, Bibiana paused by the main doors as Saoirse escorted her to them. “Saoirse,” she said, without turning, “The family will start watching you now. It’s what we do when something seems… delicate.”

Saoirse stood frozen.

“Take care of yourself.” Bibiana glanced back once, eyes flat as glass. “And sleep at night, for God’s sake. People talk.”

Then she was gone, the peppermint lingering like a closing door. The silence that followed was colder than before.

Marta appeared a few minutes later to clear the tea tray with the untouched lemon squares. She moved quietly, but Saoirse could tell by her lowered gaze that the whole house had already heard every word.

At the window, Saoirse watched Bibiana’s old car glide down the long drive until it disappeared into the cypresses.

She touched her wrist, the one Roman had held on that last visit after the March trip, his thumb tracing slow, possessive circles, and wondered if Bibiana could see the same invisible mark he’d left.

She turned back toward the nursery. The twins slept on, unaware, but Saoirse felt a new kind of gaze on her. It wasn’t just Roman’s anymore, unseen and omniscient, but his family’s. She felt the house swiftly transform into a mirror, and in its reflection, she wasn’t sure what they saw.

When night came, she tried to obey Bibiana’s last command. She lay in bed, eyes closed, breathing carefully. Sleep at night… people talk. She repeated it like prayer.

Sleep didn’t come.

She was never tired anymore; there was nothing to burn energy on, so how could she fall asleep?

By two, she was pacing again. The marble floor cooled her feet. In the nursery, one of the babies whimpered. David, she thought. She lifted him, careful not to wake Mariana, and held him against her shoulder. The rhythm of his breathing anchored her for a moment.

Quietly, Lisa appeared in the doorway. “Señora,” she whispered, smiling as if she’d just arrived by chance. “Let me help you. I was checking on him.”

Saoirse nodded, surrendering the baby. “He was dreaming.” Her voice came out weak and unsure.

“Yes,” Lisa said softly. “They dream even when they don’t know what of.”

Saoirse lingered by the crib until the tiny chest rose and fell evenly again. When she turned toward the hallway, Marta was there, half in shadow, murmuring to another maid. Their words drifted through the corridor like incense, part pity, part warning.

Back in her room, Saoirse stood at the window until dawn, watching the slow bleed of light over the sea. As the sun rose, she was determined to do better. Bibiana’s words pulsed through her head like an instruction manual. Order, discipline, contribution.

The house moved around her with its usual precision.

After spending most of the morning with the twins and their nannies, she had a late breakfast alone on the balcony, steam rising from the coffee untouched. She opened her journal, the leather spine stiff from disuse. Her handwriting was smaller still, shrinking into itself. She tried to remember everything she’d learned at the Madrid residency about writing even when there was no inspiration, and managed three hesitant lines about light, about silence, about a door that wouldn’t open. Before the ink dried, she tore the page out and folded it neatly into the pocket of her robe.

Afternoon. A call came from the Foundation secretary, who mentioned Bibiana before getting into charitable endowments, gala schedules, and her long-term public “re-engagement strategy”. Saoirse listened, agreed, thanked them. When the call ended, she sat still for several minutes, unsure whether she’d actually spoken. 

Marta informed her that she had wellness treatments scheduled. A nurse came first, quiet and efficient, to attach vitamin drips to her vein, one after the other. Then the facialist, whispering about “helping her feel herself again” as she worked Allegra’s preferred scent into Saoirse’s skin. By the time the stylist arrived to assess her posture and take her measurements without asking, Saoirse herself had stopped asking why. She just stood there as they measured.

A priest arrived from the family’s favored Madrid parish. His cassock smelled faintly of beeswax. He spoke of patience, grace, and how stillness was a form of faith.

“A wife is a pillar, Señora,” he told her gently, “Stand steady, and you sanctify the house.”

He handed her a stunning rosary made out of baroque pearls and solid gold, blessed by the Holy Father himself. She folded her hands around it and let the sermon wash over her like warm water that left her colder when it passed. When he left, Marta replaced the lilies, Allegra’s lilies, with white roses. 

They called it wellness, but it was calibration, ensuring she still fit the mold Roman preferred. Later, a chauffeured drive through the estate with Emilio in the front passenger seat, cypress shadows flickering across her reflection in the glass.

The nurse, the priest, the air itself, all of it was disciplined and curated.

Evening came with letters from charities, swatches of fabric she pretended to select for the nursery redecoration the staff had already decided on… based on family tradition, silver-framed photos to approve, floral arrangements. Marta brought her tea, and Saoirse asked her opinion about nothing in particular just to hear another voice.

When night came, she felt exhausted enough to believe she could finally obey Bibiana’s last command. She lay in bed, eyes closed, breathing carefully. Sleep at night. People talk. She repeated it like prayer, still clutching the pearl and gold rosary in her left hand.

Sleep didn’t come.

Allegra had been right about the pattern, but wrong about the girl. Saoirse never learned how to turn being needed into power. She only learned how to vanish beneath it.

+

She couldn’t remember how many days had passed.

The courtyard was almost blue under the night lamps, a light designed to look like moonlight, calibrated to his specifications. Every perimeter light, every motion sensor, every surveillance feed in the house had a code. Marco knew them all.

He walked his usual route. North wall to terrace, terrace to lemon grove, lemon grove back to the sea gate, a ritual that had become muscle memory. The gravel whispered under his boots.

He liked this hour best, the darkest, earliest hours of the morning when the house was sealed, the guards posted, the cameras still humming, the kind of stillness that made men feel useful. But lately, something had started to unsettle him, not danger exactly, but the absence of it. The air felt too clean, too perfect, like the kind of silence that smothers noise before it starts.

He turned toward the main house and stopped.

Up on the first-floor landing, behind the long window of the west corridor, a figure moved slow, pale, barefoot.

The Señora.

She didn’t look down. She didn’t even seem to see the world beneath her, only the dark reflection of herself in the glass. Her nightgown clung faintly in the blue light, her hair unbound. She was carrying something small, a folded blanket, maybe, or a child’s toy. She set it on the sill, then just stood there, staring at nothing.

Marco exhaled, quiet. He’d seen her like this before, always alone, always in motion, walking the halls long after the lights were out, never frantic, just… searching.

He thought of Roman Suarez, of men who loved people the way a gardener loves his tools, carefully, conditionally, ready to replace them if they dulled. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to pity the man, only her. He’d never spoken of it to anyone, not even Javier. But each time he saw her wandering, some private ache twisted in him, the kind you got watching an injured bird that didn’t know it was injured.

He thought of the scholarship letters stacked on his desk upstairs, his daughter’s tuition already paid, her uniform already ordered, and the envelope that had come with no sender, only a single note: 

She didn't even signed it, but he knew it was her. He understood the message.

Above, Saoirse turned from the window and disappeared down the corridor. The curtain fell back into place. Marco finished his round, pausing once at the sea gate, where the sound of waves against the cliff almost drowned out the hum of the security system. He stood there a moment longer than necessary, staring at the horizon’s dark water with no ships in sight. The Señor owned the water and airways for miles.

When he turned back, the house was perfect again.

Saoirse never meant to stay awake. She just could never breathe well anymore. Sometimes, the quiet made her feel like the house was holding its breath, waiting for her to move so it could exhale.

With the hand that held the rosary, she picked up the folded blanket at the foot of the chair, Mariana’s, and walked into the corridor barefoot, her robe trailing. The marble was cool against her soles, the scent of sterilized air clinging to the walls. She didn’t turn on the light. The dim safety lamps were enough, blue-white halos every few steps.

Down the hallway, she passed the nursery door. Both twins were asleep. Lisa and Lucia slept on sleeping bags close by, which was new. David and Mari’s small shapes curled into white linen, their breathing amplified like distant surf. She paused, watching the rhythm, inhale, exhale, the only natural sound left in the house.

She moved on. The window at the far end of the convoluted corridor glowed faintly, its glass reflecting her like a ghost. Beyond it, the courtyard lights shimmered against the lemon trees. She could make out one of the guards, a dark silhouette moving along the perimeter path. Marco. He was always there, a steadying constant.

For a moment, she envied him, the certainty of duty, the luxury of a task that could be completed.

Her reflection wavered in the glass. She looked thinner lately. Her hair was longer and too soft at the ends. The lace nightgown slipped from one shoulder. She pulled it back absently and wondered if Roman would have noticed. He always said he liked her hair up, her clothes simple. He would murmur his preferences while touching the hollow of her throat like a seal of approval.

He was still gone. Milan, maybe, or Zurich. She never really knew, did she? Over their brief call this morning, he’d mentioned both cities, but which was it? Or was it both? She leaned her forehead against the glass. The cold spread through her skin. Down below, she thought she saw the guard pause, maybe he’d looked up, maybe he hadn’t, and then move on.

She lifted the folded blanket to the sill, the rosary still in hand, and smoothed it as if it were a sleeping child. Her hands looked translucent in the lamplight. The blanket smelled faintly of milk and the rosewater lotion the nannies used on the twins. It was such a small, clean scent, the kind that made her ache.

She closed her eyes. For a moment, she imagined the sound of Roman’s voice, low, sure, saying her name the way he used to when the world still felt soft around it. Saoirse. That slow, deliberate way, as if the syllables themselves were something he’d built and owned.

Her chest tightened, a tear rolled down one eye.

When she opened her eyes again, she wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there. The courtyard light had shifted, and the guard was gone.

She turned back down the corridor, past the nursery again. Mariana whimpered softly in her sleep, so Saoirse entered and brushed her hair from her face. She lifted her daughter. The infant’s head rested against her chest, warm and impossibly small.

“It’s all right,” she whispered, pacing. “You’re all right.” Mariana sighed. Saoirse kept walking, her bare feet soundless on the carpet.

Through the open door, the scent reached her, roses, faint but unmistakable. She looked toward the hall table and saw them, a new vase, fresh from delivery earlier in the night, white again, sunlight trapped in glass.

For a moment, she only stared. Then she reached out, brushing one petal with her fingertip, the gold of the rosary’s crucifix clinking against the glass of the large vase. The petal’s softness startled her. Her grandmother’s voice rose in her mind, haunting her, quiet as breath. They thrive on neglect. She couldn’t get it out of her head.

Saoirse smiled faintly, not sure why. She pressed her finger to her lips, then to the baby’s head, as if sealing a secret neither of them could name. She kept walking again, farther than she meant to, past the main living area, past the guest wings, to the eastern wing she rarely entered. Only the rhythm of the baby’s sighs kept her tethered to the moment.

She had just begun to hum an old melody without words as she paced, Mariana cradled to her chest, when she heard the faint padding of soft shoes on marble. The corridor lights were faint blue rings, halos every few steps.

Lisa’s voice followed. “Señora,” she called, barely above a whisper, too gentle to be casual, “You’re awake again?”

Saoirse turned slowly. Lisa stood a few steps away, wrapped in her gray uniform cardigan, hair pinned in the severe way she preferred at night, her expression composed but unmistakably tight. Behind her, one of the auxiliary nannies lingered at the corridor’s bend, pretending to adjust a sconce. There were always two of them, always nearby these days.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Saoirse said. Even as she spoke the words, she saw Bibiana's look of disappointment in her mind's eye. Her tone was even, but she could see Lisa’s eyes move to the bundle in her arms. Mariana stirred, sighing against her chest.

“I know,” Lisa said, stepping closer. Her smile was tender and strained. “She’s restless tonight, yes? I heard her on the monitor and came to check. She sounded unsettled.”

“You heard her?” Saoirse asked, looking down at her daughter. The baby had gone utterly still, as if the world outside the heartbeat she rested on no longer existed.

Lisa nodded. “Just a small sound, como un pajarito.” Mariana only whimpered once, but it gave her permission to approach. She reached out and touched the edge of her blanket. “Maybe she is hungry again.” Her gaze flicked, just briefly, toward the long stretch of corridor behind them, but that silent assessment was impossible to miss.

Saoirse suddenly realized how far she’d walked. How far from the nursery. How far from anyone else.

“She wanted air,” Saoirse whispered finally, tightening her hold. “The rooms feel… suffocating at night. They are too clean. You can’t breathe in them.”

Lisa nodded, but her throat worked. “Of course.” She made another slow step forward. “But the monitors didn’t catch movement until you were almost at the east wing.”

Saoirse frowned slightly. “I didn’t notice.”

“I know,” Lisa said gently. “That’s why I came.”

And there it was, the fear she tried to hide. Not fear of Saoirse, but fear for the baby. Fear of what insomnia mixed with sorrow could do. Fear of the story they would all have to tell if something happened to the babies on their watch.

“I wasn’t going anywhere,” Saoirse said, a little too fast.

“No, of course,” Lisa soothed, even though her eyes betrayed relief. She hesitated. The air between them was fragile, like a thread stretched to its last strand. Then she said, “It’s very late. Let me take her for a moment while you rest. Just until she settles.” She extended her arms slowly, the gesture deferential, practiced, the way one might approach a saint with an offering.

Saoirse held Mariana tighter, the motion instinctive and small. The rosary at her wrist clinked softly against the baby’s head. “She’s not heavy.”

“No, of course not,” Lisa said quickly. “I only meant…” She stopped. There was no safe way to finish the sentence.

“She’s sleeping.”

“I know,” Lisa whispered. “But babies this young startle easily. And… It’s colder near this end of the house.” A diplomatic way of saying it is not safe for her to be this far from her bed.

Saoirse looked down at Mariana. The baby’s breath warmed her collarbone. She hadn’t even realized she’d wandered so far. Lisa’s careful, reverent posture made the truth sting even more. They didn’t trust her with her own child in the dark.

The silence filled with the hum of the vents, the sigh of the night system breathing for them. Somewhere far off, a clock clicked into the next hour.

Then, almost imperceptibly, Saoirse’s shoulders lowered. “All right,” she said. “Just for a moment.”

Lisa stepped forward. The exchange was careful, reverent, as if handling sacred glass. When Mariana’s weight passed from mother to nanny, the air seemed to tilt, Lisa’s shoulders loosened, a micro-release Saoirse saw despite Lisa’s restraint. Saoirse’s hands hovered a second longer than necessary, brushing the baby’s hair once, twice, as if memorizing its temperature.

The auxiliary nanny observed from her corner, silent, eyes lowered.

Lisa rocked the baby lightly. “She settled quickly tonight,” she murmured, soothing both infant and mother. But Saoirse heard what she really meant: Thank God nothing happened.

Saoirse touched the blanket one last time. “She sleeps easier with me.”

“Yes, sí,” Lisa said immediately. “Of course.” Her voice trembled just once.

Lisa turned to go, murmuring something about feeding schedules. Halfway down the corridor, she glanced back. Saoirse was still standing there in the blue-white light, bare feet against marble, one hand holding the rosary, the other touching the space where her daughter had been.

When Lisa disappeared down the hallway, the auxiliary nanny emerged, her slippers soundless. She met Saoirse’s eyes briefly, bowed her head, and whispered, “Buenas noches, Señora.”

Saoirse didn’t answer. She wanted to follow, to watch them return her daughter gently into her crib, but she couldn’t move.

When she finally returned to warmer parts of the villa, she noticed the faint outline of a crucifix reflected in one window of the main hall. Someone had hung another one over the nursery door. It glimmered faintly in the hall light, as if guarding something fragile or cursed. They rearranged shifts. They listened for footsteps at odd hours. They whispered about la señora irlandesa or la dama del mármol who wandered marble halls barefoot at 3 a.m. with a baby in her arms and a rosary in her fist.

She stood a while longer, watching the soft glow of the nursery monitor, until her eyes blurred.

+

It was nearly dawn when they gathered in the service kitchen, the hour when night-shift blurred into morning-shift. The fluorescent light hummed. Coffee steamed in mismatched mugs. Their voices hovered at the level of breath, careful because the house always listened.

Lisa rubbed her hands over her arms, warming the goosebumps that hadn’t left since she found Saoirse in the eastern hall.

“She didn’t even hear me call her at first,” she whispered. “She just kept… walking like she wasn’t touching the floor.”

Lucia crossed herself quickly. “I told you. La señora is like a spirit now.”

One of the junior maids who was barely twenty-two and fresh out of Valencia leaned in, eyes wide. “People say the Irish have thin veils,” she murmured. “Between them and the… other side.”

Lucia shook her head sharply. “Don’t be silly, niña. She’s just lonely.” But her voice wavered, betraying the doubt.

The night butler dried a glass with the care of someone who used ritual to steady himself. “It’s the house...” he gestured vaguely upward, to the gilded ceilings and echoing corridors. “...it swallows sound. If you walk long enough around it, especially alone…” He trailed off.

“You start to disappear into the walls,” one of the other maids supplied.

Lucia groaned. “Ay Dios mío.”

Lisa spoke again, voice low and hoarse. “She walked past the east wing with the baby.”

Every head lifted.

“That far?”

Lisa nodded, shame and fear mingling on her face. “I don’t think she realized. She looked… startled when I mentioned it.”

They all fell silent in a way that carried meaning.

Someone whispered, “Do you think she would ever—?”

“No,” Lisa snapped, more sharply than intended. “No. She loves them. She does. I see it.” But she lowered her eyes, the truth pressing on her ribs.

Lucia poured water into the kettle. “Grief can turn strange, Lisa. My aunt, after the miscarriage, she started sleepwalking. Once, she walked into the garden in the rain and didn’t even wake.”

“This is different,” Lisa whispered.

Marta, who sat at one corner of the large kitchen island silently reviewing household paperwork, always hesitant to talk about their employers, chipped in for the first time that night, “Since the twins arrived.” Her voice grew soft. “…and since Señor been going on these longer trips, she drifts.”

Lucia made the sign of the cross again. She did it more often lately. “She moves as if she’s listening for something.” She shuddered. “The walls feel colder when she’s walking.”

“No more of that,” Lisa hissed, though she didn't entirely disagree.

For a long moment, none of them spoke. The maids left the room with Marta to begin the day’s cleaning, though nothing in the untouched house particularly needed it.

When the doors closed behind them, the butler said to the nannies and gardeners, “If you see a woman wandering marble halls at three in the morning, barefoot, whispering to rosaries and shadows, in old stories, she’s a ghost.”

Lisa swallowed hard. “No. She’s alive, and she needs help.”

“Help from who?” Lucia asked. “Señor is never here.”

A gardener looked toward the ceiling, toward the winding halls above. His voice dropped to a reverent hush, “La dama del mármol.” The lady of the marble.

The others shivered because the name fit too well, too beautifully, the quiet figure who wandered Roman Suarez’s golden halls like someone caught between being cherished and being forgotten.