The Suarez Myth: Chapter 7

The house was different. 

The hum of quiet had changed tone. She woke to the sound of laughter and soft footsteps that were not the usual maid or nurse. Voices drifted from downstairs. One was his. 

Roman was home. For a second, she thought she was dreaming because the sound was too easy, too human. Then Marta knocked softly and peeked in. “He’s downstairs, Señora.”

Saoirse sat up slowly, heart unsteady. The bed beside her was smooth, untouched, but through the half-open door she could hear him, Roman, speaking low, amused, the kind of voice he used in public when he wanted people to feel at ease.

By the time she came down, the dining room doors were open, and the morning light spilled in gold, turning the kitchen into glass. Roman stood at the long marble counter, sleeves rolled to his elbows, the twins’ bottles already warming in a bowl of water. He looked completely at home in the order he’d built, a God returned to his heaven.

“Good morning,” he said, smiling as if they’d seen each other just yesterday. His voice was light, even tender. “I couldn’t sleep in Milan, so I flew back early.”

Saoirse crossed to him, still barefoot, still half-dazed, too happy to see him to even speak.

“I wanted to surprise you,” he continued, leaned in, and kissed her cheek. His skin smelled faintly of cedar and the long night of airports, closed-door meetings, disinfected air.

The twins stirred in their bassinets on the floor nearby, cooing softly. Roman knelt beside them, adjusting one’s blanket with surprising tenderness. “They’re growing fast,” he said, as if noticing for the first time. “Mariana’s going to have my eyes, I think.”

Saoirse stood there, still not trusting herself to speak. He looked up at her once, the faintest question in his expression.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

“Yes,” she lied. “You?”

“Not yet. Sit with me.”

Over breakfast, he asked gentle, ordinary things. Had she been resting? Did the staff make things easier? Did she go out much?

“Not really,” she said. “Only once or twice. I went into the city last week for a few hours.”

He didn’t look surprised. He didn’t even pause, just buttered his toast, poured more coffee. “I know. Emilio mentioned it.”

Saoirse froze. “Oh.”

Roman smiled, kind, patient, unreadable. “You don’t need to ask permission, you know that. I just like knowing where you are.” He’s said it so many times, the way someone might say ‘I love you’. Then he reached across the table and brushed a crumb from her wrist. The gesture was soft enough to feel like affection, deliberate enough to feel like ownership. 

As if like a flash, she remembered Nina’s questions, the thought of ‘someone else’. She opened her mouth and thought she’d ask him, but in the end, she couldn’t bring herself to. She couldn’t even imagine it.

They ate mostly in silence after that, the quiet clink of silverware, the twins’ gentle murmurs from the corner, the staff hovering. Roman spoke once more, halfway through his coffee. “I think we’ll move back to Madrid next month,” he said. “Darn all the nonsense about tradition. The security and order there will be better for the children.”

Saoirse nodded automatically. “Of course.”

He smiled again, like he was grateful for her agreement. “Good.”

When he left the table to speak with Javier and Marco, she stayed where she was, fingers resting lightly on the cup he’d used. It was still warm.

She got up and stood by the bassinets. David slept with his lips parted. Mariana’s fingers twitched. Saoirse brushed their hair back, light as air. The bracelet glinted on her wrist. The ring glinted on her finger. She turned toward the window.

From there, she could see the gardeners offloading another delivery, boxes of white, pink, and yellow roses stacked neatly on the terrace. The scent was already drifting in through the half-open door, faint and relentless. She didn’t move to close it.

Roman’s voice on a call echoed faintly from the next room, calmly and assuredly issuing instructions to someone miles away. Saoirse looked at the flowers again, their perfect heads nodding slightly in the breeze. Peace looked beautiful on her, and she was beginning, almost imperceptibly, to believe him.

That night, dinner was already half over when Saoirse realized she hadn’t said ten words.

Roman was talking, something about Zurich, about a fund he’d absorbed and the strange courtesy of men who smiled while surrendering. He spoke with that calm precision that made everything sound inevitable.

She nodded when he looked at her, smiled when he paused. The wine was white and cold, his glass always half-full, hers barely touched.

When he said, “I’ll probably need to leave again next week,” she almost spoke. Almost said, You just got back. Almost said, I miss you too much when you’re gone. Almost said, Don’t go.

She waited for a space, but his words moved seamlessly, like waves closing over themselves. When the silence finally came, it was a wall, and Saoirse’s throat ached with unsaid things, but she reached for her glass instead. 

“The babies have started smiling,” she offered softly. “David laughed when Lisa tickled him yesterday.”

Roman looked up, smiling the way one does at a charming headline. “He’s strong. He’ll do well.” He didn’t ask for details. He never did.

The silence returned, this time shaped by the clink of his fork against porcelain. Saoirse felt the old reflex, the tightening behind her ribs, the instinct to fill the quiet, and fought it down. She had learned that his peace depended on her restraint.

When he finished, he dabbed his mouth, placed the napkin beside his plate, and said, “You’re quieter these days.”

The words startled her. She set the glass down carefully. “Am I?”

He nodded, smiling slightly. “I’m not complaining. It means you’re content.”

Content. She smiled back the way someone might at a doctor who’d just said the wound’s healing nicely.

He reached across the table, brushed a loose strand of hair from her temple, his fingertips cool. “You make the house feel calm,” he said. “That’s all I ever wanted.”

He smiled and stood and left after commending their chef. She stayed at the table again, staring at their plates, his half-empty, hers barely touched, and thought about how quiet love could become before it stopped sounding like love at all.

The air system sighed on, steady as breath.

That night in bed, he told her as if it were a trivial thing. “We’re going to the match tomorrow,” he said, glancing at his nightstand before placing his phone on it.

“The match?” she asked, confused.

“Against Girona,” he said. “It’s a home fixture, and it’s the last of the quarter. It’s the furthest they’ve gone in years. We should be there.”

We. She didn’t know what he was talking about, but she also hadn’t heard him say ‘we’ in weeks, maybe months.

He turned to her now. “You’ll come with me.”

She blinked, unsure if she’d misheard. “You mean… out?”

His smile was soft, indulgent. “Yes, out. You need air. And people should see you.”

The way he said it made her throat tighten. It sounded like a compliment, but also an order. He didn’t ask if she wanted to go. He never did. But she said, “Of course,” anyway, because it felt like sunlight cracking the shutters.

He leaned over to kiss her cheek and said, “Sleep,” as she inhaled his clean, lightly misted skin from his long evening shower.

In the morning, their bedroom smelled of pressed linen and perfumes Roman had commissioned for her over the course of their marriage, all soft mish-mashes of the rarest of floral scents. Marta and two stylists moved around her quietly, opening garment racks Javier had sent up before she woke to find Roman gone. Everything in neutral tones like camel, ivory, navy. He let her choose from an array, but he selected the array.

“Not too formal,” one stylist murmured as Saoirse touched one dress. “Señor prefers simple.”

Roman appeared briefly as they dressed her, gray t-shirt perfectly pressed, his voice low and unhurried. “Keep her hair down,” he said, touching a strand without looking at her. He was gone before she could answer.

When she saw herself in the mirror, she tried to embody the woman there, in cream cashmere, pearl studs, her face pale but composed. She looked perfectly fine, perfectly nothing.

They flew in one of the smaller jets, just the two of them and Javier. Roman sat with his laptop open, his screen split between a stock graph and encrypted messages from the club’s CEO.

He barely looked up. “You’ll like this one,” he said absently. “We own most of the stadium’s west complex. My father invested when they were broke. People forget we kept it alive.”

She nodded. “Which club is it again?”

He smiled faintly. “Deportivo Aragón. It’s not fashionable enough to be Barcelona FC, but also not local enough to be sentimental. That’s why I like it.”

She looked out the window, watching the coastline blur below. For the first time in months, she felt movement, actual, physical movement, something the walls in Barcelona never allowed.

When he reached across the aisle to adjust her blanket, his touch was brief, practiced. “Try not to look so nervous,” he said. “They’ll think I’ve been hiding you.”

She smiled. “Haven’t you?”

He looked at her then, properly, and said, almost tenderly, “Just preserving something precious.”

The car wound through the old streets of Zaragoza, police escorts keeping distance on either side. The stadium lights shimmered ahead like a crown. Saoirse could see the press barricades already waiting.

Inside the car, Roman’s phone buzzed. “Bibiana’s husband’s already there,” he murmured as he read the screen. “He wants to be seen shaking my hand.”

“Do you want to?”

He gave a small laugh. “Want has nothing to do with it.”

He took her hand loosely, as though guiding a child across a road. “They’ll ask for photos. Smile, but not too much. And if anyone asks how the twins are, say ‘perfect.’ Don’t elaborate.”

She nodded. “All right.”

He leaned back, studying her face. “You’ll do fine. You always do.”

The flashbulbs started the moment they stepped out of the car. Roman’s name surged through the crowd like a wave. “Suarez! Señor Suarez!”

He didn’t flinch, didn’t pause, but the cameras adored him, his measured stride, the clean angles of his face, that aura of impenetrable calm. He raised a hand briefly, smiled just enough, then placed a guiding hand on Saoirse’s back.

She moved beside him, quiet and composed, the embodiment of his myth, the elusive Mrs. Suarez. The photographers murmured her name uncertainly, trying to recall it. One whispered, “Irish, isn’t she?” Another, “You’d think she was porcelain.”

She heard none of it clearly. The noise was too big. The chanting, the stadium lights, the smell of grass and sweat and fireworks. It all felt like weather.

They entered through a private gate, up the marble stairs to the family box. Security closed the door behind them, and the noise dimmed. The game had just started. From up here, the pitch looked unreal, like a moving painting, the players running patterns in miniature. Roman stood at the glass, hands in his pockets, the owner watching his creation. His brother-in-law stood beside him, older yet somehow lesser.

People came in and out, executives, politicians, a few familiar faces. Roman spoke to them easily, his tone measured, charming even. Saoirse sat behind him, smiling when introduced, nodding when appropriate. Her gaze followed Roman’s reflection in the glass, the tilt of his head, the control in his stance.

She tried to still her hands as the crowd’s incessant roars vibrated through the glass, too big for her chest. For months, she’d lived inside the soft hush of the villa with nursery lullabies, monitors beeping, the small sighs of babies half-asleep. Out here, the noise felt alive, almost cruel.

She told herself to breathe normally, to smile when people entered the box, to look like she belonged in this light. But her throat tightened each time the crowd surged. She wondered if the twins were awake, if Mariana was crying the way she sometimes did at dusk, that cry that sounded like a song breaking.

Halfway through the first half, he turned to her. “You all right?”

“Yes.”

“You’re quiet.”

She smiled faintly. “You like me quiet.”

He leaned closer, his voice soft enough for only her to hear. “Don’t confuse liking with need.” He tilted his head, amused. “I like you composed.” His tone this time carried that familiar undertow of affection phrased as instruction.

She nodded, hands folding in her lap. She wanted to lean toward him, to whisper something ordinary, something human, but as if the moment hadn’t happened, he looked back toward the field and applauded a goal. She glanced flittingly at Esteban, Bibiana’s husband, before facing the pitch.

Javier informed him that the CEO was here just moments before the suited middle-aged man walked in, nervous and deferential. He murmured his greetings in Spanish, bowed slightly, and asked Roman something presumably about the club or the match.

Roman didn’t look at him as he responded, but the man nodded as though he were taking dictation from a deity. Roman’s phone buzzed. He answered it without stepping away, listened for a moment without saying a word, then ended the call. He turned to Esteban, telling him something (again, in Spanish) about financiers and the Easter mass, or something. Saoirse looked down at her hands in her lap. 

His voice stayed calm, even when the stadium erupted with another chant of ‘Suarez!’ He was half in this world, half elsewhere, always composed, always orbiting himself.

By the end of the match, Deportivo Aragón had won. The box erupted in polite applause. Flashbulbs went off outside the glass, Roman and Saoirse silhouetted in the strobe.

She turned slightly to him. “They’re happy.”

“They’ll forget by Monday,” he said. “It’s business.”

As Saoirse stared at both the players celebrating and those mourning their defeat, the coach appeared at the door, flushed from the pitch, all sweat and charm. Roman’s smile was surgical as they spoke, as the coach laughed a little too loudly, as his eyes flicked briefly toward Saoirse, just long enough to betray curiosity. 

“Señora Suarez, it’s a privilege,” he said, stretching his hand out to her.

Before Saoirse could reply, Roman’s hand rested on the back of her chair, his posture casual, but the coach shifted back and smiled at Roman again. Saoirse looked down, cheeks warm. The room went silent except for the hum of the crowd outside.

When they stepped outside, the cameras flared again. Someone shouted her name, “Señora Suarez! Look this way!”

Roman’s hand pressed lightly against her back. His smile was perfect.

In the jet, she watched him read through emails again, unbothered by the hour.

He closed the laptop only once and looked at her wrist. “You wore the bracelet,” he said, referring to the diamond and sapphire heirloom.

“You asked me to.”

He smiled, and she smiled. 

“It suits you,” he said.

“You said it would,” she replied, her voice quiet but warm, grateful to be spoken to at all.

Outside the window, the lights stretched like gold threads over black water. Spain glittered beneath them, a mosaic of cities and rivers glowing in the dark. She tried to memorize it, but could only imagine the twins asleep in their cribs. She thought of how Mariana had smiled that morning, of David’s hand clinging to her hair. 

When they landed back in Barcelona, she whispered, “Thank you for taking me.”

He kissed her forehead, the soft, controlled kind of kiss that never smudged anything. “Of course,” he said. “It was good for people to see you.”

She lingered, hoping he would turn his face toward hers, to close the distance. When he didn’t, she whispered, “I missed you.”

He smiled faintly, already stepping ahead of her toward the waiting car. “Then you enjoyed yourself.”

She followed, the night air cool against her skin, the noise of the match still faint in her ears. In the car window’s reflection, her face looked ghostly beside his.

As they drove through the gates, she glanced down at her wrist, the bracelet’s sapphires catching the passing lights like tiny eyes. It felt heavier now. She turned her hand over once, twice, testing whether it could just slip off. It didn’t.

By the time Saoirse woke up to yet another morning that made the previous night feel imagined, the bed beside her was empty. She could tell from the absence of scent that he’d left it hours ago. Roman never left traces. Outside the windows, the Barcelona light had shifted to that pale blue that made marble gleam and people disappear.

She rose, showered, and dressed slowly, the faint ache of travel exhaustion still clinging to her skin. The Suarez bracelet lay on the bedside table, still closed around the same idea of belonging. She fastened it again before she could talk herself out of it.

In the nursery, the twins were awake. The room smelled of milk and powder and soft, humming order. Lisa, Lucia, and the two nurses moved quietly between the cots, their efficiency almost reverent.

“Good morning, Señora,” Lisa murmured, stepping aside.

Saoirse knelt beside Mariana’s crib first. The little girl’s eyes followed the light, her mouth forming small, wet circles of sound. Saoirse smiled faintly, tracing the baby’s cheek with her finger. “You’re growing too fast,” she whispered.

David was fussier, his cries brief but sharp. She lifted him, feeling his warmth against her chest. His tiny hand caught the chain around her neck. She didn’t realize she was crying until one of the nurses offered a handkerchief.

“Just tired,” Saoirse said softly. She liked these moments, the milk-warm smell of their skin, the tiny fingers curling against her. But even this tenderness felt borrowed, as though she were tending something Roman had loaned her.

When the babies drifted back to sleep, she stood for a while, watching them, the way their chests rose and fell in sync. It always calmed her. It also reminded her of how easily she could disappear into this life, how the house could absorb her completely, like water poured into marble.

She wandered to the terrace. Barcelona spread below, glass roofs, distant bells, a wind carrying salt. It could have been any morning of any year.

She heard him before she saw him, Roman’s voice carrying down the corridor as afternoon came, calm, decisive, issuing quiet orders to Javier. “No, not this quarter. Tell Zurich to wait.” Then, softer, “And inform Bibiana I’ll see her later today. She wants to bring Esteban.”

He entered the terrace a moment later and told her, “I have calls. They’ll visit at four.”

“Bibiana?” Bibiana and Esteban de Rojas never came unless Roman was in town.

He nodded and pulled off his jumper. “Try not to overthink the match,” he said, almost kindly. “You were perfect. The press loved you.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s what they liked.” His eyes flicked briefly toward the hallway. “Keep them near the terrace when they wake. Light’s good for them.”

She hesitated. “Would you like lunch first?”

“I’ve eaten.” He leaned in, brushed her cheek with his thumb, a gesture soft enough to disguise instruction. “You did well yesterday. Just stay like that.”

When he left, the room seemed to exhale. Saoirse stood there, half-smiling, half-frozen. Stay like that. It sounded like praise or a leash.

His presence snapped everyone into frozen alertness once more. The staff, Lisa, Marta, all unseen. But by late afternoon, the house had changed temperature again. Marta supervised the florists, the silver trays, the re-pressed napkins. Roman went up to change his shirt, then glanced at her when they met in the big drawing room, a small, assessing look that passed for affection. 

Bibiana arrived precisely at four, her husband in tow, tall, silver-haired, wearing that faint air of hereditary entitlement, easy confidence and faintly patronizing warmth. When the door opened, the air shifted. Roman greeted them first, effortlessly polite. “Sister.” He kissed both cheeks. Saoirse stood beside him, a porcelain accessory in pale silk.

Bibiana’s voice was smooth but edged with curiosity. “We thought you'd linger in Milan through the utilities supply chain exchange.”

“Change of plans.”

Saoirse stepped forward finally. “It’s lovely to see you.”

Bibiana smiled thinly, almost kindly. “And you. You look... well. Motherhood suits you.”

Saoirse murmured a thank-you, unsure where to rest her eyes.

Esteban launched into conversation immediately, fund structures, club performance, some new tax revision in Madrid. Roman listened with that serene focus that made everyone else overcompensate. He didn’t sit until they did.

They talked for nearly an hour about La Fundación Suarez’s next gala, Easter mass (again) at Santa María la Real, the royals who might attend, the Goyas’ new art wing, the Duquesa de Alba’s grandchildren, someone’s renovation in Milan. The names blurred together for Saoirse, an endless litany of people she’d never met but was expected to understand.

Once or twice she opened her mouth to speak, but Roman’s thumb brushed lightly against her wrist, a quiet tethering, part reassurance, part warning. His hand stayed there, fingers slow, deliberate.

Bibiana turned to her once, eyes cool but not unkind. “You must be proud, Señora Suarez. Roman has transformed everything your father-in-law built.”

Saoirse answered softly, “He’s extraordinary.” Roman’s thumb moved once, tracing a small circle on her skin. 

When Bibiana mentioned Marcela’s children and asked after the twins, his tone softened. “They’re thriving,” he said, expression unreadable. “You may see them after tea.” He didn’t really like anyone touching them, not even family.

Bibiana raised a brow. “We wouldn’t dream of disturbing them if they’re resting.”

“They’re well-trained,” Roman said lightly. “They don’t disturb easily.”

The remark was half-joke, but something in Saoirse’s stomach twisted.

Bibiana turned to her and again said, “You must be proud. Two already.”

Saoirse smiled. Bibiana had said the exact words to her before. Two already. “They’re perfect,” she said, the phrase Roman had trained into her.

“And how do you find life here all the time? I imagine it’s... quieter than Madrid or London, but not quite as dull as Como.”

“It’s peaceful,” Saoirse replied. It was Bibiana who always reminded her the importance of raising Suarez heirs in Barcelona through their early years.

Roman’s fingers tightened around her wrist, barely, but enough for her to feel it. “She prefers it that way,” he said. “She’s not like us.”

The room laughed politely.

Bibiana studied her brother, then, something sharp in her gaze, “You’re protective as ever.”

He smiled back. “Family requires it.”

When tea was served, the conversation turned to donors, property acquisitions, Vatican circles, topics so far removed from Saoirse even after almost three years of marriage into this world that the words slid over her like static. She sat still, composed, her pulse steady beneath his touch.

Once, when Esteban addressed her directly, “You should go to Geneva in the spring, Señora, see Marcela’s new gardens,” Roman answered for her, “She’s not traveling much just yet.”

“I’d like to,” Saoirse said quietly.

Roman’s hand moved again, his thumb tracing the back of hers in that maddening, tender rhythm. “Perhaps when the children are older.”

She smiled for the room, but her voice caught on the edge of something unsaid. Bibiana noticed, though she said nothing. Her eyes lingered briefly on Saoirse’s face, then on Roman’s hand, still holding hers.

Soon, the visit ended and night-light painted everything in the same muted gold as the chandeliers downstairs, as if the house itself refused darkness. The silence stretched out again.

Her bracelet—his mother’s, his grandmother’s—caught the glow each time she shifted her hand. She traced the cool stones absently, thinking how they always looked alive under light but felt dead against skin. She rubbed the inside of her wrist where his fingers had been, that phantom pulse that felt almost like love echoing still.

She tried to remember what she’d said at dinner, what she hadn’t. You did well. Stay like that. The words replayed like a lullaby with teeth.

The window was half open. Outside, the gardens breathed with invisible life, the sound of waves below the cliff, a single night bird, the low hum of security lights sweeping the path. Somewhere in another wing, a clock chimed nine.

She thought of the match again, the crowd roaring, the lights, the press flashing like gunfire, and then of his hand on her chair, the way the coach had fallen quiet mid-greeting. Everyone had understood it immediately. Everyone except her. She looked down at her hands. They didn’t tremble. The control had already seeped back in, slow as morphine. This house, his world, had its own way of teaching stillness.

For a moment, she imagined Roman watching from the doorway, approving quietly of this serenity, this composure. Peace looks beautiful on you.

Roman wouldn’t come to bed until well after midnight, so she sat in the rocking chair they kept in the drawing room and let the motion lull her. The bracelet glinted, the roses from yesterday stood in a vase by the window, already beginning to droop. Outside, the sea kept moving. Inside, the house slept for her.

The chair’s rhythm steadied her until the edges of the room began to soften. The hum of the monitor, the whisper of the sea, all of it folded into something almost tender. She leaned her head back, the bracelet cold against her wrist, the babies’ breathing syncing with her own.

Her eyelids slipped closed for once.

At first, it was only colour, green after rain, grey stone, the pale wash of northern light. Then, she was there again, in her grandmother’s small garden behind the Newcastle house, the narrow plot that always smelled of earth and rusted metal. She was crouched in the dirt, brushing soil from her palms. The roses were scraggly, stubborn, their petals bitten by frost. She could hear the sound of the old woman’s breathing from the kitchen window, rough and shallow.

Saoirse turned toward her, but she wasn’t there anymore, only the sound of waves against rock, the scent of lilies choking the air.

The garden tilted. The roses bent toward her like witnesses. One of them whispered, Stay like that.

She woke up with a start. The house was utterly still, lit by the low blue of dawn filtering through the terrace doors. Her neck ached from the chair, and for a second, she forgot where she was.

Then the sound of the automated shutters began to rise, their mechanical hum swallowing the quiet. The villa was waking itself, calibrating its light and temperature for the day, indifferent to the woman sitting alone in the drawing room.

She rose, and when she turned toward the door, the mirror beside it caught her reflection, barefoot, silk creased, hair loose. For a fleeting moment, she saw her grandmother’s face over her own, thin and pale and patient.

She blinked, and it was gone.

The house was awake now, and so was she. But something about her sleep lingered, the way the roses had leaned toward her, the way their thorns had glinted in the dreamlight. She touched her wrist where the bracelet rested and whispered, almost to herself, “Still thriving.”

Then she opened the double doors to the hum of footsteps, the scent of coffee, and the quiet precision of another perfect morning.

The day unfolded like a performance of calm, soft and mercilessly blue. Breakfast was served out on the terrace. It was the odd pastry, fruit, coffee, sunlight precisely balanced across the tablecloth. The light filled every corner of the terrace, gentle and absolute, the kind that revealed more than it forgave.

The twins had been wheeled out in their prams, both asleep, both perfect. Saoirse sat in her robe with a book open but unread, its spine balanced between her fingers. 

Roman came down later than usual, hair still slightly damp from the shower. It was one of those rare mornings when he lingered. He smelled faintly of cologne and saltwater. He must’ve gone for an early swim again, alone. His jumper sleeves were rolled up, wristwatch gleaming, skin touched by sun. It shouldn’t have made her heart flutter the way it did, not after all these months of distance, but it did.

“You’re up early.” He poured her coffee himself. “And you’re reading again,” he said, glancing at the page without really looking.

“I’m trying to,” she answered, smiling softly. “It feels like I’ve forgotten how.”

“You just need discipline,” he said, tearing a croissant neatly in half. “You always were too gentle with yourself.”

She tilted her head, amused despite herself. “You make it sound like I’m a project.”

His mouth curved faintly. “You are. A successful one.”

She laughed, a small, genuine sound. “Is that what you tell all your mergers?”

“I don’t usually marry them.”

It wasn’t a joke, but she laughed anyway. It felt almost easy, this back-and-forth, the first sliver of warmth in weeks. She looked at him and thought maybe this was the beginning of something soft returning, the smallest pulse of the life they used to have.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, smiling.

“I noticed last night.”

She lowered her eyes. “I’ve gotten used to the sound of the babies breathing. When I don’t hear them, I wake.”

He hummed. “That’s maternal instinct. You’ll grow out of it.” She tried to laugh. “It’s meant to fade.” He smiled faintly and reached for her own croissant, slicing it open with the same neatness he brought to everything. “You’ll start to feel more like yourself soon.”

He offered it to her. She took it but didn’t answer. Myself, she thought, but couldn’t remember who that was anymore.

He glanced at her book again. “What are you reading?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Then choose something else that’s actually worth reading.” He smirked.

“I was thinking of poetry.”

He looked up briefly. “You’re still on that?” His tone was neither unkind nor sensitive. “You used to have a sharp instinct for structure. Don’t lose it to sentiment.” And just like that, he dismissed something that had once been the most important thing to her, that could’ve been her entire career.

Saoirse smiled, quiet, accepting. “I’ll try not to.”

They sat in silence for a while. The twins remained asleep in their prams, one small hand twitching, one pacifier rolling to the floor. She bent to pick it up before Lucia could. The motion drew the robe tighter across her chest, and when she straightened, she felt his eyes flicker toward her then away again, immediately, cleanly.

Her face warmed. She took a sip of coffee, though she could barely swallow it.

“I was thinking,” she said softly, “We could take the babies down to the beach later. Just for air.”

He smiled, indulgent. “There are too many cameras there. Later, maybe.”

She hesitated, then tried again, “Or we could go somewhere else, just us—”

The phone on the table began to vibrate. He didn’t hesitate. “Marcela,” he said, already answering. The shift was instant. His voice was cooler, fluent Spanish filling the air like music she couldn’t translate. It was efficient but touched with fraternal courtesy.

Saoirse’s smile faded as his voice took on that rhythm she knew too well, the one that turned every conversation into a negotiation. She turned her gaze back to her book, though she still didn’t read.

“Of course, I saw the numbers,” Roman was saying in Spanish. “No, no, that’s the old projection… Geneva’s board will follow once Zurich confirms.”

He paused, listening before a quiet laugh, the kind reserved for family. “I’m aware. Bibiana mentioned it. We’ll make the adjustments before Easter.”

Saoirse sipped her coffee slowly, her reflection wavering in the cup. The words blurred together into royal patrons, foundation funding, dinner invitations, but his tone carried that familiar certainty that closed every door she didn’t have the key to.

After a few minutes, he said lightly, “No, I’m not alone. She’s here.” A pause. “She’s well. The babies are well. She’s reading.” Another pause, then softer, “Yes, I’ll tell her you asked.” He hung up, slid the phone aside, and looked at her as if nothing had happened. “Marcela sends her love.”

Saoirse smiled faintly. “That’s kind.”

He nodded once and reached for his coffee again, the conversation already gone from his mind. For a long moment, she just watched him, the sharp planes of his face, the faint shadow at his jaw, the stillness that seemed to exist around him like air pressure. There were times she still wanted to reach out, just touch his hand, pull him back into some kind of warmth. But every time she almost did, she felt the invisible wall between them, that composed, polite, unbreakable wall.

A knock came at the terrace door. Javier entered, unobtrusive as ever, tall, greying, an envelope in his hand. “Forgive me, sir. Geneva confirmed the board dinner for Tuesday. Your flight’s been shifted forward.”

Roman didn’t even look surprised. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Yes, sir.” Javier’s eyes flicked briefly to Saoirse, then back to Roman. “I’ll have Marco coordinate the security detail.”

“Fine.”

Saoirse stared at the table. “Tomorrow?” she asked quietly.

He glanced at her, as if surprised by her surprise. “Just a few days.”

“How many?”

He smiled. “You’ll hardly notice. I’ll have the pilot on standby.”

Her throat tightened. “The twins…”

“They’ll be fine.” His voice softened. “You’ve been doing wonderfully with them.”

She wanted to say we’ve been doing nothing together, but the words felt childish. Instead, she swallowed. “You’ve only just come back.”

He reached over and held her wrist. “And I always come back.” His thumb brushed once, slowly, over her pulse. “You know that.” The gesture made her dizzy, the gentleness of it, the false warmth it carried.

When Javier left, she said quietly, “I thought maybe… we’d have more time this week. I thought you’d stay longer this time.”

“I can’t. Not now.” He looked at her then, something unreadable flickering behind his calm. “You shouldn’t count time by my travel schedule,” he said softly. “You’ll drive yourself mad.” The words were tender, but they landed like a door closing.

He rose, brushed a crumb from his sleeve, and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “Read something good,” he murmured. “Keep your mind occupied.” The warmth of his breath lingered as he left.

Saoirse sat there long after he was gone, the page in front of her still untouched. The sound of the sea returned, soft but endless, and when the wind lifted, a few yellow petals drifted from the vase on the table onto her lap. She looked down at them and smiled faintly.

The twins stirred. She rose and went to them, still smiling through the ache that could never quite leave.

The Suarez Myth: Chapter 6

The water had gone cold long before she stepped out, but she hadn’t noticed. The sound in her head had gone quieter too, the way the world sometimes goes still after a scream. In that silence, she thought of his voice again, always calm, always right, and told herself this might be what safety felt like, like silence that burned and soothed at once.

Again, days became weeks and her body mended, mostly. 

The truth was the twins brought the era of temperature control with their birth. 

Saoirse now stayed in Barcelona almost all the time, and Roman would fly in and out for a couple of days each month. They never talked about it, this new order, never decided together on the ridiculous schedule, but one day, it simply was.

The Barcelona villa moved completely different from how it was when Amancio and Allegra ruled it. Roman’s reign was disinfected and quietly efficient precision. The twins’ monitors chimed every four hours, bottles were sterilized on schedule, the new housekeeper moved like breath itself, omnipresent, unobtrusive. Even the sunlight seemed filtered through invisible hands. The central air stayed fixed at 22 degrees, the number Roman had chosen for optimal infant regulation.

After Amancio’s death, all the houses changed temperature, the security staff tripled, new faces appeared in the rotation, men in dark linen uniforms and earpieces, men who bowed to Roman and kept their eyes lowered. In Madrid, Isabella spoke to her less and less, and the chefs began plating every meal with an almost ceremonial symmetry.

Every sound that wasn’t a baby’s cry seemed to belong to him. Sometimes, Saoirse’d walk the courtyard with Lisa and the babies, watching guards pace the perimeter like metronomes. Roman trusted Marco Alvarez most of all, who’d arrived shortly before the twins’ birth. Javier had informed her he was their head of perimeter systems now.

He was not as deferential as the other guards, the kind of man who had already worked under too many masters to bother performing loyalty. He managed the biometric sensors, the motion grids, the AI-assisted feeds Roman monitored from afar. 

The guards who’d worked here longer treated her like a sainted relic, something never to be approached. Marco spoke to her like a person, and it felt like a small mercy. He lingered to double-check the courtyard locks, to explain the motion sensors with patient precision, to offer the simplest courtesies. Would she like him to move the umbrella closer to the pram, did the noise from the north wall bother her? She said thank you, always thank you, always softly.

The twins were sleeping when the phone rang, her personal one, the one she’d stopped using so often she almost didn’t recognize the sound.

Nina.

She hesitated before answering, glancing once at the nursery monitor, then at the clock. 11:07 a.m. London would be an hour behind. She imagined Nina sitting cross-legged on her sofa, mug in hand, light slanting through a window cluttered with plants, the leaves of the overgrown monstera she’d once named Basil, mind heavy with projects and traffic and appointments. The thought made her chest ache.

“Hi, stranger.”

Saoirse smiled before she could help it. “Hi.”

“You sound half-asleep,” Nina teased. “Or drugged.”

“Neither. Just… quiet morning.”

“Quiet house, you mean.” Nina laughed softly. “God, it still feels weird to imagine you surrounded by people in uniforms. I picture you giving orders in diamonds.”

“Hardly. They all give orders to me.” Saoirse laughed a little. “It’s just very quiet here. The babies are finally down.”

“Quiet sounds like heaven,” Nina said softly. “Mine’s chaos. My flatmate’s cat had kittens, and the whole place smells like milk and sawdust.”

Saoirse laughed again, low and careful. “You make it sound nice.”

“It is. Messy, but nice. You’d hate it. Don’t forget deadlines and neighbours fighting about recycling bins!”

Saoirse smiled. “I almost miss that kind of noise.”

A pause. Then Nina said, half-joking, half-sincere, “You okay?”

Saoirse hesitated. “I think so. The twins are thriving.” She laughed too quickly, as if to prove it didn’t sting.

They talked for a while about nothing, about London rain, Nina’s first solo investigative report, the twins’ new sleep pattern, the new cleaner Nina could barely afford but adored, the army of Suarez staff Saoirse was beginning to fear could stage an insurrection, the way Nina’s editor had accidentally sent her flowers meant for another reporter. Nina described a little café she’d started writing in again. Saoirse kept her answers short, practiced, gentle, but Nina had known her too long to miss the spaces between words.

“So,” Nina said finally, lowering her voice, “How’s… you know, the two of you?”

Saoirse leaned back against the chaise, eyes on the monitor, staring at the two tiny forms breathing in rhythm. “Fine,” she said.

“Fine, how?”

“The usual way.”

“That’s not an answer,” Nina said lightly. “You sound media trained.”

Saoirse smiled faintly, remembering Roman’s comments about her. “You’d make a terrible diplomat.”

“I’m serious. You’ve been married almost three years. Twins, a villa, all that. You’re allowed to brag a little. You sound…” She stopped herself. “You sound lonely.”

“I’m just tired,” Saoirse corrected softly.

The silence stretched. Saoirse could hear Nina exhale, that careful, thinking kind of breath. “You sound different. Maybe not ‘bad’ different, just... far away.”

Saoirse hesitated. “It’s been a long few months.”

“Twins will do that.”

“Twins, and…” Saoirse stopped, not sure what she’d been about to say. “Roman’s been traveling more.”

“Of course he has,” Nina said gently. “He’s running empires. You’re allowed to miss him.”

“I do,” Saoirse said, her voice so quiet it surprised even her. She looked toward the door, her voice dropping even lower. “I miss him in the strangest ways. His smell, his hands, the way he looks at me before touching me. It’s been… months.”

Nina stilled. “Months since…?”

“Since he’s touched me,” Saoirse said simply, without complaint, without drama, as if stating weather. “Before the twins were born, and now, after. I don’t mind. He says rest is important.”

There was a soft hum on the other end, a pause that wasn’t silence, just care. Then Nina said gently, “That must be hard, though. I mean… you still need warmth.”

“I have it,” Saoirse said automatically, her tone calm, almost serene. “He’s kind. He’s just… careful. I think he’s protecting me from… something.”

We’ll wait for you to heal properly, he’d said a month after the twins were born, and she’d appreciated it then.

Nina let out a quiet breath, the kind that meant she was biting back a dozen questions. “You always see the best in people,” she said finally, in a voice that was almost fond. “Despite all you’ve been through. It’s one of the things I love most about you.”

Saoirse smiled faintly. “I don’t know if it’s that, or if I’ve just learned not to ask too much.”

“Still,” Nina said softly, “You deserve to feel wanted, not just safe.”

Saoirse’s throat tightened. “I am safe.”

“I know,” Nina said quickly, backpedaling, her tone soothing again. “Of course you are. I’m just saying… I miss hearing you laugh like you used to. That’s all.” There was silence on the line, the kind that ripples when someone is choosing their words carefully, before Nina continued softly, “Is this normal for him?”

“I don’t know what normal is anymore.”

“Christ.” Nina’s voice softened. “You’re 24, not 54. You can’t live like some widow in pearls. How do you… cope?”

Saoirse blinked, startled by the question. “What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

She laughed again, nervous now. “You’re impossible.”

“And you’re lying.” Nina’s voice had that old warmth, the one that once got her through memories of her grandmother, of Sinead’s flat, of her first heartbreak. “Look, maybe he’s stressed, fine. But… you can’t just stop being a person. He’s not God.”

“Don’t say that,” Saoirse whispered too fast.

Nina sighed. “Sorry. It’s just… sometimes, you talk about him like he’s air and you’re lungs. Doesn’t that scare you?”

Saoirse nodded, still smiling faintly, as if it were nothing. “It’s not strange, really. He’s careful. He worries too much.”

“About what?” Nina asked softly.

“About everything,” Saoirse said. “He thinks if we control the details, nothing can go wrong. I think that’s his way of loving.”

Nina hesitated. “Maybe it is,” she said slowly. “But still… you must miss him.”

“Of course,” Saoirse said quietly. “I miss him all the time.”

The line went still for a heartbeat. Then Nina said, her tone careful and kind, tired of running around in circles with her dearest friend, “You said he travels a lot more. Maybe there’s… someone he leans on out there. I don’t mean it badly. Men get lonely too.” Saoirse didn’t answer. Outside, a gull cried. Then Nina added, softer, almost apologetically, “You ever think maybe there’s someone else?”

The question landed like a stone in water, soundless but deep. Saoirse smiled automatically, even though Nina couldn’t see it. “He’s not like that.”

“Men are all like that,” Nina said, with the weary authority of someone who’d seen enough to mean it. “Especially rich ones who travel and have assistants.”

“He’s not…” Saoirse trailed off, then steadied her tone. “He’s careful. He wouldn’t risk… anything.” She gave a small, nervous laugh. “You think he doesn’t want me?”

“I think he lives a life that doesn’t leave room for witnesses, and maybe that kind of life needs… distractions,” Nina said, voice soft but clear, choosing each word, “I think sometimes withholding is just another way of reminding you who decides.”

“That’s not fair,” Saoirse whispered, more to herself than to Nina.

“Neither is being 24 and already whispering,” Nina replied. She hesitated, then laughed weakly to dissolve the tension. “Well, if you ever get bored of being worshipped, I know at least three decent men who’d die to bring you coffee.”

“I already have someone who brings me coffee.”

“Yeah,” Nina said, dryly. “That’s what worries me.” They laughed, but Saoirse’s laughter came out too light, too polished, before they both fell quiet. “I just hope you’re still in there somewhere. That’s all.”

“I am,” Saoirse whispered. “I think I am.”

They spoke for a few minutes more about Nina’s brother’s engagement, the bookstore down the street that had finally reopened, a bad date she’d barely survived, a bakery she’d found in Camden that sold perfect cherry tarts, the joy of sleeping through an entire night for the first time in weeks. 

Saoirse laughed where she should, responded warmly, but every word left her feeling further from the sound of her own life. She listened to it all like a person pressing her ear to a door, trying to catch the sound of a world she used to belong to, like someone sitting at the edge of a lake, dipping her fingers in the water of another life.

When they hung up, she sat there for a long time, staring at the phone, at the pale reflection of her own face in the dark phone screen, the quiet wrapping back around her like gauze. The call log glowed faintly, Nina — 42 minutes. It had felt like five. 

A soft knock interrupted her thoughts.

Lisa and her assistant stood in the doorway, one holding David in her arms, the other Mariana drowsing against her shoulder. “They’re both awake early, Señora.”

“Bring them here,” Saoirse said, rising quickly, almost grateful for the interruption.

Lisa crossed her private living room, easing David into the bassinet by the window, as Lucia, the other nanny, passed Mariana, whose eyes blinked up at the ceiling light as if startled by its brightness, into Saoirse’s waiting arms. The baby’s weight surprised her. It was heavier now, more certain. Saoirse sat on the chaise, holding her daughter close, inhaling the faint scent of milk, powder and clean linen, her silk robe pooling around them like water, the baby’s warmth seeping through it.

“There now. Always on your own schedule,” she whispered. “See? Mama’s still here.” Mariana blinked up at her, eyes unfocused but intent, as if she knew her mother’s voice already. She made a small cooing sound. Saoirse smiled, brushing a fingertip along her brow and down her cheek. “You have his eyes,” she whispered. “You’ll have his steadiness too, won’t you?”

David made a small hiccuping sound and stirred, his little fist curling near his face. Saoirse leaned over to touch his cheek, light as breath. “He calls you both perfect,” she murmured. “He hasn’t seen you in two weeks, but he says it every time we speak. Perfect.”

Mariana clenched her tiny fist around the gold chain of Saoirse’s dressing gown. The touch startled her as so human and deliberate. Saoirse smiled faintly, swaying her in a slow rhythm. She pressed her lips to Mariana’s temple, inhaled her skin again, then looked toward the window. “But he’s never here to see you.”

Lisa smiled faintly from the doorway. “He asks after them every day, Señora.”

Saoirse nodded. “I know.”

It was true. Roman’s voice on the phone was always gentle, the questions exact. Are they feeding well? Is their sleep regulated? Are they responding to light? Every word sounded like care measured in clinical precision. When he last saw them, two weeks ago, for 17 minutes between flights, he touched each of their heads with his fingertips, the way one might test the temperature of water. “Perfect,” he’d said. And then, he’d kissed Saoirse’s temple and left.

Now, she sat between their small, warm bodies and thought of how strange it was that she could miss a man who was everywhere, in the air, the rules, the walls, and yet, never beside her.

For a while, she just rocked Mariana gently. David squirmed in the bassinet, so she began to hum an old tune her grandmother used to sing, something about roses and wind. It had no words she could remember, just a rhythm that steadied her breath yet trembled in her throat unfinished. The sound filled the room, soft and unsteady, like a ghost relearning language.

Outside, a shadow moved past the courtyard window, the movement caught her eye. Marco, a tall figure in dark linen, his earpiece glinting in the light, digital tab in hand, walking the perimeter with some guards again. He turned once toward the house.

Saoirse’s hum faltered. She met his brief, unreadable glance through the glass.

He passed the window twice, the first time slow, the second faster, before disappearing around the corner. The faint static of his earpiece bled into the silence. Somewhere deeper in the house, a door clicked shut. The moment felt like something closing.

Lisa adjusted the thermostat by instinct, returning it to 22 degrees.

Saoirse looked down at her children, their eyes half-lidded, bodies soft with trust, and felt a strange ache she couldn’t name. Was it love, fear or longing, or all of it braided into something that almost resembled calm?

When they began to fuss, Saoirse kissed Mariana’s head, handed her back to Lucia, and stood to take David out of the bassinet. She rocked him mindlessly, tutting as she crossed to the window. The courtyard was empty again, washed in perfect winter light. The sea beyond it shimmered faintly, sunlight fractured over the water like broken glass.

For a moment, she thought of calling Nina back. Then she didn’t.

She turned around and saw it, a slim glass vase on a side table that hadn’t been there before. Inside, six yellow roses, their petals freshly cut, stems trimmed to equal height. She didn’t bother to ask who put them there just now, but her pulse caught. There was no card this time, no note, just the faint trace of cologne in the air. 

She stared at them for a long moment as David fussed harder in her arms, cooing and reaching toward her face. Yellow, the color of apology, or hope, or warning. She couldn’t decide which. She gently handed David back to Lisa without looking at her. She moved closer, touched one rose petal lightly with her fingertip. It was cool, almost waxen.

A memory surfaced of her grandmother’s voice, soft and raspy with age: They thrive on neglect, you know. Too much love, and they rot.

Saoirse looked at the roses, her reflection caught faintly in the glass, and for a moment couldn’t tell which one of them looked more alive. The house resumed its rhythm, and the roses stood there, Roman’s presence, distilled into silence, fragrant and bright against the white walls, reminding her that even from far away, he never stopped arranging her world.

The house resumed its rhythm and she, once again, belonged to it, and the air held steady at 22 degrees.

+

She tried to write.

The old leather notebook still sat on her desk, the one Roman had bound for her for their first anniversary. She opened it now, half-expecting to find something waiting there, but the pages were blank except for his neat inscription on the flyleaf: 

Who am I? She wondered as she picked up her pen, twirled it once, then set it down again. Lately, when she tried to write, all her thoughts came out sounding like him. Even her metaphors seemed to seek his approval. Even her imagination had been tamed into symmetry. She no longer reached for words the way she once had. Now, they arrived sparse and already filtered, like air through the ducts that kept the house at its perfect temperature, careful to offend no one.

She pushed away from the desk and wandered through the nursery instead.

She strayed past Lisa and Lucia and the nurses, into the babies’ closets filled with tiny cardigans from Paris still tagged, miniature silk booties arranged by color, rows of pale wooden hangers holding cashmere sets in every neutral shade. The week they were born, a nurse had shown her a drawer of monogrammed linen bibs embroidered with the twins’ initials in gold thread ordered by the Suarez estate. The sight had made her laugh then. Now, it only made her tired.

Each item was exquisite, handmade, untouched. There was nothing in the room that had ever known dirt, or struggle, or warmth. She ran her fingers along a row of folded blankets that were gifts from Roman’s business partners, from monarchs and ministers, all catalogued in an Excel sheet she’d never seen.

The wealth of it no longer shocked her. It only blurred the edges of reality, like light passing through glass too thick to see clearly. 

She stepped back out into the main nursery bedroom and spoke briefly with Lisa about vaccination schedules that had already been booked and arranged by Roman’s personal staff. None of it needed her input.

She moved next to the south drawing room and sat at the grand piano, Allegra’s piano, its ivory keys gleaming under the filtered afternoon sun. The staff kept it perfectly tuned and polished though no one ever played. Roman once told her Allegra had imported the instrument from Vienna decades ago, when she still played semi-professionally. Saoirse sat and pressed one key, then another. The sound floated up, echoing softly through the empty rooms, small and pure, and for a moment she closed her eyes.

When she was younger, she used to believe art could save her, that words, music, beauty could redeem anything if she reached far enough inside it. Now, she wasn’t sure what she believed.

She began an old Irish melody, one her grandmother had hummed while going through her old letters from when she was a young wartime typist. Saoirse couldn’t quite remember all the notes, so she improvised where memory failed her. Her fingers hesitated, restarted, faltered again. The sound was too uncertain. She’d never learnt formally, after all.

She paused, her hands still on the keys, staring at her reflection in the piano’s black lacquer. Her face looked calm, obedient. He would like that, she thought. The thought frightened her for the first time.

She stood, moved to the mirror near the window, adjusted the sleeve of her silk robe. In the reflection behind her, the only living things were plants and old paintings and sculptures of those who once lived. She wondered which group she most fit in with. When the air system clicked on, she felt it, that faint sigh that filled the entire house.

She thought of Nina’s words, of Roman with another woman, of the question she hadn’t answered. Don’t you miss being wanted? It rippled through her, then dissolved.

Later, she wandered to the den that had once been Amancio’s domain, the only space in the entire villa with a television. She turned it on for background noise. The afternoon light had gone soft and amber through the curtains. The house was quiet except for the hum of the air system and the nursery monitor she carried around everywhere.

The large flat telly murmured softly, one of those international business channels Roman preferred, all crisp voices and neutral suits. She wasn’t watching what was on, not really. It was just noise, the hum of a world still spinning, until the anchor said his name.

“Roman Suarez, chief executive of Suarez Group, met with senior partners in Milan earlier today to finalize a string of high-value acquisitions in the global banking sector. The 39-year-old investor has become known for his discreet style and record-breaking turnaround projects across Europe.”

The screen showed him for less than a minute, shaking hands, stepping through a glass atrium, cameras flashing like rain. He looked immaculate, composed, the calm center of every frame. He smiled briefly as he greeted someone off-camera, a gesture both genuine and distant. 

The reporter’s voice added, “Mr. Suarez is expected to attend a private EU gala tonight with other international partners before returning to Spain later this week.”

Saoirse leaned forward unconsciously. His posture was easy. His smile came quickly but gracefully. She had forgotten how alive he could look, in a way she hadn’t seen in months, head slightly bent toward another executive, smiling faintly as though the air itself bent toward him. His voice, even through the grainy audio, sounded warm, practiced, sure.

The broadcast cut to footage from a Suarez Foundation gala. Roman, tall in a black tuxedo, his smile that knew exactly how much warmth to ration per handshake. Cameras flashed on. The announcer’s voice described him as “a man of exceptional restraint and precision, the steady hand behind Europe’s quietest empires…” She muted the sound and watched him a moment longer.

He turned slightly toward a group of executives, his hand gesturing mid-sentence. It was such a small movement, yet something inside her twisted. She studied his face, the way he seemed fully present in that world. The man on screen looked untouchable. The man she slept beside was made of distance. There was no distance in him here, no restraint that looked like care. She wondered if he had already called the florist by the time this video was shot, or if the roses had been arranged automatically by someone else’s efficiency.

The footage ended, and the next segment began, something about rising oil futures, but she was still staring at the screen. The bracelet on her wrist caught the fading light, sapphire and diamond flickering like breath, the one that had belonged to his mother and beloved grandmother. She turned it slowly, as if testing its weight, and watched the reflections move across her skin. It was beautiful and heavy.

She’d always thought of their lives as him taking trips and returning home when his business was done. But watching him just now, he’d looked more like he lived another life entirely and only dropped by in this one for momentary visits. The thought made her shake inside.

Saoirse sat back, her hands folded in her lap. She reached for the remote and turned the TV off. The screen went black, leaving only her reflection, pale, composed, a woman inside a perfect frame. For a while, she didn’t move. Then she rose, crossed the quiet room, and walked toward the window overlooking the courtyard. She saw more of the yellow roses, fresh from that morning’s unseen delivery, luminous against the dimming sky. She reached out, brushed one petal with her fingertip. 

Her grandmother’s voice surfaced in that quiet, cracked, inevitable way: They thrive on neglect, you know. Too much love and they rot. She pressed her hand against the window’s glass, cool against her palm, and whispered almost to herself as a kind of admission, “Too much love, and they rot.” 

Outside, the sea murmured beyond the walls, endless and unreachable. She looked at the flowers for a long time, the color bleeding into the air like an old memory, and wondered if she’d already learned how to bloom that way.

+

It was 3:11 a.m.

Marta, the Barcelona housekeeper, kept the villa’s night rhythm by heart, the soft sweep of the vast hallway lights dimming, the hum of the sterilizers in the nursery wing, the whisper of the sea through the east windows, nothing ever broke that pattern… until the Señora began to wander.

At first, Marta thought she was dreaming, a pale figure gliding past the stairwell, barefoot, robe trailing, no light except the blue glow from the baby monitor Saoirse carried like a candle. She moved slowly, like someone searching for something she’d misplaced long ago.

Marta froze behind the kitchen doorway, afraid to startle her. She wasn’t supposed to be awake herself, but she’d wanted a hot cup of tea to ease her cramps. It wasn’t her place to speak unless spoken to, but she couldn’t look away. The Señora paused before the long glass doors that opened toward the sea, one hand pressed to the pane, as if testing whether it was still there.

On the counter, the roses Roman had sent two days earlier had begun to wilt, their heads bowed, their scent heavy and sweet. Marta had meant to discard them before morning, but something in the way Saoirse looked at them made her stop.

The Señora reached for one, just one, and lifted it gently by the stem. A petal fell, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her other hand traced the marble edge of the counter, the faintest sound against stone, the kind of sound Marta associated with loneliness bordering on madness.

Then Saoirse did something stranger, she began to hum very quietly, a tune with no words. It was slow, repetitive, almost childlike. It was also the first human noise Marta had heard in the villa that didn’t sound rehearsed.

She wanted to step forward, to ask if the Señora needed tea too, but fear stopped her, fear of disrupting whatever small private rebellion this was, fear that if the Señor heard, if the guards reported that the Señora was not sleeping at night, there would be questions. So she watched in stillness as Saoirse crossed the kitchen to the piano room, humming all the way.

Through the open doorway, Marta could see her sit down, brush dust from the keys, and press one, just one, note. It rang, pure and trembling. Another petal fell to the floor. Marta stood there a moment longer, clutching her empty mug to her chest, listening to that single sound fade.

Then, with the quiet discipline the house demanded, she turned off the corridor light and pretended she’d seen nothing.

In the morning, she would tell the maids to replace the roses, to reset the thermostat, to bring order back to the room. But as she walked away now, Marta whispered to herself, “Poor girl doesn’t sleep because her life already dreams for her.”

Marco saw it too.

From his post near the eastern gate, he watched the reflection of the sea on the glass walls. Every so often, the cameras would flicker, showing small moving silhouettes inside, maids changing linens, a guard patrolling the back gardens, the Señora walking around dead in the night again, when everyone else had finally retired.

She always walked the same way, slowly, aimlessly, barefoot, as if every tile remembered her weight.

Tonight she paused by the fountain, the one they said Amancio Suarez had imported from Florence. The water was still running, the Señora dipped her fingers into it, tracing circles. He saw her look up toward the nursery window, where a soft light still glowed.

Marco exhaled through his nose. A mother who never sleeps, he thought. And a husband who never stays.

He knew he wasn’t supposed to look for long, but his eyes lingered anyway. The cameras were set at angles that wouldn’t catch his face, and the other guards had drifted toward the rear perimeter. He allowed himself the smallest disobedience of watching her and not her security grid.

She looked… lost, yes, but there was a quiet dignity to the way she held herself, robe pressed against her, hair loose, eyes fixed somewhere only she could see.

He’d seen women like her before, wives of men who owned half of Europe, mothers of heirs who would never know a moment’s hunger. They all had that same look once the house got too quiet, a stillness that came after too much wanting, too much being told that wanting itself was dangerous.

He thought of his daughter, 12 now, with her noisy laughter and mismatched socks.

No one had ever given him anything without expecting something back. No one but this woman. He looked up at her again through the glass. She was touching the petals of a rose laid out in a crystal vase near the stairs. The yellow ones had wilted two days ago. The Señor sent new ones now every three mornings, a ritual the staff obeyed like prayer.

The Señora pressed one petal between her fingers, almost reverent. Even from where he stood, he could see the moment her shoulders fell, the smallest sigh. He wondered if the Señor knew what he’d built here, a fortress so perfect it kept out air itself. And if he did know, whether he thought it was love.

The cameras whirred softly above him, refocusing. Marco straightened his posture, turned his gaze back to the gate. In the glass reflection, he saw Saoirse lift the rose to her face and breathe it in. For a fleeting second, she smiled. Marco swallowed hard. The gesture was so small it hurt.

He murmured a quiet prayer under his breath, the kind his mother used to say when crossing paths with ghosts. “Dios la guarde,” he whispered. May God keep her. 

The motion sensor clicked back on. The fountain lights steadied. By morning, she would vanish again into routine, and the roses would be trimmed before anyone could see how many had fallen.

The Suarez Myth: Chapter 3

Year one.

The Madrid house knew, the rooms knew, and so did the people paid to keep the silence tidy. People like their housekeepers, drivers, executive assistants, nannies, chefs, who had worked with the Suarez family for years and were never invited to speak. They watched everything and formed quiet theories, truths no one else was positioned to see.

They all knew that it looked like a fairytale between the latest Suarez Mr and Mrs, but the walls were too clean, the air too still, the silence too heavy. Her eyes always said, Help me, but don’t speak.

Isabella was the head housekeeper of their Madrid home, the woman who kept the household running while teaching Saoirse how to be the madame of it. 

Isabella thought Roman loved Saoirse like a trophy, a glass one that needed careful, constant polishing.

Isabella saw Saoirse as quiet and very sweet. But, like someone trying not to be caught off guard, she always looked… prepared. Even at breakfast, always in silk, always listening more than speaking.

Roman, she’d known for a decade. He was uncharacteristically gentle with Saoirse, yes, but it was… rehearsed. 

Once, Isabella went into their rooms to check the linens and found a used lipstick tissue with a shaky handprint on it. Every time she thought about that tissue, it was to remember how soft the smudge looked.

Saoirse’s lipstick was something she’d started wearing carefully, always in soft shades, after the honeymoon. Something for show, for control.

The shaky handprint pressed over the tissue wasn’t on purpose. She was grabbing for the sink, the edge of the counter, the edge of reality. A physical echo of something slipping just… holding herself up, wiping something off, leaving a trace of the moment she almost didn’t hold it together.

The dinner was small, just 12 people at the Madrid estate, art world types and minor royals. Roman told the story again about how he met her “scribbling in a bar with a notebook and no lipstick, like someone who’d escaped a convent.”

They all laughed. He kissed her hand and said, “She’s mine now, but softer and shinier.” She smiled. Of course, she did. But she didn’t know exactly why the smile shook inside her.

Later that night in the bathroom, she locked the door, stood in front of the mirror. The lighting was too golden, too forgiving. She reached for the lipstick, a soft rose shade, and applied it with practiced grace, then stopped. The night was over. The dinner was done. Everyone, gone.

Her lips trembled. Her hands, too. She grabbed a tissue and pressed it hard to her mouth to erase. But the color didn’t come off neatly. It smeared a muted smudge across the tissue like something unfinished. Her hand slipped. She gripped the marble counter to steady herself, and the tissue crumpled in her palm.

She opened it, and there it was, her lipstick, her print. She stared at it, at how it looked like a note she never meant to write. She left it on the edge of the sink, maybe out of wanting someone to know, to see her, without her having to speak.

She walked out of the bathroom. The hallway outside their bedrooms was silent, but Roman’s voice drifted faintly from the wine room. She smiled at nothing, fixed her dress, and returned to him like a ghost in a silk sheath.

+

Soon, they were living out of multiple Suarez homes, seven of them, in multiple countries. 

Seven homes, seven versions of the same story told in marble, glass, and curated silence. Saoirse could list them chronologically, geographically, by mood or memory. But they were always ordered the same way in her heart, from the one that felt most like hers, to the one that never was.

He had taken her straight to the Lake Como house for the first time after he proposed. A 19th-century restored villa on the water with terraced gardens, private dock, silk-upholstered rooms that smelled of lemon oil and afternoon light. 

On the dock, barefoot, a glass of Franciacorta in her hand, his arms wrapped around her from behind, the sun had just folded into the lake like it belonged there, when he whispered into her ear if she liked it here. She said yes because, for a moment, she belonged there too, she had felt the belonging.

The villa was older than either of them, but restored with reverence. She always wrote her thoughts there in longhand before the children came, before the quiet turned to ache. There were days she wandered out barefoot with wet hair and no phone, and no one asked her where she’d gone.

It was the only house that never tried to perform. It just was, and so was she. For a while, it felt like love lived there without needing permission. It was softness and isolation, a place of beauty, the type she never believed could become a cage, a gilded cage.

London, the house in Belgravia he had let her decorate herself when they were only married for three months. It was his way of allowing her back into her own world. 

She’d given it cream walls, velvet sofas, art books that didn’t match but she’d stacked anyway, plush fabrics, some warmth. People came through it often, for foundation board meetings, quiet dinners, interviews, and more and more rarely, Nina and Sinead for social calls. When she sat at the head of the dining table there, she did not feel ornamental.

She hosted a poetry showcase once. Roman came late, watched from the hallway, arms folded, amused. He let her keep it for herself. The house, the circle, the sense of self. There were cameras, and Emilio, his junior secretary who was becoming hers, was always nearby. But the townhouse was hers enough to pretend she wasn’t watched here more than anywhere else. 

This was her soft power base because even when she felt watched, she felt seen the way Roman had made her feel when they first met.

New York City. Just once, early in their marriage, she read from Blue Milk in a bookstore in Tribeca. The apartment was high up, glass-edged, masculine in its sparseness. But she stood at that window afterward with a glass of something cold and felt taller than she was.

Roman flew them back the next day. He said there was an emergency at the Madrid office, but she always wondered if it was the applause or the man who asked her to sign his copy of her book with a personal note. It was a glimpse of freedom, brief and then gone. Still, she kept the memory, one of the few she hoarded selfishly, like what could’ve been. It reminded her of a version of herself she once believed she could protect. 

He maintained the apartment as an investment or to stay during brief public appearances in the States.

The palatial family villa in the hills of Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, Barcelona, was still the Suarez fortress, their official home, the place that placed her firmly under Amancio and Allegra’s gaze even long after they passed.

It was in the Barcelona villa that she gave birth to their children because that was where all Suarez children have always been born. The place with the nursery wing, the wine cellar stocked enough to gift a small country, the underground panic room no one spoke about. The limestone floors chilled her bones, even in summer.

It was beautiful, of course. Of course. Art hand-selected by private curators of a century ago, everything scented and soundproofed. She could walk the halls for twenty minutes and not see a single person. Roman called it peace. She sometimes called it drift. She lived in its wings. She was presented in its dining room, but she never stood at the center.

The old duplex penthouse in the 8th arrondissement near Avenue Montaigne, Paris, was always empty, even though every member of the distant Suarez household technically had access to it. It held mirrored corridors, all-black kitchens, floor-to-ceiling windows, the kind of place you photographed but didn’t live in. 

Roman hosted investors there when he wanted a place more cultured, more neutral, than his Madrid penthouse. Saoirse walked the Champs-Élysées alone, took long baths, bought perfume. She once tried to write in the black-and-glass study but stopped when she caught her reflection in the window. She looked like someone else.

He once told her the apartment was hers, no longer free for his extended family to access, but only when he was overseas. When he was there, she knew better than to ask to come. It was his satellite, often left empty.

Tuscany was Allegra’s house, her dowry inheritance. A rustic countryside villa with vineyards. It was her house even after death. The linens smelled of her. The kitchen spoke a dialect of life Saoirse never quite picked up. She walked through it like a ghost, nodding at staff who smiled with loyalty that did not include her.

She didn’t dislike it. She just never arrived there.

They stayed two nights at a time, sometimes three. Roman seemed younger there, or maybe just quieter. He showed her his mother’s piano once, then never mentioned it again.

They lived primarily in Madrid. “The mausoleum,” she called it once, and he didn’t laugh. 

It had cold floors, dark wood, no windows that opened. It had been in the Suarez family for centuries, built for family gatherings but not the warm type, the type that felt more like board meetings, overnight deals, people who landed and left.

Before the wedding, she visited once. He showed her the cold stone kitchen like he was giving a tour. She told him it felt like a hotel lobby. He didn’t respond. They slept there that night. It was the only place where she never once unpacked a suitcase. Yet it was the place he chose for them to live primarily after the wedding.

Seven homes. Seven selves.

She wondered sometimes what the maids thought of her, watching her drift through rooms she didn’t own, folding herself into the design. She hoped they saw her as graceful. She feared they saw her as dull.

+

His increasing absences felt romantic. There was a rhythm to them, the hush of a departing car before dawn, the soft shh of his suit jacket sleeve against her arm as he leaned down to kiss her forehead, the scent of his cologne lingering in the sheets like the aftertaste of a shared dream. 

He always left notes tucked into her books, slipped under her coffee cup. 

Or

When he returned, it was with gifts and gravitas, new rubies wrapped in velvet, stories from boardrooms in Singapore or dinners in São Paulo. She’d laugh and pour them wine and sit on the floor between his legs while he recounted market shifts like fables.

But then, time began to stretch.

It was a slow, sun-smeared afternoon at the villa in Como. The lake glistened just beyond the terrace, its surface undisturbed except by the occasional boat passing far enough away to seem like a painting. 

Roman sat beneath the awning in loose linen, flipping through a financial journal with the deliberate slowness of a man who had nowhere urgent to be, a serious rarity Saoirse was learning to be grateful for. She came out of the kitchen barefoot, holding two glasses of wine.

“It’s not cold enough,” she said as she passed him his. “Sorry.”

Roman accepted the glass without looking up. “It’s fine.”

“You’ll say that even if it tastes like tea.”

“I’ve learned to pick my battles.”

She smiled a little and curled up on the cushioned lounger opposite him. The old Bose speaker was playing something quiet and orchestral, one of her playlists, she thought, though she barely remembered adding it. Roman preferred live music.

“I miss London sometimes,” she said.

He didn’t lift his head. “Because it gives you people to impress?”

Her brows pulled in slightly. Not hurt, just… surprised.

“Because I feel like I exist there,” she said carefully. “I chose the wallpaper in every room. Even the horrid one in the guest bathroom. It was the first time I made something mine.”

He folded his journal and finally looked at her. “You speak of it like it’s an empire.”

She gave a small shrug, eyes still on the lake. “Sometimes, it feels like my only one.”

Roman stood and walked toward the balustrade, glass in hand. The sunlight touched the collar of his shirt, casting golden light against his neck.

“You have everything here,” he said. “Peace, privacy, your own dock, no press, no interruptions.”

“And silence that grows teeth when you’re gone,” she said, trying hard not to sound accusatory.

He tilted his head like he was considering it. “In Madrid,” he said after a moment, “You don’t complain about silence.”

Saoirse leaned back into the cushions, stretching her legs out in front of her. “In Madrid,” she said, “You don’t stay long enough to notice it.”

Roman gave a soft huff of amusement and looked over his shoulder. “You think architecture owes you emotion.”

“No,” she said, more gently now. “But I think people do.”

He came back to her, glass nearly empty, and sat beside her. They were close now, shoulder to shoulder, legs brushing.

“Paris, then?” he asked, tilting his head toward her. “You want Paris next?”

“Not really.”

His eyebrows lifted slightly. “No?”

“I haven’t figured out who I’m supposed to be there,” she said. “I walk through those mirrored corridors and I catch my reflection too many times in one evening. And every time, it feels like I’m rehearsing someone I forgot I was meant to play.”

He laughed softly. “You’ve always looked good in that reflection.”

“That’s the problem,” she murmured. “It’s the one you prefer.”

He turned his face toward hers. “You’re very dramatic today. Are we speaking in poetry?”

“I’m not. I just...” She stopped, searching for the right words. “Sometimes, I wonder if you’d rather have a reflection than a person.”

Roman didn’t respond right away. Instead, he reached for her hand and laced his fingers through hers. His thumb ran slow circles against the back of her wrist. It was affectionate, thoughtful, almost apologetic.

“You make everything heavy,” he said quietly.

They sat like that for a while, watching the water shift and glimmer. A bird passed low across the lake. Somewhere in the nearby kitchen, a timer went off.

Later, over dinner on the terrace, they shared grilled fish and vegetables. The white wine had finally chilled. They spoke of an art exhibit in Milan, his thoughts on a new visionary joining the board, a poem she’d been turning over in her head. He told her he liked her hair pulled back like that.

“You should wear it like this in London,” he said. “When you host things.”

“I haven’t hosted anything in weeks.”

He frowned slightly. “Why?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t think you liked it.”

“I never said that.”

“You never need to,” she said, but smiled as she said it, turning it into something less dangerous. He reached across the table and ran a finger down the inside of her wrist. She let it linger.

That night in bed, she lay on his chest, her hand curled into the space beneath his ribs. The villa was silent, the lake barely audible beyond the walls.

“Do you remember New York?” she whispered.

Roman’s voice was low. “Of course.”

“That reading I did... the one where the man asked me to sign his book?” He gave a tired sound, half breath, half memory. “You went quiet in the car,” she said. “I never asked why.”

He didn’t answer for a while. “You’re still nursing that?”

“I’m not nursing,” she said. “I’m remembering.” He was silent again. “It was the last time I felt... unobserved.”

Roman shifted slightly beneath her, then exhaled. “You want invisibility now?”

“No,” she said. “I want to be seen without being studied.”

He sighed, kissed the crown of her head absentmindedly, gently. Then turned toward the bedside lamp and switched it off.

“Sleep, Saoirse.” 

She didn’t sleep, not immediately. He only called her Saoirse when he was irritated. Instead, she stared at the dark outline of the ceiling and thought about all the rooms they’d lived in. All the versions of herself she’d tried on. All the mirrors she’d smiled into, hoping he was behind them.

There was love, but some nights, it felt like loving him was singing into a canyon and hearing nothing back but your own voice, beautiful and echoing, but utterly alone.

+

In Barcelona, the walls held Roman’s silence like temperature made more stifling by his parents’ heavy presence. 

Amancio and Allegra were never in the same room or even wing as Saoirse, but always, she could hear their voices from somewhere just beyond, could feel every domestic decision they presided over as it trickled down through the army of staff to her designated space in the house.

On days he was away, she wandered through it with nowhere urgent to be. She never ran into anyone who wasn’t the most polite, taciturn staff member. There were no children to occupy her time. She would take breakfast on the terrace alone, run her fingers along the edge of the baby grand piano in the east room, read half a chapter in the drawing room, then forget what she’d read.

She sometimes opened his closets just to smell his shirts. Once, she called him at midnight just to hear his voice.

“You're okay?” he asked like it didn’t make sense that she’d call her husband like this.

“Of course,” she said, too quickly.

“I'm in meetings from morning until late. Let’s talk properly when I’m back.” But when he returned four days later, they never circled back. She didn’t remind him. He didn’t ask. It had just been to hear his voice anyway, and she had heard it.

Back on Lake Como again, the loneliness was more elegant.

She bathed in silence and tried to romanticize it. The way the light fell on the stone floor. The quiet lapping of water against the dock. She wrote useless sentences in notebooks she never finished, made up recipes and forgot them, practiced Spanish in the mirror.

Roman left her voice notes sometimes. He preferred them to texts.

“The Tokyo board liked the pitch. I mentioned you. They asked if you'd come next time.”

She saved them and played them on loop some days when the house was too still. She told herself it was love, that distance was love, absence was fond, work was love.

As they neared the end of their first year, Paris was the first place she stopped bothering to unpack. She’d arrive with a carry-on, wear the same three dresses, and spend hours watching the sky change colors through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Roman had art shipped there constantly, pieces she'd never seen before, or chosen.

“It’s an investment,” he once said when she asked who the artist was.

“So was I,” she replied, smiling. He hadn’t laughed.

By the time they stayed in London again, she was pregnant, softening in places he had once praised as angular, her ankles swelled, her belly refusing to hide. 

Roman didn’t say much about it. He kissed her forehead when she told him, and once, absentmindedly, the flat of his hand had rested against her mid-section before drifting away, like touching her too long there unsettled him, like he wanted the idea of fatherhood more than the sight of it.

The townhouse that was once her performance stage now felt like an echo chamber. She canceled two events that month. Roman called once.

“You need to be seen, Saoirse. We don’t vanish just because you’re growing round.”

That night, she stood in front of the mirror in the en-suite and held her tummy with both hands. 

“You’re not round,” she whispered to herself. “You’re real.”

Still, he traced poetry on her growing belly two months in, wept when he first heard two heartbeats at the private infirmary in the Barcelona family villa. It struck her, shook her, that it was the first time she’d ever seen him cry, ever.

+

As she found herself more and more in a different home, a different city, than Roman, Javier, his chief executive assistant, became a more visible fixture in their lives. He was the go-between, the connector who kept their lives united through logistics, arrangements, and precise matching of schedules.

To Javier, Roman referred to Saoirse as ‘perfect’ so often it stopped meaning anything. What he did know was that Roman loved to use her to sweeten meetings with difficult investors. He once told Javier soon after they were married, “Just have Saoirse drop in and say hello. She makes the room forget I’m the most dangerous man here.”

Late one afternoon in the main shareholders' boardroom at Suarez Group HQ, eight middle-aged men in suits, one elderly woman in a cotton kaftan, all major potential investors, a collective $200bn in net worth, and their translators, sat together at the table.

As they spoke three languages in low, tense tones, Roman at the head of the table stayed silent. Javier stood to the side, reading the energy shift.

The negotiation wasn’t going badly, but it wasn’t going easily, either. The Qatari prince pushed hard, a Catalan lawyer kept interrupting, Roman hadn’t blinked in 15 seconds. He nodded once at Javier.

Saoirse sat by the window of his vast office at the top of the building, feeling weighed down by the growing fetuses inside her, waiting for him to finish. They were in the same city for the first time in about a month, so she dropped by for a visit because she missed him, or maybe she just wanted to feel relevant to him beyond the house. Or maybe being newly pregnant for their first children and not being able to write a thing was making her extra needy.

Long ivory dress, no jewelry except her wedding ring, hair tucked behind her ears, she looked precisely how he liked. She was just waiting when Javier walked in. 

“He says you can come in, señora.”

She responded softly, “Into the board meeting?” She frowned. He nodded. “Am I interrupting?”

“No,” he lied.

The doors opened into the boardroom, and Saoirse walked in.

Roman stood and crossed to her. “Everyone, my wife. The better half of everything I try to be.” He chuckled. They murmured greetings. 

She smiled exactly enough and said extra softly, “Thank you for keeping him occupied. He tends to forget to eat on days like this.” Everyone laughed. The room warmed up like she’d let the sun in. 

Javier noticed one of the investors visibly relax as Saoirse placed a hand on Roman’s arm. Her solid gold and diamond ring caught the light. She didn’t speak again. She didn’t need to. 

When the Italian asked where she was from, “Ireland,” Roman answered for her, like he was a circus showman, and she, his latest human curiosity.

“Roman imports the rarest things.”

“Only the ones worth keeping.”

She stayed for exactly four minutes, said nothing of substance, and left the scent of lavender in the room. The men returned to their negotiations with softened jaws. She passed Javier as she left. He didn’t say anything at first, but then, so only she could hear, “You know, he calls you his secret weapon.”

She smiled but didn’t turn, didn’t stop walking away.

Roman closed the deal barely an hour later. As they rose, someone patted his shoulder and said, “She’s something special.” It was the 80-year-old banking mogul, a woman who’d just pledged the most investment in the room.

“She is,” Roman said. Javier glanced out the window, adding up the investor figures in his head.

Saoirse never spoke out of turn. She smiled, nodded, asked about people’s children. But once, after a meeting, this time with Sotheby patrons ahead of an art auction where Roman planned to acquire a rare painting connected to the British royal family’s founding fortune, Javier passed her in the hallway. She was staring at a different painting on the wall like it wasn’t even there at all, like she was staring through it. He asked if she was okay. 

She said, “I think I’ve been standing beside him for so long that people stopped seeing me.” 

Suddenly, she laughed, a gentle demure sound, and said it was a joke. Javier knew she wasn’t joking. They’d only been married about a year by then.

Roman never brought her in to contribute. He brought her to neutralize, to soften the room, to complement his power with beauty, to be the illusion of calm beside the storm he controlled. And Saoirse, still in the early fog of loving him, was only just realizing she was being used as atmosphere.

+

The jet landed in Milan at dusk weeks later. Saoirse had barely slept the night before, her nausea a steady tide, but Javier’s voice on the phone had been smooth and unwavering: “The señor requests your company at Como. I’ll arrange the car. We’ll keep it gentle.”

She knew better than to ask why now, after weeks without him. Roman never explained his summons. He simply made them happen.

As the chauffeur eased the car into the villa’s gravel drive, the house glowed with lamplight. Terraced gardens slipped down toward the lake, its surface reflecting a bruised purple sky. Staff waited in a quiet row at the door, heads bowed, uniforms precise. Lucia took Saoirse’s shawl without a word. Bianca offered her a glass of water on a silver tray she accepted with trembling hands.

Roman appeared at the threshold in loose linen, tan deeper than she remembered, and she wondered if his business trips had come with sun. He kissed her cheek, not her lips, not her belly. His cologne lingered as he turned smoothly toward the house, expecting her to follow.

Dinner was already laid on the terrace: grilled fish, fennel, salads dressed with lemon oil. He loved fish. A pianist, invisible somewhere in the house, was playing Chopin so softly it might have been a trick of the air. Javier stood at a discreet distance, tablet in hand, glancing between Roman and his buzzing phone.

Roman sat, poured her wine before remembering. He paused, exchanged it for sparkling water, and said, “How was the flight?”

“Fine,” Saoirse said.

“You rested?”

“A little.”

He nodded and cut into his fish.

She wanted to tell him about the nausea, about the way her ankles swelled now when she stood too long, about the frightening little thud she sometimes felt at night, but his phone lit up, and he answered without hesitation. A board member in Singapore, numbers, percentages, asset transfers. His tone sharpened, smoothed, sharpened again.

Saoirse ate silently, listening to the language of money that rolled so easily from his tongue. Javier came forward once, murmured an update, then retreated again. Roman’s hand lifted mid-call, almost absentmindedly, to rest on Saoirse’s wrist. His eyes flicked to her, soft for a breath, then back to the conversation.

It was always like this, presence not dialogue.

When he hung up, he asked, “Did you walk in the gardens today?”

“I only just arrived,” she reminded him gently.

“Then tomorrow.”

She smiled faintly. “If it isn’t raining.”

“It won’t rain,” he said like he could decide the weather himself.

The pianist shifted into Debussy. The villa’s lamps glowed golden against the lake. Roman leaned back, watching her with that composed stillness she was now used to.

“You’re quiet tonight,” he said.

She set down her fork. “I’ve been quiet a lot.” Her chest tightened. After a long pause, “Do you like the baby names we chose?”

His gaze lingered on her belly, then lifted. “Names are just costumes. We’ll see what fits when the time comes.”

She nodded, and the staff appeared to clear plates, moving like ghosts, efficient and noiseless. One asked a question in Italian, something to do with her, presumably whether she wanted anything more, and Roman responded fluently on her behalf. She didn’t mind it. She couldn’t speak Italian after all.

Later, they walked through the gardens. Fireflies flickered near the cypresses, the lake lapping faintly below. Saoirse touched his arm, testing a confession. “Sometimes, I feel… I don’t know… Like I’ve disappeared into all these houses.” Roman stopped, looked down at her. “It feels lonely sometimes,” she continued.

His hand lifted, brushed her cheek. “Loneliness is only dangerous if you fight it.”

She bit her lip. “So I should… accept it?”

He smiled faintly. “It makes you untouchable.”

She wanted to argue that she didn’t want to be untouchable. She wanted to be touched, seen, spoken to, but his phone buzzed again, and Javier materialized like an extension of it, murmuring about Tokyo’s follow-up. Roman kissed her forehead and turned away, already answering.

Saoirse stood by the balustrade, watching the dark lake glimmer, clutching the rail as if it could anchor her.

When he returned, he slipped an arm around her waist, pulled her against him, kissed her hair. “You look tired. Come inside.”

They made love that night. It was skilled, consuming, but she cried afterward, silently, while his breathing steadied into sleep beside her. She didn’t know exactly when she started crying as a reaction to sex, but suddenly, it was a routine part of the process for her.

The next morning, she found Javier in the hall. He bowed his head politely. “The señor will leave after breakfast. He has meetings in Geneva, but he asked me to tell you he’ll return Friday.” But will he return here to Como or to Madrid or Barcelona or Tuscany? And where will I be when he does return?

She smiled, small and perfect, and thanked him. When she went back into their room, the bed was already stripped, the sheets gone, the linen folded away by the staff. The warmth of him had been erased, like the night itself had been another performance, reset before the next act.

+

Her first birthday as his wife was a small, manicured dinner party in Madrid. Staff poured wine. No one from her side of life attended. The guests were his family and friends and business associates, her stylists, and a few socialites who tagged her in the birthday posts, but she’d never had a private conversation with them ever.

Roman clinked his glass. “To the woman who made me believe in softness again.”

The table applauded. Saoirse smiled, but inside, she remembered Nina’s voice, her college mentor, her sister Sinead, her few London friends. All voices she no longer heard.

The Madrid house was too still the morning of their first wedding anniversary, a month later. Saoirse woke expecting nothing. Roman had been gone all week, shuttling between Paris and Geneva, and although Javier had hinted he’d return, she didn’t trust the hints anymore.

She moved through the rooms in silk, her hand unconsciously holding her belly. The swell was visible now, still delicate, but impossible to ignore. By dusk, she had resigned herself to solitude in their bedroom. Then she heard it, the soft creak of the great front doors opening downstairs, a voice she knew brushing repeatedly through the silence.

Her heart started. She descended barefoot, silk robe trailing, and found the main parlor transformed. Every lamp was extinguished, only candles glowed, lined on mantels, stairwells, the grand piano, flickering everywhere in slow constellations. The air smelled faintly of ink and paper.

On the center table, where normally sat polished silver and untouched decanters, were stacks of books, her books, rare first editions of poets she’d once whispered about to him in half-sentences, volumes in worn leather, volumes bound in cloth so exquisite they looked like miracles rescued from time, translations she thought no one remembered.

A small pile of notebooks, too, their spines untouched, Italian linen paper bound with twine, waiting for her to fill them, though she knew he wouldn’t want anyone else to see whatever she filled them with. He’d want them to be exclusively his, theirs.

Roman stood beside it all in dark, loose t-shirt and slacks, his gaze fixed on her as if waiting to see if she would cry, watching her with that intent stillness that made her feel like nothing else existed.

“You remembered,” she whispered, throat tight.

“You thought I’d forget today?” He smiled more softly than usual. “...that I forget anything you say?”

She crossed to the table, her hands hovering over the books, afraid to touch. The titles shimmered with proof that someone had been listening when she thought she was alone. She lifted a volume of Yeats in soft green binding, the exact edition she had once told Nina they’d never afford. Beside it was a slim Plath journal she had never been able to find in London.

“Where did you find these?”

“I had them gathered,” he said. No mention of cost or effort, as if the world simply bent to his request.

On the piano, she saw one more thing. A slim, silver-framed photograph of her at the bar in Madrid where they first met, scribbling in her notebook, unaware of him. She had never seen the photo before. She didn’t remember looking quite so interesting.

Her throat tightened. “Who took this?”

“I did,” he said simply, crossing to her. “The night I knew you’d change my life.” She couldn’t shift her eyes from the picture. This was her through his eyes.

It was beautiful. It was suffocating. It was both. Tears pricked. She felt seen, the girl who had once written at a bar, raw and unguarded, not the polished version of herself he so often curated and presented. For a moment, she believed he loved that first girl still. 

Roman cupped her jaw, kissed her with unusual softness like she was something both precious and fragile, then pulled back to glance down at her belly. His smile faltered for half a beat before he recovered. His eyes softened in a way that made her forgive the retreat. 

“You’re still the girl in that picture. Just… more.”

She nodded, but she wasn’t sure she believed him.

He took her hand and guided her to a low couch, where she’d only just noticed dinner had been laid out on trays instead of at the formal dining table. It was made up of simple, elegant things like figs drizzled with honey, roasted pink salmon, small porcelain bowls of clam paella, pears poached in wine. For once, no audience, no toast, just them, and they sat close together.

“You hate eating like this.” She laughed softly. “It’s too casual for you.”

“This isn’t casual,” he said. “It’s ours. It’s the first time in a long time I’m lucky enough to have you to myself.” This confused her for a second because she wasn't aware anything kept him from spending more alone time with her.

Later in their private sitting room, he read to her by candlelight from one of the notebooks he had filled for her with her words. Fragments of poems she’d abandoned, letters she’d written and never sent, passages copied from journals she’d left lying open. She rested her head on his shoulder as he read, and felt more peace than she'd ever felt... ever. His voice gave her words weight she never imagined they could have. 

She never knew he noticed her random writings. Her heart squeezed. She pressed a hand to her mouth, trembling with a mixture of awe and unease. “You kept these?”

“I kept you.” 

He kissed her again when he was done, deepening it fast this time, urgent, the way he kissed her in their first married months. 

In their bedroom, he undressed her irreverently, pulling silk from her shoulders, scattering her hairpins on the floor. Candles glowed faintly in the next room as he pressed her against the sheets.

Their lovemaking was almost desperate, his mouth at her throat, his voice low and raw when he whispered her name. She clung to him, nails sharp at his back, surrendering to the weight of him and the way he seemed determined to pull her back into his orbit entirely. When she broke, he didn’t let her fall, he chased her, caught her, pulled her under again.

Afterwards, they lay tangled in sweat and silk, his hand heavy at the base of her spine, her face pressed against his chest. He kissed her temple like he had just remade her. 

When she lay beside him in their vast bed, belly curved between them, he brushed her hair back with the gentlest hand and murmured unhurriedly, “You see? I give you everything you ever wanted. I’ll put it all at your feet. You’ll never have to search. It’s all here.”

And she smiled with a swell of love so sharp it hurt, even as she thought of the bookshelves in the little Oxford library she once adored, shelves she used to wander without anyone watching. 

It was the sweetest night of their marriage, but it was also the clearest reminder that her wants would always come curated by him. Only much later, as sleep tugged at her, did she wonder why every version of her life, even the one she used to write for herself, had to be kept in his hands to exist. Still, she fell asleep believing she had never been more wanted.

+

The next morning, she woke to the sound of him dressing. The morning light spilled over the Madrid bedroom, pale and forgiving.

Roman stood by the window in a slate suit, cufflinks already fastened with economical grace, his watch glinting in the new light. The books and notebooks had been cleared away, the candles extinguished. For a moment, their anniversary night felt like a dream staged only for her.

Saoirse lay propped against the pillows, long ginger hair undone, the sheet drawn loosely over her. He bent and kissed her temple, and his hand brushed her thigh beneath the sheet, the heat of last night still clinging there, pulsed between them.

She thought he would pause, come back to her, touch her, say something about the night they’d shared, about the curve of her body under his hands, about the child, children, growing inside her. But his voice was already elsewhere, absently murmuring, “I’ll be late tonight.”

Half-asleep, she shifted toward him, her fingers catching the edge of his jacket, almost tugging, almost asking him to stay. The words hovered, Don’t go yet, but she swallowed them before they could leave her lips.

“Where are you going?” she asked instead.

“Office, meetings.” He adjusted his tie and added almost as an afterthought, “My parents are coming to Madrid for the week. We’ll host them here.”

Saoirse blinked, her heart stuttering. “This week?”

“Yes, probably today.” He smoothed his jacket, glanced in the mirror. “Isabella will help you prepare.” 

Saoirse shifted, her hand resting lightly on her small swell. His gaze slid right past it like a polite subject to be avoided. He crossed to the dresser, collected his phone. “The Tokyo call is late evening, don’t wait for me at dinner.” His voice was even, brisk.

And just like that, he was gone, the door clicking softly shut. The house was quiet again. Saoirse lay in bed, the sweetness of the night before dissolving like sugar in water, but the heat of it still glowing faintly inside her. 

With her other hand, she reached across the sheets to where he had been, fingers curled into the hollow he left behind, clutching at linen still warm with his weight, imagining she could hold the night itself before it dissolved into daylight. 

Stay. Stay like you were last night.

Roman’s parents came that afternoon to break the illusion fully.

Amancio and Allegra arrived at the Madrid house with the ceremony of sovereigns. Staff lined the marble foyer in two silent rows, drivers unloaded cases of luggage so heavy it seemed they had come to move in rather than stay a week. Allegra wore widow’s black though her husband was very much alive. Amancio walked with a silver-tipped cane, his gaze a cold ledger tallying the house, the staff, Saoirse herself.

They embraced their son with dry kisses. When Roman turned to her, expectant, Saoirse leaned forward. Allegra’s cheek barely brushed hers, cool and perfumed like old violets.

With his parents installed like reigning ghosts, the house felt smaller, although it was cavernous. Saoirse moved through the rooms silently, obeying their unspoken codes of formality. 

Amancio, who could speak English but never did, dominated all the conversation in traditional Spanish, a relentless cascade, sharp and aristocratic, the kind where every rolled ‘r’ was like a gate slamming shut. Saoirse, whose lessons had faltered amid the chaos of travel and pregnancy, tried to answer. Her words stumbled. Her accent wavered. Allegra’s eyes always drifted away before she finished her sentences.

That night, Roman came to bed late as promised, after hours of hushed conversations in the library.

Saoirse slept in their bed alone through the next night. She slipped beneath the covers, her hand instinctively finding his side of the mattress already cool. She clutched the sheets there, bunching the silk in her fist, pretending to summon the warmth of him, the tender passion of their anniversary night. But the linen was cold and empty. The gesture felt foolish, almost childish, but she held on anyway.

The night after that, Roman told her gently, smiling over their evening wine, “You don’t have to keep embarrassing yourself in front of my family.” His voice was pitched almost ironically to soothe her. “I’ll handle all public conversation until you’re more confident.” It landed like a soft slap, the type that injected a pin-prick of poison she would feel for days.

Her brain started cataloguing the many times Allegra looked away from her mid-sentence, the way his father never slowed the pace or tone of his Spanish for her benefit, how Roman, too, always gently dismissed her mid-speech, as if anything spoken aloud was beyond her to attempt, sliding his hand lightly over hers at dinners to hush her without saying it.

One evening months ago, she’d tried to read Lorca to him in Spanish. Bright-eyed and nervous, she’d stumbled on a few lines. He smiled, corrected her pronunciation, then said, “You’re not ready to perform this. Maybe in a few years.”

The dismissal had tasted like mercy at the time. Now, the aftertaste was something different. She nodded, smiled, and sipped her wine. “Thank you,” she whispered.