The Suarez Myth: Chapter 5

The maids entered at ten.

They stopped at the threshold as if crossing into a chapel. None of them spoke. The smell was the first thing, sweet, heady, faintly metallic from the cut stems. The flowers covered nearly the entire room, a pale tide of devotion and decay. They’d joined the dozens of florists and deliverymen in carrying them in before dawn and placing them here and there, but it didn’t stop them from being surprised to see it all as it was now.

Lisa came in behind them, carrying the twins’ morning schedules. She paused too, lowering her voice instinctively. “Dios mío,” she whispered, then glanced toward Saoirse, still lying back just at the edge of the bed in her silk robe, the hem grazing petals.

“Señora, should we—”

“Not yet,” Saoirse said quietly, not looking up.

Her rare ginger hair was undone, her expression unreadable. The note rested once more on the nightstand beside the water carafe. From the hallway, the faint sound of a nursery rhyme drifted in, one of the nannies humming to Mariana.

Lisa hesitated. “The flowers will wilt quickly in this heat.”

“I know.”

“Should I have the gardeners take them out?”

Saoirse moved finally, slowly. She stretched out for the note, taking it from the nightstand again, tracing a fingertip along the spine of the folded card, weighing it without reading. The air was thick, syrupy now, the sweetness turning faintly sour. She imagined the hands that had arranged this, yet all of it credited to one man who wasn’t here.

Around her, Lisa and two young maids waited as though on pause, not daring to breathe because the room was too quiet, its owner too listless to risk disrupting anything.

Saoirse bent down and touched one of the flowers. The stem pricked her finger. She drew back sharply to see a pinprick of red bloom on her skin. It was so small, she almost laughed. One drop of colour in all that white. She pressed her thumb over it… to feel something, even if it was a little pain.

“Just open the windows,” she said at last. “Let them breathe.”

Lisa nodded, signalling the maids to pull back the curtains fully. The sea light flooded in, sharp and clean, spilling over the white chaos on the floor. The petals shone almost gold for a moment before settling back into pallor.

Saoirse stood slowly, stepped barefoot into the blooms, and began to walk. Each movement crushed petals and their bouquet wraps underfoot with a muted sigh. The maids froze, unsure whether to intervene. She stopped near the far window, looking out at the horizon where the morning haze softened the line between sea and sky.

“After lunch,” she said, without turning. “Take half to the chapel. The rest… dry them. He likes it when things are preserved.”

Her tone was even, but something in it made Lisa’s throat tighten, as if the instruction had been given by someone not entirely there.

When the staff began clearing the flowers later, the villa was filled with a faint rustle, like paper burning in slow motion. Trays of petals were carried out into the courtyard to dry in the sun, pale hands sorting the ones not yet browned. From the balcony above, Saoirse watched silently. The wind toyed with the corners of her robe, and she thought of how love, too, could be cleaned away, efficiently, reverently, without a sound.

By evening, the marble floors shone again, but the scent lingered still, faint and persistent, caught in the seams of silk, in her hair, in the soft corners of the room. When she went to bed that night, a single dried rose had been placed on her pillow. No note this time. Saoirse looked at it for a long moment, then turned it upside down, stem over petals, and left it on the nightstand.

By the third day, the scent had settled into everything. The silk curtains, the cotton of the twins’ blankets, even the water in the vases, wherever she walked, the air still held that sweetness gone faintly stale, like perfume on old paper.

Lisa said the petals drying in the courtyard looked beautiful, so Saoirse went to see them once, late in the afternoon. The trays were lined in neat rows beneath gauze, sunlight seeping through like honey. The flowers had lost their shape, curling inward, pale and whisper-thin. They looked peaceful, emptied of color but somehow intact, neither alive nor gone.

When she reached out to touch one, it crumbled instantly, a breath of white pieces against her palm. That night, she thought of it again, how easily something soft could be preserved if it surrendered soon enough. All it took was control of the temperature, the light, the air. The body stayed perfect if you kept the world away from it.

Maybe that was love, too. Maybe that was what he meant.

When Roman returned three days later, she was in bed reading beside the lamp. The room still smelled faintly of roses and cool linen. He kissed her temple, told her she looked rested, and for once, she believed him.

The maids had cleared every trace of decay. The roses had been pressed and stored in white boxes marked ‘Conservado, Agosto’. In the archive room beneath the villa, they joined the silver frames, old letters, family relics too fragile for air. Above, Saoirse slept beneath the same hum of controlled air, precision, and preservation.

And in the silence that followed, she began to forget that love was ever meant to move.

+

Order was the only tenderness he ever received.

Roman Suarez grew up in a house that looked serene but vibrated with tension, the immaculate Barcelona villa Saoirse now inhabited. Allegra, his mother, was Amancio’s second wife. Much like Saoirse, she was younger, foreign, brought into an empire she would never truly own. But unlike Saoirse, Allegra was exquisitely groomed for it. She was adored publicly and undone privately.

Amancio was charismatic, brilliant, erratic, a man whose moods could change the temperature of a room. To the world, he was a builder of fortunes. To his household, he was a storm system. Allegra learned early that her survival depended on composure. She ran the household like a palace, every gesture choreographed, every silence meaningful.

Roman grew up watching his mother hold that storm in her smile. He learned to read her face like scripture, the faint tightening at her jaw before a fight, the way she’d smooth her napkin when she was afraid.

When she said, “Everything’s fine,” what she really meant was, “Be still. Don’t provoke him.” That lesson became his religion.

He was raised in glass rooms, the kind where adults laughed too loudly and staff pretended not to hear things. 

The first time he saw his father throw a glass at the wall, he was six. The first time he saw his mother bleed, he was seven. The first time he saw her compose herself afterward, applying lipstick before anyone else entered the room, he understood something essential: Love wasn’t what saved you. Control was.

From then on, Roman stopped playing with other children. He preferred to sit silently beside his mother during dinners, correcting the placement of the cutlery when it was off-center. She called him mi ordenado pequeño (my orderly one), half affection, half relief.

When Amancio raged, Roman tidied to keep from crying. He shut doors. He ignored his nannies. He arranged the chessboard in his playroom again and again.

By adolescence, he’d become his mother’s confidant. She’d whisper things like, “You’ll understand when you’re older how men can build empires and destroy them over a look.” He thought she was warning him not to be like Amancio. What she was really doing was teaching him how to survive Amancio’s world.

And she died still believing that order could hold back chaos. Her last words to him, according to what he murmured to Saoirse on a balcony before the funeral, were, “Keep everything beautiful, even the pain. Especially the pain.”

+

Saoirse had always loved roses.

Not the long-stemmed kind that came in shipments, but the kind that fought to live, the small, stubborn ones that grew along wire fences. Her grandmother kept a narrow garden behind their house in Newcastle, two stone steps, a low fence, a patch of earth stubborn enough to bloom even in the cold. 

They bloomed unevenly, bruised by rain and salt air, petals the color of watered milk and diluted wine. Saoirse used to crouch by them after school, brushing off the slugs, snipping the dead heads the way her grandmother showed her. She’d snip above the second leaf, always at an angle, never too close to the root. The smell stayed on her hands all day, sweet and a little sour.

“They thrive on neglect, you know,” her grandmother would murmur, trimming another stem with her arthritic fingers, before she stopped moving altogether. “Too much love and they rot. Too much tending makes them delicate.”

Saoirse had laughed then, not understanding, but somehow, she believed her. Roses were proof that beauty could survive rough weather if left alone.

After her funeral years later, the garden was the only part of the house Saoirse couldn’t bear to look at. By the time she went to live with Sinead in Redhill, the bushes had withered, stripped bare by frost. The scent she remembered, that faint mixture of earth, iron, and sweetness, stayed with her like a ghost.

She didn’t see another rose for years.

The Suarez houses smelled of lilies, always lilies or tulips, Allegra’s preference preserved like law. Every villa, every city, every suite Roman inherited kept the same perfume of purity and control. Saoirse had grown used to the sameness of every floral arrangement, the way nothing ever changed without permission. The flowers came pre-cut, air-freighted, and arranged in silent abundance. They were replaced before they could fade, their scent carefully measured so it wouldn’t offend the guests. She never saw soil anymore, only marble, water filtered through silver taps, and bouquets that outlived their meaning.

Then, that morning, after he’d told her in that quiet, reasonable way that her oldest friend might not be safe to trust, she woke to find the room filled with roses. 

It was the first time he’d ever given her any. She still wondered whether it was a kindness or a correction. He’d written about the beauty of her peace. The roses looked like peace, but they smelled like grief. Her grandmother’s words came back to her, soft and uninvited. They thrive on neglect. Was that what he believed, too?

Sometimes, in the quiet hours when the twins were asleep and the staff whispered in Spanish down the hall, she would walk through the house and think of that small back garden, how the wind had made the roses bend instead of break. She thought of that now whenever she saw the florists unloading boxes through the servant’s entrance. 

Roman had started sending them. Roses upon roses, always new, always dying too soon. She wondered sometimes if he knew what it meant that he had made the flower she’d once loved for its resilience the one most used to adorn her captivity. The irony almost comforted her.

The morning light reached her dressing table, catching on the wedding ring, the one that still felt too heavy for her finger. The twins were in the old family nursery with their nurses and nannies. Somewhere in the house, she could hear the distant rhythm of the sea, the faint hum of a life designed not to change, the same perfect silence that filled every Suarez room.

And that was how the day of their second anniversary began.

It was quiet. Roman remembered, of course. He always remembered. A Cartier box appeared on her breakfast tray, red and gold, slim and heavy, inside it a diamond-and-sapphire bracelet. The stones caught the morning light like frozen tears, delicate enough to whisper but not sing. As she slid it over her wrist, she read his handwritten note:

She smiled, because what else could she do? It was meant as intimacy, a gesture of trust and inheritance. The bracelet was beautiful, but it bound her to a history that didn’t feel like hers. It felt like nothing was ever really hers. The bracelet marked her, but not as herself, not as Saoirse, as another in a long line of Mrs Suarezes.

He arrived home early just for her, and they ate a late lunch alone in the Barcelona dining room. No candles filling the house this time, no rare books waiting in stacks, no thousands of flames, just wine, cold lamb, and his glass raised in a toast: “To two years of peace, and to the family we’re building.”

Saoirse smiled, but it caught in her throat. After the children, after the endless weeks without him… she thought of the first anniversary, of the journals he had bound and preserved, of him reading her words aloud like scripture, of the fierce, lingering sex that had felt like worship. She wondered if he remembered that night, too, or if memory for him was just another ledger.

As she reached for her glass, he said it casually, like an afterthought, “You went out last week. To Passeig de Gràcia.”

Her hand paused. “Yes.”

He shrugged lightly. “Emilio mentioned it in his report. I’m glad you took some air.” His tone was kind, almost indulgent, but there was a precision to it like a scalpel that had drawn blood before you noticed the cut.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” she said quickly.

“I’m not worried.” His smile deepened, reassuring and final. “I like knowing where you are, that’s all. It helps me focus.” He reached across the table, brushed his thumb along the edge of her wrist where the new bracelet caught the light. “Next time, tell me first. I’ll make sure the streets are quieter for you.”

She laughed softly, unsure if it was meant to be a joke. “Quieter?”

His eyes flickered with warmth that felt almost like pity. “You don’t like crowds, remember?” he said, voice lowering, fond, as if reciting something he’d memorized long ago.

He lifted his glass again, as if to seal the moment, and she lifted hers in response, her pulse fluttering under the weight of his touch.

She had tried to plan something for him this time. Two weeks earlier, she’d asked Emilio to drive her somewhere ordinary. He’d looked puzzled but obeyed, arranging a discreet afternoon away from the villa.

They took the car through the upper district, Barcelona’s winter light slipping between the narrow façades. 

A second car followed behind, and when they stopped, the security detail stepped out first, scanning doorways that no one had ever thought to guard. Saoirse had to wait until they gave a nod before emerging, her linen coat belted too neatly for anonymity.

She had Emilio stop them at the quieter end of Passeig de Gràcia, where the luxury stores gave way to smaller ateliers, the kind that still smelled faintly of leather and dust. She kept her head down, walked a few paces behind him, scanning window displays as if something might reveal itself, like a rare first edition, a set of cufflinks shaped like anchors. Emilio, ever patient, matched her pace by half a step, and the security car idled slowly half a block behind. 

Every object seemed already his. They were either too ordinary, too expensive, too curated, too much like what she’d seen in his drawers or on his desk. Nothing felt right. 

It also felt like trespassing. She tried to linger, to ask questions, to pretend she might pick something up with her own hands, but the air around her kept tightening. The shop clerks were too eager, Emilio too close, her shadow always in view. She wanted to touch a box edge, to lift a jar, but everything came pre-wrapped in someone else’s deference. 

Some young women paused by the curb, whispering, “Is that her? Roman Suarez’s wife?”

“The Irish one?”

Their words followed her like perfume, gentle, speculative, almost kind. She didn’t turn. The glass reflected her back to herself. Her hair was too red for this city, face too pale, eyes that seemed to look too deeply into herself. The reflection blurred as Emilio’s shadow crossed hers again.

“I’ve seen her picture once at some gala. My God, she’s prettier in the flesh!” 

To the strangers, she looked like a myth sighted by accident, a beautiful ghost wandering among the living. Her coat was pale linen, her hair pinned too neatly, her smile polite but cautious, like a creature still remembering how to breathe air. 

Saoirse heard none of it directly. It was all whispered and in Spanish. She only caught the hush that followed her as she moved, the kind that comes when people try not to stare. A few people lifted their phones discreetly, but she looked away before she saw the flash.

In one of the windows hung a row of old pens, brass-tipped and delicate. For a moment, she almost stepped inside, imagining something to remind him of the letters he’d once written her. But the thought dissolved as quickly as it came. It was too selfish. And the clerk inside had already recognized her, posture straightening, face brightening with professional anticipation. Saoirse looked away.

She thought of writing him a poem instead, but the words stuck in her throat as too childish, too whimsical. She thought of a watch, but that, too, felt naïve, provincial, like playacting a kind of woman she’d never learned how to be. She had no experience in choosing things for men who already owned the world.

Emilio, sensing her uncertainty, offered quietly, “We could have something commissioned, Señora.” 

She smiled at him, polite, defeated. “He’d see through that.”

When they returned to the car, she sat in silence, watching the boutiques recede through the tinted glass, wondering why love for a man like Roman always required translation. She rested her forehead against the tinted glass. Outside, the streets were still loud with the lives of other people. Inside the car, her world was soundproof.

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, mi amor,” he said now as they sat at the table, and she smiled. She thought of herself once more as someone that only existed for him, something created simply to be his peace.

She kissed his lips a little too tenderly when he stood to embrace her, as if the kiss could count as a gift. She thought of the babies sleeping upstairs and told herself they too were gifts enough.

Later, after he’d gone to take a call with Javier in the library, she remained at the table, fingers resting where his hand had brushed her wrist. The bracelet felt heavier now, its cold curve pressing against her pulse. 

The air smelled faintly of lilies. The staff must have replaced the centerpiece again. She looked at the wine glass he had used, the print of his mouth still visible at the rim, and thought of his words: I like knowing where you are.

She found herself smiling faintly, almost gratefully.

Outside, the late sun flared against the sea, turning the windows into mirrors. The house, immaculate as ever, breathed around her. It was quiet, climate-controlled, waiting. Somewhere inside her, the phrase, “Peace looks beautiful on you,” uncurled again, slow and tender, like the echo of a prayer she no longer questioned.

But lying beside him in bed for the first time in days, she felt awful that she had no idea what gift would make him smile, not the way he made her smile. And in that realization was a small, sharp terror that she truly had no material value of her own to offer.

+

Roman invited her to the Suarez Global HQ in Madrid again. 

It was the first time he’d done so since the twins were born, so she was relieved. The 21-floor building was still made of glass and white marble after some months away, and the walls still gleamed, but everything else was different.

In his office, a low hum of air circulated through vents invisible to the eye. Two Monets hung beneath a long line of security-grade windows overlooking the city. He must’ve moved them from the Barcelona villa recently. The new carpet was thick, soft grey, the kind you wouldn’t notice until your heels sank into it.

Saoirse sat alone on the Italian leather couch by the far window, knees crossed at the ankle, like she’d done countless times before. She’d dressed simply, a black silk dress, small pearl studs, nothing extravagant. The office was silent but brimming with presence, with money, with his world. She glanced at the antique gold clock on his desk. Roman was 30 minutes into a closed-door meeting downstairs.

They told her he was entertaining a $400 million capital injection from an Eastern investment group. Strategic growth. Industrial diversification. Big words that hadn’t meant much to her until today, when she saw how the entire building had changed.

The staff stood straighter when they passed her. The floral arrangements were swapped for stark minimalist vases. The espresso machine near the reception hummed like it had something to prove. Even Emilio, normally charming, barely smiled. Javier was probably with Roman in the meeting.

"If you need anything, let us know. The meeting shouldn’t run over an hour," Emilio had said when she arrived.

From her seat, she heard footsteps, laughter, then hush. The outer office door opened, and Saoirse turned a little. A man entered, surrounded by aides in dark suits. He was tall, elegant, with the calm of someone who’d turned money into presence. He didn’t look at her, not yet.

He spoke to Emilio in French. Saoirse caught fragments. The man’s eyes eventually flicked toward the inner glass wall where he could see her, waiting, composed, wife. He smiled, polite, faintly amused, then turned away. Saoirse’s chest tightened, suddenly aware of how this world worked.

The money wasn’t just numbers. It entered rooms first, rearranged tone, swallowed air. Saoirse sat still, but her thoughts weren't. She watched the city below, a thousand tiny lives moving through late afternoon light, and felt foolish for coming. What had she expected? Maybe he'd meet her at the door, smile like he used to. Maybe he’d say something in that low voice of his, “You came for me?” like it mattered, like she mattered.

Instead, she was part of the backdrop. Even the investor’s gaze made her feel like art. Beautiful, expensive, yes. But also hung on the wall, framed, motionless.

The murmur of voices and doors just outside the office brought her back. She smoothed her dress, sat straighter, wondered what her posture said. Does it say I belong? Or does it say I’m still trying to? She didn’t know anymore.

The morning he’d flown to Madrid, leaving her in Barcelona, she’d placed one hand on Roman’s chest just for a second, just to feel the weight of him. He’d kissed her forehead so softly it barely registered as affection.

She caught her reflection in the glass beside her, the sleek lines of the postpartum body she’d worked very hard to get back, the practiced grace of her expression. But her eyes looked nervous, too alert.

I shouldn’t feel like this just sitting here. Like she was about to get caught doing something wrong, like being in his space without being was… trespassing. She shifted, crossed, and uncrossed her legs as the silence grew teeth.

Then the outer door opened again. Another corporate figure glanced in. A flicker of recognition, then respectful dismissal. It hit her that she had no role here, not really, not in these meetings, not on the spreadsheets, not in the slow chess game of power played by people who shake hands in four currencies.

She was adored in the abstract, but not consulted, cherished privately, but not considered publicly.

Yet, when Roman finally arrived, looking radiant and commanding, her heart still flipped like she was 19, like this was still some kind of love story, not the second act of her erasure.

The moment he walked in, the energy shifted. He stepped into the marble-floor office like he owned the hour, which in many ways, he did. She stood. He kissed her cheek, a perfect show of grace from a husband who kept his wife nearby. But when he spoke to the investor, his tone was different, lower, clipped.

“I appreciate your flexibility on timeline. We’ll review the tranche in two phases.”

$400 million. Saoirse watched him speak to the investor, smiling, smiling, and quietly wondering what happens to people like her when that much money moves through the room.

Finally, Roman smiled and took her hand, warm, assured, like a man proud of the woman waiting for him. He introduced her to all of them, and as they exited, he slowed for a beat at the elevator with the investors and associates close by. He said in a low voice, “You looked beautiful just now. Very... composed.”

She felt his approval like a lightning bolt through her body and smiled. He brushed a lock of hair from her cheek and pressed the elevator button himself. For a second, she believed in the version of him that still wanted her close.

But as their car glided past the lit façades of Passeig de Gràcia ten minutes later, inside was silent.

Saoirse turned to him gently. “You seemed... relieved after the meeting.”

He didn’t look up from his phone, “We’ve been dancing with their advisors for eight months. This was just the final round.”

“And they’re investing?”

“They’re interested.” He scrolled, typed something. The screen lit his face in cool blue.

She watched him. What was it like to carry so much, and still find her so... weightless? “Was it hard, choosing to take their money?”

He still didn’t look up, didn’t look at her. “Money isn’t chosen. It’s accepted or outpaced.”

That silenced her. She didn’t know how to stay in the conversation without slipping.

Later that night, after she’d called Barcelona and confirmed the twins had fallen asleep and Lisa had retired, Saoirse stepped out of the bathroom, hair damp, skin clean, suddenly asking herself why he’d called her to Madrid, to his office, at all. 

She was wearing the slip nightdress he once said reminded him of moonlight, as she climbed into bed beside him, slowly. He was reading something on a tablet. Stock reports, legal briefs, something. She kissed his bare shoulder, but he didn’t react. 

“I missed you today,” she said very quietly. A long pause.

“I’ve been thinking for everyone lately. It’s exhausting,” he murmured, still reading from his tablet.

Quieter still, she said, “I wasn’t trying to add pressure. I just... I wanted to be near you.”

“Being near me doesn’t mean constantly pulling me.”

That’s when she knew he wasn’t angry, just already somewhere else, on the next business target perhaps. She lay beside him, facing the ceiling, but she couldn't fall asleep.

It could’ve been minutes or hours later when he put his tablet away and turned the lights off. She felt him face her, but he didn't touch her. She still couldn’t sleep, not with everything that confused her about today still scrambled in her head.

“That investor from today. The $400 million group. What does it mean for the company?”

He shifted and cleared his throat. When he finally spoke, he was gentle but still distant. “It means I’ve done what I always do. I’ve protected us.”

She nodded in the dark, even though he couldn't see it, and decided that today, she’d been fine china. He’d made sure she was beautifully placed, rarely touched, and always out of reach. That’s why he’d called for her.

Saoirse flew back to Barcelona the next morning just so she could watch the babies wake. They cooed in their white bassinets beside the wide windows as she stood there beside them. She’d come to the nursery straight from the car in her cinched cream blouse, soft grey trousers, no lipstick, just foundation and quiet. Too neatly dressed for so early in the morning. Light spilled in through sheer curtains as she stood. 

Lisa entered with a younger nanny, holding a sterilized bottle. She paused when she saw the young Señora. Something about the room felt… stiller than usual, so she waved for her assistant to wait outside. Finally, she spoke, “They’re early birds today. They barely let me boil water.”

Saoirse smiled, but it was too quick, too polite. “They’re getting smarter. I think they’ve worked out how to tag-team you.”

Lisa chuckled. She placed the bottle down on the changing table, then turned to watch Saoirse for a beat. “Did you sleep, Señora?”

Softly, Saoirse replied, “He didn’t come to bed until late.” A pause. Lisa nodded. “He’s working on a major deal. He’s… thinking for everyone.”

Lisa adjusted the twins’ blanket, and without turning, “You used to hum to them in the mornings.”

Saoirse blinked and looked down at her own hands. “I didn’t notice I’d stopped.”

Lisa faced her and made her voice as gentle as possible, “That’s why I said it, Señora.”

Saoirse looked like she might cry. Instead, she nodded once, turned to the babies, and touched the top of their heads one by one with a kind of practiced grace. She started to hum something softly, as if unsure of the tune.

Lisa moved to the side, nudged for her assistant to come in and work out the feeding schedules, and let the silence stretch around them, warmer now but still marked.

At the end of the day, Saoirse stepped out of her soft home slippers slowly. One, then the other. Her blouse slipped to the floor like fabric exhaling. She didn’t turn on the music, didn’t pour a bath. She walked into the shower naked but with her makeup still on.

Hot water on full blast, she stood there with her hands at her sides and eyes closed, letting the heat blister the skin between her shoulder blades. She was still trembling. She couldn’t stop the small, constant tremor that lived behind her ribs.

“You keep him civil.”

“You soften the room.”

The sentences echoed, one over the other, like oil slicks layered over glass. She leaned forward and pressed her hands to the marble wall. Her breath shallowed as she thought of Sinead… and Sinead’s brother… and that cramped house she lived in with them for a year between secondary school and university. Slowly, her forehead followed her hands. She rested it there, eyes open as the water poured, as she trembled still.

She whispered something, but the room didn't respond. Only the water did, hot and relentless on her chest, but she couldn’t really feel it. She wanted to feel it, like the silence that kept pouring and won’t let her speak.

The heat pressed harder. She stayed still, not knowing if it was water or memory crawling over her skin. Something flickered behind her eyes, white noise, an old voice, a hum that could’ve been the plane from that night, the low hum of engines.

“The same sister whose brother tried to touch you…” The words came back without sound, just the shape of them, the warmth of his breath on her ear as he’d said it so gently. Touch you. Tried to touch you.

He’d meant it like comfort, or maybe control. She couldn’t tell the difference now. She hadn’t been able to then. His tone had been soft, almost tender, the way someone might trace a scar to prove they remembered where it hurt. She’d let him. She’d let him turn the pain into intimacy. And now, years later, the same tenderness burned through her skin like an accusation.

The water kept running. She let it. She let it until she couldn’t tell what was burning, her skin or the part of her that still tried to forget. The water stung, the air thickened, and she felt her body speak in the only language it had left, heat, ache, silence. The marble tiles blurred, the air shimmered. She thought she smelled something, champagne, maybe, or her grandmother’s roses, or the inside of that flat she never talked about, or Roman’s roses.

She wasn’t remembering, not exactly. It was something quieter, like a pulse in the chest, a tightening of the throat, a small voice that said enough but never loud enough to hear.

She pressed her forehead harder against the wall. She pressed her palms there until her fingertips throbbed. She was just… hot, tired, maybe sick. It didn’t matter. The silence was the same. Somewhere deep inside, the sentence formed but never finished: You have me… You have me…

The water answered for her. Somewhere beneath the noise of the shower, she thought she heard his voice again, steady, gentle, impossible to fight: You have me. You’ll sleep better and smile more.

She hadn’t realized until now that she was still waiting to be rescued.

That night, Saoirse sat on the edge of the bed when she heard he’d returned to Barcelona too. How many nights had she sat at that precise spot waiting for him? How many more nights to come? She was clean, her hair damp, wrapped in one of his white silk robes instead of hers, loosely knotted.

Her skin was pink, angrily so, from the scalding shower. A blush of heat across her chest and collarbones, barely visible to her in dim light until Roman walked in. He tossed his cufflinks onto the dresser, shrugged off his jacket, and paused.

“What happened to your skin?”

She looked up, startled. Her voice was painfully quiet. “Nothing. I just— The water was hotter than I meant.”

He crossed to her. “That’s not nothing.” He pulled the robe open just enough to see the flushed red across her chest and the beginning of her shoulder. His mouth tightened. “Jesus, Saoirse. Were you trying to cook yourself?”

She pulled the robe closed again. “It wasn’t on purpose.”

He looked her in the eye now. “Are you sure? Because it looks like something else. Like you’re trying to tell me something.”

She didn't answer. He stepped back.

“You take off after a meeting I brought you into, that you helped me win, after I asked for you. I wanted you close, and your response is to burn yourself?”

Shocked still by his version of events, she stammered before managing to say, “I didn’t burn myself.”

“No? Because that certainly looks like a cry for help.” His calmness was sharp, which made it somehow worse than yelling.

She swallowed hard. “It was just a hot shower.” Her voice was too soft.

“You know what I don’t tolerate? Theatrics. Not from you. You don’t get to fall apart just because someone asked you to be useful.” His voice was still too calm.

He turned and left the room. She sat there, hands shaking like they were getting used to, the robe falling open slightly, the red on her skin blooming, proof that even her pain wasn’t hers to keep.

He didn’t come to bed that night, and Saoirse imagined that he’d already flown off to another country, another continent, another world. The sound in her head, the rush, the hiss, the heat, continued after the door closed. It settled somewhere deeper, steady as breath. The shower had long stopped running, but the water hadn’t. It was inside her now, coiling quiet, filling every hollow the silence left.

She sat there for a long time, robe clutched at her chest, steam still ghosting from her skin, the air cooling around her like punishment. For a fleeting second, she thought she heard him again, his calm voice, his practiced mercy, but it was only the house breathing, the walls expanding with night. Even when he wasn’t there, silence moved through her like a command.

Another morning, another pale light muted by gauzy curtains, Saoirse woke slowly, alone. His robe was still twisted around her, her skin still pink across her chest, not blistered, but tight, tender. She sat up, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and saw it on her vanity. A pale glass jar with no label. Next to it was yet another folded card, embossed with his initials. She opened and read the note.

That was it. He simply left her a gift that functioned as a command, another pointed reminder that Your body is ours, so preserve it accordingly.

She opened the jar. The cream was soft, almost iridescent. It smelled like crushed pearls and clean linen. She dipped a fingertip in and touched it to her collarbone, then stopped, wiped it off with the back of her hand.

She left the jar open on her vanity and headed to her bathroom to turn on the tap. She cupped water in her hands to rinse her face and looked at herself in the mirror. The redness was already fading, but what lingered was the knowing that even her healing was expected to perform.