The Suarez Myth: Chapter 8

Before sunrise, the house was already humming with quiet efficiency. 

Saoirse woke to the sound of footsteps on marble, luggage wheels, muted voices, the low mechanical sigh of doors opening and closing. Roman never packed at night. He preferred mornings, preferred to see everything done while he was awake.

Through the open doorway, she could hear Javier speaking with Marco in low tones about the route to the airstrip. Someone was already checking the weather reports, another arranging the jet’s catering. It was the choreography of departure, performed so often that the house itself seemed to move with its rhythm.

Roman emerged from the dressing room in a dark suit, hair perfectly in place, cufflinks catching the early light. He smelled faintly of cedar and something sharper, like new paper and control. Saoirse sat up in bed, the sheet gathered over her knees, her hair loose from sleep.

He came to her side. “Go back to sleep,” he said softly.

She smiled a little. “You’re leaving already.”

“I’ll call when I land.”

He leaned down to kiss her forehead, the same kiss as always. She caught the lapel of his jacket lightly between her fingers before he could straighten. “Stay a little longer,” she said, almost teasing.

He smiled faintly. “If I do, I’ll miss the window for takeoff.”

“Then miss it.”

He didn’t answer, just brushed her hair away from her face. “You’ll have a quieter day without me.”

“I don’t want a quieter day,” she whispered, but he was already standing.

He looked at her for a moment longer, and she thought she saw something almost human flicker behind his calm, a soft pang, a hesitation. But then it was gone.

“Try to get some sun,” he said, as if it were a kindness. Then, after a pause, “You look pale.”

And he was gone. The sound of the door closing was the softest in the house, designed not to echo. Still, she heard it.

When she finally stood, she crossed to the window. Outside, the pitch black car was waiting at the bottom of the steps, flanked by the others. Javier held the main house doors open. Roman stepped out, phone already at his ear. He didn’t look up toward the window.

She thought briefly of Nina, of that midday call days ago, Nina’s voice softened with hesitation. “Don’t you ever wonder if he has… someone else?” Roman doesn’t have time for anyone else, she had said in her head.

But now, watching him through the glass, she wasn’t sure if that was the same thing as being faithful.

The convoy pulled away, silent as a secret. When the last car turned down the long drive, Marta came in quietly to draw the curtains, her hands moving with reverence. “Señora,” she murmured, “Would you like breakfast in bed?”

Saoirse shook her head. “Not yet.”

Marta nodded and left.

The room fell still again. Saoirse sat on the edge of the bed, her fingers brushing the faint warmth left on the pillow beside her. She thought of the twins still sleeping in the nursery, of the way they reached instinctively toward sound and warmth.

She stayed there for a long time, the silence filling the air like something solid. Then she lay back down, eyes open, staring at the ceiling until the light shifted and the day began to move on without her.

By afternoon, the house had settled back fully into its quiet pulse, as if Roman’s absence were simply another room closing. The staff moved through the halls with the serenity of habit. Marta directed the cleaners in low Spanish murmurs, the twins’ staff exchanged soft jokes near the nursery door, and every clock in the villa seemed to tick at the same exact rhythm.

Saoirse hadn’t moved from the bedroom for hours. The sheets still held the faint crease of his body, the scent of him lingering like something she wasn’t allowed to touch. But at some point, she realized she was still sitting in her robe unbathed.

The silence pressed in until she couldn’t bear it.

She slipped her feet into slippers and walked down the marble stairs barefoot, her hand grazing the polished banister as if to prove she was still material. The air smelled faintly of citrus and the faint powdery scent of formula. Outside, the afternoon had settled into a still, bright heat, the kind that made even birds quiet.

The courtyard was empty. The fountain murmured, water catching the sunlight like thin glass. Along the low wall, the latest roses had been arranged in enormous clay pots, their petals trembling from the breeze. 

Saoirse knelt beside them, the tiles cool under her knees. Her reflection shimmered in the water as she reached for one of the roses. Its stem was long, spined, and deliberate. She brushed the petal gently, and it folded beneath her touch.

Her grandmother’s voice whispered back through the years, soft as earth. She didn’t say it aloud, but the memory stung all the same, those same sentences that seemed to tether her.

Behind her, she heard footsteps pause, Marta, standing at the edge of the colonnade, pretending to inspect the shutters. The housekeeper’s gaze lingered on the young woman kneeling before a display of perfect flowers, her silk robe catching the light, her fingers tracing thorns like prayer beads.

Marta lowered her eyes. She had seen this before, this quiet unraveling that looked like grace from afar.

Saoirse rose after a while and wiped her hands against her robe. A thorn had pricked her finger again, a faint bloom of red against pale skin. She pressed her thumb over it, watching the color spread slightly, then fade.

The fountain burbled. The house hummed. She stood there for a long moment, her hand bleeding just enough to remind her that she could still hurt. Then she turned back toward the house.

Inside, the air was cool again, temperature-controlled, 22 degrees, scentless. The citrus gone, the roses stayed behind, untouched but already beginning to curl at their edges. When she closed the door, the wind outside sighed and went still.

Night settled with unnerving precision, every lamp dimmed to its prescribed wattage, every corridor lit like a photograph. The villa was immaculate again, as if Roman had never existed inside it, as if no man had ever breathed here at all.

The house was too quiet. After a dinner of cold lamb served early, the twins tucked in hours before, it felt like all the electricity had been pulled from the walls. But sleep didn’t come.

Saoirse lay awake long after the hour the nurses retired to the nursery’s adjoining suite. The silence was vast but shallow, like a stage set waiting for its actors. Somewhere down the hall, a clock struck midnight. The sound absorbed itself without echoing.

She rested her hand on the pillow beside her, felt the faint impression, like a memory pressed into fabric. She inhaled slightly and then held her breath, expecting his scent to linger there. It didn’t. She turned onto her side, watching the pale shapes of the roses on her nightstand, yellow and white. 

The monitor beside her crackled softly, one of the twins stirring. She sat up before the nurse could respond. 

“It’s all right,” she whispered into the intercom, “I’ve got them.”

She slipped her robe on and padded through the dim corridor. The nursery door opened without a sound. The faint blue glow of the baby monitor painted the room in underwater light. Both cots stood side by side beneath gauzy canopies. David was still asleep, his small mouth twitching in dreams, but Mariana was awake, her eyes open and searching.

Saoirse bent over her. “Shh,” she murmured, brushing her thumb across the baby’s cheek. The skin was impossibly soft, almost warm enough to undo her. She lifted her gently, cradling the tiny body against her chest.

Mariana blinked up at her, then gave the smallest sigh, the sound of a being too new to understand longing. Saoirse began to hum. The melody wavered. Her grandmother had once told her that babies could feel sadness through skin. She hoped that wasn’t true.

Source: Pinterest

She rocked slowly, her shadow gliding across the wall. The air smelled faintly of milk and talcum. “You have your father’s eyes,” she whispered, though the baby couldn’t yet understand her, “But I hope you’ll never learn to look away… the way he does.”

The words hung there.

She kissed Mariana’s hairline and glanced at the second cot. David stirred, stretching, one tiny hand curling into the air as if reaching for someone unseen. She laid his sister down and leaned over him, too, adjusting the blanket the way the nurses always did.

“Shhh,” she whispered, because every sound felt too loud in the still house. “It’s okay. Mama’s here.”

David’s small hand gripped her hair. The sudden contact took her breath. She let him, let him hold on, and she let each cry, each sigh, each search for comfort break the spare perfection of the house.

For a moment, she could feel Roman’s presence behind her, the ghost of his cologne, the quiet correction in his tone, You’re holding him wrong. She straightened her posture automatically, then realized no one was there.

For the first time, she didn’t pretend she was strong. She didn’t think about why he had to do it all, how hard he worked, how far he traveled, how disciplined he was, how much he sacrificed to protect and provide. Tears came without warning, brief and soundless, cutting down her cheeks like something her body didn’t need permission for. She wiped them away before they could fall on the sheets.

What she felt fully was the ache of wanting him, needing him, and still being here alone.

Her fingertip trailed the bracelet on her wrist, her eyes glistening in the new light. The stones caught the glow. That morning, he’d said she would have a quieter day without him. Now, she wondered, quieter for whom?

She kissed the top of each baby’s head and whispered their names. Then she whispered, “I miss him.” No answer. Only the night, and the house that dreamed around her.

The babies breathed evenly again. She left them and walked out into the hallway. The clock ticked on. The sea wind rattled faintly at the shutters.

+

The jet rose through the soft gold of early morning like a thought he’d already finished thinking. The hum beneath the floorboards steadied him. Altitude always did. Below, the Catalan coastline dissolved into haze, its pale stone and blue water giving way to clouds.

He didn’t look back at the house. It was enough to know it existed. Saoirse laying in bed, he liked to imagine her framed by light, the kind of soft beauty that steadied a house, the twins on their schedule, Marta resetting the air filters, everything calibrated to function in his absence. He opened his laptop before the seatbelt light dimmed.

By the time they crossed into French airspace, Zurich was already awake. Javier’s voice came over the secure line, reciting figures from the Suarez Consolidated portfolio. Roman listened, fingers pressed against his temple. “Restructure the Zurich board. Merge legal and acquisitions. Replace Serrano before quarter-end,” he instructed.

“Yes, sir.”

“And make sure the Foundation’s schedule reflects the new directors. I want Saoirse’s name everywhere Allegra’s used to be.”

Javier hesitated. “She’s… still easing into public work.”

Roman looked out the window. The cloud cover was seamless, like glass turned inside out. “Then she’ll ease faster.”

There was a pause. “She hasn’t reviewed any of the new briefs herself.”

“She doesn’t need to,” Roman said. “It’s symbolic.” He didn’t hear himself sound like Amancio when he said it, that decisive dismissiveness.

Geneva smelled of rain and money. His driver met him on the tarmac, umbrella waiting, convoy ready. They drove in silence through wet streets where embassies gleamed like polished bones.

At 8 am, he was in the tower that bore his family’s crest, thirty floors of mirrored restraint. He felt that quiet satisfaction Allegra used to call providence. She’d walked these halls once, her voice low, her smile precise, speaking to his father’s secretaries as though bestowing grace. He’d inherited her calm, people said. They never mentioned or simply didn’t know that calm could also be quiet cruelty practiced to perfection.

Meetings began immediately with arbitration councils, shareholders, and sovereign fund representatives. Roman moved through them like current. He never raised his voice. He didn’t need to. When he spoke, entire tables shifted direction. When he stopped, no one filled the silence.

When he finally looked up from a projection sheet and said, “This is not efficient,” no one argued.

At noon, a message from Javier blinked on his phone: 

Senora is resting. The twins ate at 11:40. All systems stable.

He didn’t reply, but something in his chest loosened, his shoulders eased like a door clicking back into its latch. The language was clinical, but that was what he preferred. 

Saoirse didn’t need to mother their children. She did not need to do anything. All he required of her was to be constant. The twins were already safer, more immaculate, calmer than he ever was, untouched by the chaos that made him. And that was all he wanted. Marcela had once accused him of “ruthlessly removing every noise from life.” He hadn’t disagreed. Allegra had hated noise, too.

Lunch was a formality. One hour at the Hôtel d’Angleterre with the Zurich partners who ordered for him out of habit. He didn’t mind. He liked efficiency more than pleasure.

Afterwards, he walked along the quay with a younger partner who was brilliant, ambitious, and reckless enough to flirt without saying a word. He watched her the way a collector appraised a painting, aware of its beauty but unmoved by its meaning. Her laughter was precise, like crystal. She spoke of expansion, renewable transitions, and optics, while tracing the rim of her water glass with her index finger, and he let her talk. 

He liked watching people perform their usefulness.

When she brushed something invisible from his sleeve, he didn’t move away. But when she lingered, he said quietly, “Be careful, Alina. Don’t overstep.”

Her face flushed as she nodded. He smiled faintly, and the moment passed. He admired her poise even in retreat. Allegra would have approved.

Evening came dressed in rainlight. Geneva’s lake turned black and still. From his office’s penthouse suite, Roman could see the reflection of the city lights trembling over water. He stood by the window, shirtless, a glass of mineral water untouched beside a sleek, large desktop.

On the screen, projections, contracts, a thousand lives bending toward his will. In another window, the Barcelona villa’s surveillance feed lay open with security logs, infant-room temperature, entry timestamps. He scrolled once, reading without seeing as he thought of Saoirse’s voice that morning, how soft and uncertain it was when she asked him to stay. 

He had wanted to tell her he admired how she’d adapted, how she’d become almost ethereally serene in his absence. Allegra had said once, “Peace in a woman is the rarest luxury a man can afford.” He hadn’t understood it then… until he met her.

At 22:00, he typed a message:

Everything all right?

Five minutes later, she replied: 

Yes. 

It’s quiet as always.

He stared at the words for a long moment, then closed the screen.

Later, dinner with the Swiss finance minister over cigars, brandy, and polite corruption. 

Four men in bland T-shirts and pants sat in the private room at the back of the hotel restaurant with walnut paneling. The faint burn of smoke had already sunk into the walls from decades of similar evenings. The minister laughed too loudly at his own jokes, and spoke in polished half-sentences, the sort that allowed retreat if necessary. Roman matched him. There was a rhythm to these evenings that sounded like pause, concede, retract, or chess played with soft gloves. 

They spoke of bond spreads, a refinery expansion that would “benefit both corridors,” but what about regulatory timing? The minister held his cigar between two careful fingers, smoke unspooling in disciplined ribbons. Numbers were discussed without ever being spoken plainly. Roman inclined his head at the right intervals. It was the slow choreography of men who understood exactly how much to concede without ever conceding anything. The brandy was warm and expensive and unnecessary.

Someone joked about Roman’s club victory, and Roman smiled, finally. He knew the exact revenue bump it had generated, down to the decimal. He could see the numbers as clearly as the crystal in his glass, the merchandise uplift, broadcast shares, post-match traffic, a sponsorship clause that would quietly adjust itself upward, the uptick in hospitality bookings, too. The stadium had been full. It always was when they won at home. 

He said nothing. It was vulgar to speak in commas or translate joy into figures at a dinner table. It was enough that he knew.

When the glasses rose for a toast, he thought briefly of Saoirse, her hair loose that morning, the way she’d said then miss it. The words had almost moved him, but she’d agreed to let him go too easily. She always did.

Something else flickered, another morning in Barcelona. Saoirse was barefoot in the courtyard, hair loose, unpinned, one hand resting against the stone balustrade, saying she would miss him. The way she’d said it lightly, almost apologetically, not accusingly or even theatrically, made him… soft. He had kissed her temple. The ease of it lingered longer than the taste of the brandy.

She was his safe space to return to when the world and all that he was building for himself got overwhelming. She was perfect. He thought of her in pale light, the thin strap of her dress slipping from one shoulder, saying she would miss him. The image, the sound of her voice, kept him strong through his more brutal business moves.

Just last month, in a glass tower overlooking the Rhône, he had listened while the Valcárcel brothers—third-generation shipping magnates from Bilbao who still spoke of Franco-era port concessions, invoking their grandfather’s glory—tried to salvage their shipping arm. They spoke of how they had workers whose fathers had unloaded the same docks.

Roman waited patiently until they finished. Then he said, “Sentiment is expensive. You can’t afford it.” After all, nostalgia did not refinance debt. 

Javier, efficient as ever, slid the revised term sheet that had three points shaved from the brothers’ leverage ratio, collateral restructured through Esteban’s holding vehicle, voting rights diluted under a technicality his legal arm had spotted in the old Aragón charter, across the table without looking up. 

The eldest Valcárcel’s hands trembled as he reached for the pages. “We built that port,” he said, voice cracking despite himself.

Roman did not raise his own. “No,” he replied. “Old Sonny (their grandfather) did. You just inherited it.” The room went still.

Marcela was there with them. She did not intervene, she rarely needed to, but her presence was enough. The Valcárcels had grown up hearing “Suarez” spoken alongside Ferrara steel and de Witt private banking, families who survived wars by bending first and consolidating after. The Suarez name had long ago learned how to remove control; Lindholm & Söner private equity had folded the same way after the sovereign crisis, and Kovačević Estates, when the numbers stopped flattering them. Pride dissolved quickly when liquidity tightened.

When the youngest Valcárcel brother bristled, Roman leaned forward and told him, almost gently, that pride was not a currency that markets recognized. 

By noon, their flagship port concession at Santander was his. Their name would remain engraved above the port authority doors and preserved in the press release, but they were removed from control. Everything else had changed hands. Javier handled the calls; Esteban routed the acquisition through a discreet Luxembourg conduit; other old families took the hint.

Hausmann Maritime recalibrated without public protest, as they had during the Baltic freeze. Cattaneo preferred acquisition to conflict; they learned that lesson in 1943. Lindholm simply moved their capital temporarily overnight. All the old families survived by bending early. And Suarez always consolidated.

They were not the loudest family in Europe.

They were simply the ones who financed things and owned the infrastructure after the loud family collapsed.

Roman left the building having broken no laws, but secured an empire’s throat with a signature, thinking fleetingly how the cool stone of Barcelona would feel under Saoirse’s bare feet. 

The particular clarity he felt when a system yielded cleanly under pressure, when resistance proved predictable, and he had been right about where to press, lingered with him. In the elevator’s mirrored walls, his reflection looked unchanged. He thought only of Saoirse in Barcelona light, her voice gentle as she told him she would miss him, and the contrast steadied him.

He often told himself that if she ever looked at him and truly insisted he stay longer, he might reconsider. If she pressed harder, if she demanded, he would respect it. He was not his father. He was not threatened by strength. He pictured her insisting.

But the image was strangely blank, and the thought settled uneasily.  

Now in Geneva, he remembered, instead, that other evening after he’d flown her into Madrid, invited her into the office, mere months after the twins were born. She had climbed into bed in that silk slip he once said looked like moonlight, kissed his shoulder, and said she missed him. He had been reading. He remembered the exact sentence he’d been on when she kept demanding his attention.

“I’ve been thinking for everyone lately. It’s exhausting,” he’d responded, not looking up.

She had grown very quiet after that. He had not meant to wound her, only to correct the pull. He disliked being tugged at when he was already stretched thin. But she stopped reaching as often after that.

When she had reached toward him too openly, he had stepped back. When she faltered, he steadied her by narrowing the options. When she had burned beneath water that was too hot, he had called it theatrics. He did not connect these things. He only knew that when she moved easily within the boundaries he set, the air felt cleaner. If she ever pushed in a way that threatened anything, truly threatened it, he believed he would accommodate her, but he never tested that belief.

Amancio had ruled through fear and fists. Roman was proud of his own refinement. He never raised his voice or struck Saoirse. He couldn’t even imagine doing that.

The suite upstairs was arranged before he arrived. It always was. The sheets were ironed flat enough to erase any suggestion of prior use, drawn so tight they held the light differently. White lilies stood in a narrow glass vase on the console, his mother’s preference maintained by habit even abroad, the staff’s unspoken homage. He could not remember requesting them; he had never done so. They remembered these things without being told because they had long ago learned that memory was rewarded. They’d mostly replaced the tradition with the roses Saoirse preferred in Barcelona, but he still preferred his mother’s lilies around him everywhere else. They appeared wherever he stayed, in every country, exported faithfully across continents. His mother’s preference had become policy. Order as both inheritance and insulation.

He set his watch beside his phone, parallel to the edge of the desk, adjusting it once so the leather strap aligned precisely with the grain of the oak desk. 

His grandmother had not been orderly in the same way. She was already in her 90s in his earliest memory of her, yet he’d never known a fiercer woman. No one mistook her age for frailty. His daughter carried her name now, and he sometimes wondered whether that had been sentiment or self-instruction, hope that something of her fierceness might pass on.

Mariana Suarez had been fire barely contained. 

Her husband had died when Amancio himself was a boy, and to keep his fortune thriving for her boy, her only child, she never remarried. The estates under her supervision were immaculate. Roman had once watched her dismiss a housekeeper for moving a vase three inches off its line. She filled rooms without raising her voice. Staff trembled because nothing escaped her. Amancio had inherited her intensity but none of her control. Where she tightened, he struck. Where she assessed, he erupted.

Allegra had chosen something else entirely. Perfection with edges aligned, emotions flattened, and noise reduced to non-existence. Roman had grown up inside that stillness like a boy inside glass.

He did not often think of his grandmother at night. She belonged to afternoons, sun on stone, long corridors, the weight of air that did not dare stir.

He was eight the summer he understood the house did not belong to his father. Mariana sat at the head of the dining table. No one else would occupy it before she arrived. Her hands were small and veined, heavy with rings. When she lifted a glass, conversation stilled without instruction.

Amancio entered late that evening. Roman remembered the sound first, a door striking the wall harder than necessary. The laughter from his father’s throat was too loud and already edged. He had brought guests, men from families they always mingled with. Mariana looked at him once, slowly, the way she looked at accounts that did not balance.

“You were expected at seven,” she said with no anger or elevation in tone.

The guests shifted. Someone cleared their throat.

Amancio smiled in a way that did not reach his eyes. “Business does not answer to dinner bells.”

“Business answers to ownership,” she replied, and there was silence for long after.

Roman watched his father’s jaw tighten in reaction to the exposure. He turned to the nearest servant, a young man barely older than a boy, and corrected him sharply for an imagined misplacement of cutlery. The reprimand was precise, cutting, but entirely disproportionate. The servant’s hands trembled. Mariana simply adjusted her napkin and began eating. Roman learned that power was safest when it did not need to move. And men who could not dominate upward would find somewhere else to press.

Later that night, he heard glass break in his parents’ wing. Allegra did not come down the next morning. The lilies in the drawing room were replaced before noon.

The city beyond the glass walls of his suite moved in orderly veins of light, pulses of red and white, traffic threading through wet streets. He loosened his collar and stood there on the edge of the infinite living room suite, listening to the low mechanical hum pulsing below like a heart that underpinned everything from elevators and ventilation to distant engines. Systems inside systems.

He did not consider that memory of his grandmother an origin. It was simply a fact. His father had been large in public and restless in private. His grandmother had been small but immovable. Allegra had chosen perfection as if stillness itself could absorb force.

Tomorrow afternoon would see him back in Madrid, and by nightfall, Singapore for ten days of investor summits, refinery audits, bilateral meetings over an Eastern Corridor expansion, and quiet insistence. The work required his presence, and entire ventures hinged on it. He knew he’d promised to return to Barcelona soon, but he’d delayed this trip twice already. Some timelines did not bend simply because he had newborns. Schedules did not respond to sentiment.

The twins.

They were still so new, their presence unsettlingly fragile in a way he did not enjoy examining. Their expressions were still unfamiliar to him, so he pictured them as scale. The weight of one against his forearm, the way their heads seemed disproportionate and breakable at the neck. They were so small in the crook of an arm that he found himself holding them too carefully, as if the wrong angle might undo something irreversible. They would be asleep by now. 

Infants were disorder disguised as softness. They altered the air of a house, disrupting sleep, temperature, and the very rhythm of life. They wailed. Doors opened more often. Voices lowered, then rose. Schedules bent. He pictured them again, their small mouths opening in sleep, fists curled. He disliked how vulnerable they appeared. It required even more vigilance. Even with the staff in place, the nurses and nannies on rotation, Lisa making the expert pediatric decisions, he preferred Saoirse close to them. She steadied the rhythm of the house, the quiet order he’d built around them. She softened rooms without distorting them. Even when she faltered, she did not disturb the air. 

He remembered the same night with the shower, her skin flushed an angry pink that made his blood boil, her collarbones glowing in the low light. He could still hear his own even, measured voice, the words he meant as instruction. Afterward, she stopped taking long showers when he was home.

The twins were too new to travel. Barcelona was safer. Barcelona, too, did not disturb the air. The villa did not react to the disruption. Just like Saoirse, it contained expectation with its thick walls and measured light, its corridors long enough to swallow sound. It was the family seat, and it was walled against excess, designed to endure centuries.

Bibiana liked to remind them that Suarez heirs began there. Roman found himself agreeing more often lately. The other homes were porous. They attracted too much motion and too many interruptions; too many entrances, too much glass, and so, too many variables. Barcelona remained constant. The floors did not creak, and the temperature held. It did not shift when the winds changed. That was why heirs began there. Bibiana was right. 

And Saoirse belonged there. Barcelona was still, and he wanted Saoirse still, the twins at her side, the house orderly, the days measured. He wanted, needed, to return to that same peace every time, and peace required discipline.

He would tell her, perhaps when they spoke next, that she could start travelling again, gradually, once the twins were older. A year off was reasonable. She could have a luncheon after, an exhibition, something small, quiet, to ease her back into the world. There was no urgency. The world would wait. There was no need to hurry her back into noise. She could come to Madrid more often for something structured, an afternoon engagement. For now, it was better that she remained stable for the twins and to recover her strength. 

Again, he imagined her asking for more, for Como, perhaps, or her London. He imagined himself agreeing. The image held for a moment this time.

The last time she tried to leave a meeting early after he’d brought her in, asked her to sit beside him, to be visible, she had excused herself a few minutes in. Later, he found her in the bathroom, clinging to the porcelain sink, white as her skin. She was often a nervous wreck. He knew the answer in practice, even if he preferred not to name it.

He poured himself a measure of bourbon he wouldn’t finish. He let the cold lowball sit in his hand and checked the time. Barcelona was an hour behind. The twins would be asleep. Saoirse, perhaps, walking the halls again, the way Marta said she sometimes did. He’d never told her to stop. He liked knowing she still moved through his space while he was away. Like proof of gravity, it steadied him, everything about her did. Her footsteps in corridors built by better men long dead suggested a quiet continuity that felt like nothing essential could shift while he was gone. He found it necessary, her movement without departure.

When they first met, of course, he’d noticed her face immediately, that mild beauty. But what struck him most was her lack of friction, that absence of resistance. 

She did not compete for space in a room. She did not interrupt or rush to fill silence. She listened as though nothing in her required negotiation, and gave him a sense of being understood without being challenged. She listened as if the information itself mattered, not the advantage of hearing it first. It had been… restful. Her receptivity steadied him. Her simplicity soothed him.

She was so intelligent, yet she wasn’t grasping, argumentative, or ambitious in the way the women he grew up with were. The women of his childhood sharpened themselves against men. He had grown up around women who rearranged rooms. Saoirse was different. She was softness without demand. She did not rearrange a room simply by entering it. Saoirse did not move vases or confront those who moved them. If he left for three days, she adjusted. If he extended it to five, she adjusted again. When he told her Barcelona was better for the twins, she agreed before the explanation was complete. 

There were brief, almost imperceptible moments when the smoothness of her agreement pressed against him like thin ice, a surface too unbroken. He would find himself provoking small reactions, a delayed reply, a change of plan at the last minute, watching. She rarely protested. She trusted him.

He had not realized, at first, how quickly he began to calibrate himself against her equilibrium. If she was calm, the house felt aligned. If she was unsettled, something in him misfired, a low irritant he preferred to correct immediately. When she seemed distant, which happened rarely, but enough that he noticed, something in the structure of his thoughts shifted slightly out of place. So he would correct it with a suggestion framed as concern.

The invitations she declined were wise decisions. The trips postponed were sensible. The articles she stopped writing were unnecessary distractions. He was only streamlining her life, protecting her from scrutiny and exhaustion, from the world. There were friends who introduced noise, news cycles that agitated her, projects that pulled her attention outward. She was happier this way. She certainly looked it. She was less anxious, more serene and grateful. 

He lay down in the immaculate bed at nearly two in the morning. In the dark, the lilies gave off a faint, sterile sweetness that thinned as the room cooled. Roman lay on his back, eyes open, watching the faint line of light beneath the curtain where the city still moved. He remembered his mother’s Tuscany drawing room smelling the same way. Nothing decayed there without being replaced immediately. Allegra had believed that if everything remained in its place, nothing could explode. Amancio had proven otherwise.

Roman had chosen something else.

When Saoirse’s skin flushed red beneath the bedroom light from that hot shower, when she excused herself from a meeting he had positioned her in, he had felt the faintest echo of that dining room with his father and grandmother. A shift in structure, a misalignment he had to adjust and would keep adjusting when needed. 

The lilies held their shape. Nothing in his suite was out of place. The room breathed at a regulated temperature. In Barcelona, the vents would whisper at precisely 22°, the same calibrated air, the same invisible current, the twins breathing, Saoirse somewhere within the walls, moving from one quiet room to another. It was his job to preserve her innocence. 

He folded his hands over his chest for a moment before turning to his side. He closed his eyes, waiting for sleep to take him. Sleep came without dreams, held in place by the quiet satisfaction that everything, for now, remained exactly where he had left it.

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Four years ago. 

The afternoon had been too still, the kind of heat that flattened sound. Roman remembered the smell first. It was rosemary, linen, the faint jasmine of Allegra’s perfume lingering in the shaded hallways.

She was in the loggia, seated beneath the stone arches that looked out over the Tuscany vineyard her father had given her. A newspaper lay open on her lap, her hand resting lightly on the center. She looked up when he entered, her smile small, knowing.

“So this is the girl who writes poems,” she said in standard Florentine Italian, in that patient tone that could slice through any defense.

Roman poured himself a glass of water from her carafe before answering. “She’s more than that.”

“Mm.” Allegra turned a page of the fresh-off-the-press sheets without looking at it. “They’re always more than that, aren’t they, at first? How old is she?”

He didn’t answer, and that was answer enough.

Allegra’s voice softened, though her eyes did not. “You were already running companies at that age. At 21, I was hosting diplomats. And she’s… writing poems.” She flipped another page, inwardly noting what events were relevant to her circuit, and how all of it was entirely cooked up. “She’s barely begun to know the world… barely begun to understand the cost of anything,” she mumbled that last part.

He didn’t rise to it. “She’s clever. And not the kind of clever that wants to be seen. The kind that listens.”

Allegra’s eyes flickered toward him. “Listens to you, you mean.”

He paused, considering. “Yes.”

That amused her. She closed the papers. “And that’s rare now, I suppose.”

“It is. She listens because she understands,” he said quietly. “And she sees me.”

“Ah.” Allegra folded the paper neatly, aligning its edges with meticulous care. “Where does she come from, this clever listener of yours?”

“London. Originally Newcastle.”

Allegra’s mouth curved faintly. “Working stock.” She said it without malice, but with that effortless cruelty of those who had never needed to climb. “And you think she’ll bear the weight of your father’s name?”

“She doesn’t care about that.”

“That,” Allegra said, “is either very good or very dangerous.”

He said nothing.

“Women who don’t care for our world, who enter it unaware or indifferent to its currency usually end up breaking under it.” A long pause. “You forget how precise it is, how it measures worth in gestures, accents, silences…” 

Her tone remained cool, but her meaning bit deep. “You’re thirty-six, Roman. I’ve watched you pass through rooms full of women who knew how to match you… and you never paused for one. Now, you choose a girl young enough to be dazzled, and you call it peace.”

“She isn’t dazzled,” he said, his voice tightening. “She’s grounded and still, and she knows who she is.”

Allegra’s expression softened into something almost pitying. “No one knows who they are at twenty-one. Least of all the ones who’ve had to climb.”

He met her gaze, unflinching now. “You think I’ve lost judgment.”

“No, I think you know exactly what you’re doing,” she replied. “What does she want from you?”

He held her gaze. “Nothing.”

“She wants nothing from you yet, and that makes you feel safe. But women who want nothing are the ones who learn fastest how much power that gives them.”

“She’s not like that.”

“They all are,” Allegra said simply. “Eventually.”

“You underestimate her.”

“And you overestimate love. It’s never enough in our family.” She studied him for a moment, her only child, Amancio’s heir, always the calm in the house of storms. “That’s precisely what frightens me. She wants nothing, so she’ll find power in being needed, and you won’t notice it until she stops asking.”

“She won’t stop asking,” he said, too quickly.

“Figlio mio.” Roman loved when his mother’s Tuscan gorgia of consonant sounds jumped out just a little whenever she said those two words. It was the closest she ever got to warmth, though her voice always stayed gentle. “They all stop eventually. If she’s wise, she’ll learn that your love depends on her peace.”

“She doesn’t need to learn that,” he said, looking away. “She already is peace.”

At that, Allegra reached for her glass of wine and regarded him with quiet, tragic fondness. “You think you’ve found me again,” she murmured. “But she’s not me, Roman. And you can’t remake her to be.”

He didn’t answer. 

Somewhere behind them, cicadas shrilled, their hum rising like static through the stillness. Allegra sighed, setting down her glass. “Bring her here when you’re sure. I’ll know what she’s made of.”

He nodded, but he never did. Saoirse would never set foot in that particular house, Allegra’s haven, while Allegra was alive.

Years later, Roman would remember this conversation, the stillness of that afternoon, and understand too late that what his mother had seen in him, what he called love, was only the quiet beginning of conquest.

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.