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Cracks in Paradise [I'm Your Man]

Characters/Pairings: soft!dark mafia Andy Barber x curvy Millennial female!reader Word Count: 6.8k Summary: You and Andy hit a wall during a dinner in with friends where a throwaway comment puts Andy on the defense, and the fallout threatens to shatter what you've tenuously been nurturing together in Italy.

Content/Warnings: forced marriage; mafia themes; explicit smut/rough sex/mildly dubious consent

Author Note: Time for another IYM!Monday update (Monday eve again for some). Again, this link won't wor forever, but for reference, this is your Italian villa on Lake Como, and that outdoor dining spot shown in the listing is what made me pick THIS villa over the others I was considering - and it's featured in this chapter.

Additional Note: This chapter takes what I put into an answer for something @biteofcherry put into my inbox right in the very beginning of IYM!Andy's existence (Nov 2023) before I sat down and developed a much longer and more intricate plot and loosely reworks it to fit into what the story has become now.

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You have learned to read Andy well through the past weeks: the way he stands at a window, how he crosses the flagstone kitchen after lunch, the angle of his body when he sits at the enormous marble island, elbows planted, hands steepled. Today, there is nothing predatory in his posture—no sharpness, no smirk—but a kind of diffident calculation, as though he’s rehearsing a script only halfway written. Still, you leave him to reveal whatever it is he’s thinking about for when he decides to bring it out and present it to you. He remains contemplative all morning.

You are rinsing your plates after lunch, and you’re considering taking the walk down to the lake, when Andy finally says, “Wait.” The word lands with no urgency or demand, it is simply a marker before what he wants to come next.

When you turn, he is already moving toward the glass-fronted cabinet near the pantry—a section you have seen but never opened, because you’ve lived off simple meals through the early parts of the day—bread, figs, cheeses. And for the rest of your meals, at some point a private chef descends either to cook dinner or drop off dishes for the week, and occasionally Andy will drive you to one of the lakeshore trattorias and order for you in his fluent, unshowy Italian.

Andy returns to your side with an old, battered notebook in hand. He sets the notebook on the counter with both hands, a careful act. You recognize the reverence in his fingers, feel the slight uptick of gravity in the room.

It’s a spiral-bound thing, the kind you’d expect to find in a grandmother’s kitchen drawer—edges dog-eared, pages stained with rings and flour-dust, a dozen tabs made of masking tape and ancient Post-its. The front cover says, in an elaborate, feminine hand: FAMILY RECIPES.

You dry your hands before reaching for the precious tome. You flip through the pages, careful, running your thumb along the edge the way you might with old money or ancient letters. Most of the recipes are written in faded, looping script, others in blocky, penciled all-caps. There are short, cryptic notes in the margins—“add more lemon if not fresh,” “marinate overnight or don’t bother”—and the effect is of something not curated for show, but built up over years of trial and error.

You glance up at Andy, who is watching you with a studied nonchalance, as if he might bolt if you laugh at this offering.

You run your hand down the page, feeling the indentations of the pen, the grit of flour caught in the spiral’s seam. “Did you ever make these? Or is this… was this your mom’s?”

“It was hers. We made most everything in there at some point together.” He shrugs, not quite meeting your eyes. You imagine the blocky script then has to be his additions and annotations. “I thought it might be good to have a few things from home here. For the future.”

The word future lands heavy between you, but not unwelcome. He edges closer, almost bashful, as if worried that presenting this piece of his past is a violation, or an imposition, or worse, a vulnerability. You can hardly believe how tentative this moment is between the two of you, how precious and telling.

“Which do you like?” you ask, voice softer than you intend, but Andy doesn’t seem to mind. He leans in and flips to a page marked with a yellowing Post-it, the ink here a mix of bold and delicate: LEMON CHICKEN. There is a doodle of a chicken in the margin, and a note in a younger hand: “good for impressing guests.”

Andy’s finger rests there, but he doesn’t speak right away. Instead, he moves behind you, arms coming to rest on either side of the notebook, bracketing you in. His chin finds your shoulder. “We could try this one,” he says, after a moment. Another beat, and then, “It’s more complicated than it looks.” His mouth is close to your ear, but the games are absent; this is not a seduction, but something closer to an ask. You realize it is important to him, more than he will admit.

Your turn your head slightly so you can meet each others’ eyes. “For tonight?”

You see the exact second he wants to say, No, not tonight, but he’s set this gambit in motion, and a mafia boss won’t blink. “Tonight’s good if you’re up for it,” he says, as though it isn’t the most loaded suggestion possible.

You are up for it. And it’s the first of what becomes the everyday ritual of cooking something out of the family recipe book for dinner together.

The first day you attempt the lemon chicken, you are both so hyper-focused on the recipe that you forget to set the table, and end up eating off the kitchen island straight out of the pans.

The next night you try the thyme and basil roast pork, and the next after that, a tortellini in brodo that requires two hours of simmering and a phone call to Ugo for advice about the right kind of herbs to gather from the garden.

By the end of the week, you are inviting dinner guests—first just a pair, then a trickle, then somehow, the momentum of the lake and the villa and the rumor of a young American couple in residence brings neighbors out of the woodwork. There’s a widow from the slope above, her British accent perfection and her opinions more so, and the retired engineer with his grandchild, and eventually, a small parade of acquaintances who rotate through with bottles of local wine and offers to swap garden produce. The first time, you’re nervous, certain one or another of them will see through you and Andy, but the rhythm of food and small talk smooths everything while also seeming to stitch the two of you closer together.

If there’s one spot on the estate of this Italian villa that you love more than any other, it is, without question, the terrace that features a fine outdoor dining table intended for small gatherings of friends or family, nestled under a lush, vine-covered pergola looking directly over the lake. Now that it’s coming into late October, the evening temperatures of autumn are crisp enough that everyone is in sweaters, and there are heat lamps, but with the warmth precautions, it’s still pleasant enough to eat outside in the stunning setting. The space is illuminated by a stunning chandelier glass chandelier, augmented with strings of white lights threaded through the vines. It’s been the most enchanting place to host your new friends with your new husband in this new life that feels endlessly surreal.

The dinner table is big enough for twelve, but tonight it’s just eight. There is a bowl of lemons at the center, bright as orbs stolen from a still-life painting, and the smell of the lake is so clean and sharp you can taste it even through the heady wafts of roast chicken and white wine. Andy pours for everyone, moving around the table with a host’s grace that no one at the table would clock as anything but camaraderie, except you who knows that he’s a ruthless mafia boss back home, but even you question who he is now that you’ve seen so many new elements of him that exist here.

Tonight, the table is loud with stories and laughter. The gathering includes the widow, Sarah, with her foxlike charm and acid tongue; the engineer, Paolo, his wife, and their college-aged grandson, who is mortified by everything; and a pair from lower on the hillside, a married couple who bring a kind of Mediterranean tennis-pro energy despite clearly hating sports. There are also two empty seats for “a last-minute add-on,” as Andy puts it, and when they arrive, it’s a surprise: Sarah’s daughter, home from Rome, and her boyfriend, a Spaniard who teaches at the university.

You’ve come to relish hosting the rotating circle strangers-turned-friends you’re quickly building, but you’re still adjusting to the tradition of an Italian dinner party, which is as much about the relentless, cascading waves of conversation, as it is about the food. Here, no one is allowed to be quiet for long.

You’re impressed at the ease with which Andy navigates all pockets of conversation across the table, how deftly he manages the pivots from politics, to soccer, to the village gossip. It seems impossible, but he makes it look like he’s always lived here, always belonged.

You play the part too, trading stories, laughing into the night. When Sarah asks, point-blank and with the confidence of the terminally curious, “So. You two—how did this happen?” she makes a little waggle of her empty glass at your newly minted wedding bands. “You’re newlyweds, and you said it was a quick engagement, but what got you to that altar? How did you and Andy meet? You never told us the whole of that story.”

The table hushes, expectant. You’ve become aware how much you’ve inherited Andy’s ability to evade and deflect, to answer with a truth that is not entirely true.

Andy’s head cocks. He’s winding up for a deadpan lie or a polite deflection, but you’re quicker tonight, emboldened by the wine and the waves of collective cheer.

“Oh, it’s nothing as romantic as it looks.” You set your fork down, lean an elbow on the table, and say, “He extorted me. Threatened to ruin my life if I didn’t say yes.”

There’s a beat of silence, then the neighbors laugh—first a burst from the widow, then the rest, the sound rolling in like the waves lapping up against the property of the villa. “Honestly, I’m trapped. A prisoner of the fearsome Andy Barber.”

The joke lands, the table erupts in laughter, but Andy is not among them. His mouth approximates a smile, sure, but there’s a sudden, unmistakable torque to his jaw that tells you he in no way appreciates your antics. Nobody else catches it, and then Paolo is recounting his own disastrous engagement story for the benefit of his grandson and the young Spaniard, who are, against all odds, enraptured. But you see the way Andy’s hand curls around his wine stem, the white of his thumb gone bloodless, and you feel the new coil of tension slither under the table straight from where he sits at the head of the table to where you sit on the other end.

When you excuse yourself to fetch dessert from the kitchen inside, Andy follows. He is so casual about it—“let me help,” because he always does as you two host these evenings—that no one at the table thinks twice. But when you pass from the spill of terrace light into the dimness of the patio leading up to the villa, you feel the change in pressure, the sharp coiled energy in the silence. You can feel every motion of Andy stalking behind you, every footstep measured, the gravity of his attention drawing up the length of your spine.

You step into the kitchen and turn to face him, but he’s already seized your wrist, pinning you to the cool marble counter with so little force it’s almost nothing, but you both know the implication. His eyes are dark, unblinking.

“Don’t do that again,” Andy says, voice only just above a whisper. “Don’t ever joke about me owning you.”

You stare at him, momentarily stunned by the vehemence, but you hardly miss a beat, and the words, “But you do, don’t you?” tumble out of your mouth.

You say it like a dare, but Andy steps even closer, eliminating the gap until your hip is pressed flat to the lip of the counter. “I would burn down everything you’ve ever loved before I let you make a cheap joke of this,” he says, but his hand is shaking, and he doesn’t even try to hide it. “Don’t do that again.” His grip tightens, a flash of heat, then he releases you. He turns away, breath ragged. You haven’t seen him so intensely worked up in months. You forgot this part of him existed.

You stay where you are, hand braced on the marble, as Andy looms back to his full height. You feel something flare at your core—that traitorous twist of desire when he’s like this, a spike of outrage that he’s resorted to it, the seams of both threading together tight as wire.

You tilt your chin up to meet his gaze, your pulse steadying into a challenge of its own. “It was only meant to be clever banter,” you say, careful to keep your voice low and even, but letting him hear the needle in it. “No one believed it.”

He doesn’t respond right away. Andy’s eyes bore into you, reading for signs of retreat or remorse. When he finds neither, he finally inhales—slow, deliberate, calming himself by increments.

“I know what you were doing,” he says. Because you know as well as he does that jokes are always a vector for the truth. “But I mean it. Don’t.”

He’s still a gracious, charming host the rest of the evening, but you see that it’s subdued, less warm.

The moment you’ve called out the last of your goodnights from the front steps as your guests wander home, Andy turns, looks at you with those hard, steel blue eyes, and goes inside without a word.

Now it’s you following him into the kitchen, because the clean up from these dinners with friends has become part of the closing ritual that you two share, as well, but when you step up next to Andy at the sink, he growls, “Leave it and go upstairs.”

You don’t bother to argue, to offer some response meant to salve either of you and smooth things over. Instead, you pivot with a clipped, “Fine,” and leave him. You don’t bother flipping on lights as you reach the master. You stand there in the dark, hearing your own heart thumping, feeling every inch of your skin alive and restless, your body trying to decide if it is angry or simply keyed up by the aftershock of that confrontation.

You pace the bedroom, back and forth, and finally drop onto the edge of the bed, arms crossed hard over your chest. For endless minutes, you’re just locked there in the moon-shadow, staring out over the black sweep of the lake, counting seconds. You’re waiting to hear Andy’s footsteps, the sound of him coming up to finish what he started, to demand a further reckoning.

When Andy finally comes upstairs, you’re ready for him. He enters without a word—just a sweep of dark eyes, a tightening of his mouth as he closes the door behind him, the quiet slide of the latch declaring this space sealed from the rest of the world. You don’t let him get two steps in before you say, “It’s not going to be anything like it is here when we go back to Boston, is it?”

He stops. The shadows cut the sharp lines of his bearded jaw, and for a second you wonder if he’ll lie—if he’ll even bother with a performance for your benefit or simply bulldoze past the question. Instead, he stands there, hands in his pockets, and weighs you like a problem.

“No,” he says. “It won’t.”

You push up from the bed and take a few steps forward. “Why?”

He stalks the edge of the bedroom, not coming closer, his hands still jammed in his pockets. His voice is quieter, but it vibrates at a pitch meant for you alone. “Because,” Andy says, each syllable landing deliberate, “a honeymoon is a liminal space, a fairytale. It isn’t real.”

You know what he means, but you want to punish him for the admission, want to see how far he’ll go in spelling it out. You cross your arms tighter, say nothing, hold the silence until he continues. He’s right, but this hurts because you wanted it to be more than temporary.

“This,” he gestures vaguely—at your body, at the lake, at the high, old bones of the house, and the air quivering between you—“is a retreat. It’s not the world. It’s not sustainable. I borrowed this time for us. But it can’t last.” You watch him, still and wary.

“Why can’t you fucking want us?” Andy asks.

You want to scream because somehow you’ve unraveled everything right back to the start in the space of mere hours. You don’t scream, but you do choke on a frustrating sob when you say, “Because you demanded it. I would have chosen you if you’d been kind instead of cruel, but you never even gave me a choice.”

You say that last part too loud, but you want him to hear the garble and the pain in it, that you want him to finally react as a person, not as an institution or a fortress. Andy holds very still.

“Don’t you see?” he says, and he’s close enough now that you can see the quiver in his left hand. Then his hands curl, not into fists, but into something worse—into the shape of wanting to touch you. He comes closer, walking with a kind of exhausted inevitability, and you can tell he’s been fighting with the words since before he came up the stairs. “If I didn’t take you, you would have run.”

You surge forward and raise your hand to slap him, but he catches your wrist before you can strike. You try to shake out of his hold, but he doesn’t let you.

“You don’t know that,” you argue. “You never even let me make the call.”

Andy doesn’t flinch, but his grip changes, less capture and more containment. Andy’s breaths are ugly and uneven. “I wasn’t going to risk it. I couldn’t.”

Your pulse is skittering under his thumb where it grips your wrist. You wish you could say the feelings are all anger, but the emotions are thick with something raw and unkillable that’s lived under your skin since the first week you met, all the more terrible and breathtaking now that whatever’s between you has evolved and expanded deeply here in Italy. You close your eyes, just for a second, because the only thing worse than being seen by Andy is seeing the want on his face.

He yanks your body tight to his, foreheads nearly colliding. You feel the way his whole being is trembling, probably close to shattering, you in the fallout zone. “You don’t understand,” Andy says, and you hear the ferocity in his conviction.

“Then make me,” you bite back.

You are thrust backward, the world contracting to the violence of his mouth on yours, then down the column of your neck, his tongue ferocious and wild. There is nothing careful in the way Andy drags you toward the bed, your body crashing against the mattress, his grip so absolute you know you’ll wear the ghost of his fingers for days. He tears at your clothes—not undressing you, but stripping you, rough and elemental—and pins your wrists above your head, his weight a pact that you are not leaving, not now, not ever.

He fucks you with a savagery you haven’t seen in him since the earliest days, when everything between you was a war, and then an addiction, and then a war again. There is no foreplay because your bodies remember every password, every escalation, and Andy knows yours by heart. He forces you open, mouths your skin so hard you arch up in shock, pleasure already a cry from your throat. He bites at your mouth, your jaw, the line of your neck.

He forces a knee between your legs, spreads you wide, and fucks into you in a single, savage thrust so deep your vision whites out for a second. There’s only the impact of Andy’s hips crashing into you, the push and force of hands you could never mistake for gentle. You are flipped as if you weigh nothing, your face pressed to the mattress, your body pinned in a way that is—should be—danger, but now reads as his. Because his cock finds you wet, spread, so ready you want to scream with the humiliation of it, and when he plunges in, you do scream, muffled by fists knotted in the bedding. He fucks you with a violence that lights up every nerve ending in your body, stroking so deep it feels like he’s remaking you, each thrust a seismic reminder that you are his, that you have always been his, that even now, especially now, you want it. You want it more than you want to win.

He is relentless. He takes you from behind so hard you nearly lose your bearings, his hands bruising your hips, his cock battering a rhythm into you with no mercy, no space for anything but the friction and fullness. He grunts into your shoulder, each sound a confirmation that the only thing he wants is more—more from you, more inside you, more of everything you have to give.

When you come, it’s not a climax so much as a collapse, a convulsion that tears something loose, but Andy doesn’t slow down. He fucks you through it, not letting up, as if your pleasure is a thing to be drained. You sob, raw, and he covers your mouth with his—biting, licking, silencing the sharpness with his tongue. He flips you again, manhandling you onto your back, and hooks your knees over his elbows, spreading you so wide you can barely breathe. His cock pistons in you, deeper, until you are gasping, keening, until you are reduced to the rawest version of yourself, nothing left but sensation, the feel of him, the violence of his wanting you.

He is not gentle, not even a little, and you don’t want gentle. You want to be consumed, and Andy obliges—he fucks you until your body is shaking, until the tears spill down your face, until your voice is hoarse from the pleading, the yes, the please, the more that you can’t help falling from your lips. He does not stop. Not until you are truly broken open, legs trembling, cunt so raw and used you think you will never get the ache out of your bones.

He circles back to your mouth, forces his tongue inside, kisses you with the same ferocity as he fucks you. He bites your lower lip until you taste blood, and then licks it away, tongue soft as an apology, but you know it is not one. You have been wrecked in the span of a few minutes, but it’s clear he’s not done.

He is going to fuck you until you don’t remember your own name.

He crawls up over your body, grabbing your jaw with his big hand and shoving the wet head of his cock between your lips, not waiting for an invitation. The first taste is salt and skin, your juices and his precum, the burn of him so deep on your tongue you gag, but Andy does not relent. He drives his cock into your throat, one hand fisting in your hair to keep you exactly where he needs you, the other bracing against the wall as he looms over you, and all you can do is take it. If you try to twist away, he holds you tighter. If you choke, he says, “Good girl,” and pushes in further. Your vision blurs with new tears as he fucks your face, the thick, hot shaft of him relentless, your mouth ruined already from the earlier kisses and now wrecked by the invasion.

You want to hate him for it, you’re sure you do, but you are gone, reduced to this animal need to please and to be conquered, to see how far he’ll push you and whether you’ll break. You need to be ruined by him, made anew, fucked out of even the memory of the anger that brought you here. You try to breathe through your nose but he’s too deep for too long, and when he finally lets go, you gasp so hard your lungs ache.

Andy groans as he fists himself furiously and then comes across your face, and shifts so he can shoot the rest of his load over your chest. When he finally releases your head, you collapse backward on the bed, breath heaving, spit and come and tears streaking your face. Andy towers over you, his own chest heaving in time with yours.

You feel the collapsing hush of the bedroom as Andy composes himself, standing at the edge of the mattress, his features still marred by the wet brilliance of anger and longing both. Your legs are spread, trembling, and you hate how much you love the weightless aftermath of being used until your head empties out, until there’s no room for doubt, only this: this knowing, this rawness, like a secret you must never confess.

You don’t flinch as he reaches for your chin, thumb smearing his come from the corner of your mouth and dragging it slow across your cheek, tracing his claim into the skin. It’s humiliating, and it’s the only thing that quells the shaking inside you.

He leans down, bracing his hands on either side of your head, and you see the play of war and reverence in his face—still caught between violence and awe. Then he kisses you, you, deep, with a hunger that seems bottomless, the heat of his tongue against your teeth and the salt-blind taste of your own tears and the ache he’s left in every muscle. The kiss is messy, open-mouthed, more bite than balm, but it binds you to him in ways words never could. You can taste the iron resolve in it, the promise of obliteration and devotion entwined. He doesn’t say “I love you” — and you don’t want him to. Not like this, not ever. All the same, you know the truth of it down to your marrow.

Andy injects his cursed, talented fingers into your cunt, tormenting you with the mess of your ruin, again, knuckles grazing your clit and making you buck up on reflex because you are so tender and slick all movement is pain-laced pleasure, so much more intense than usual. He probes two fingers inside, pressing deep and curling to stroke that perfect, devastating spot. “You’re dripping, cunt still gripping for me,” he murmurs with a strange reverence, as if confirming a suspicion about the physics of your body. He works his fingers in and out with increasing speed, and the obscene wet sound of it is so raw you want to die. “You take every inch of me,” he says, not as a question, but as the ending to an equation. “You’re made for me.”

He moves with a deliberate roughness, fucking you with his hand, thumb never leaving your clit, and in seconds you’re strung out and shuddering again, unable to stop. You wail into the darkness, no longer caring if it sounds like anger, or keening, or the wound of wanting. Andy doubles down, unrelenting, until your body spasms and you break yet another time for him, this time so wrung out you black the edges of your own consciousness, every muscle clamped and helpless to resist.

After, you lie there, wrecked, every limb trembling and dead, your breathing wild and uneven. Andy finally draws away from you, leaving, and you can’t pinpoint to where since you can hardly sustain your own functionality.

Andy’s presence is gone for less than a minute, but the void is so total it makes your ears ring. When he returns, he is silent. He carries a hand towel in one hand, and in the other, a damp cloth. You lie there, still splayed and shaking, and let him clean you—face, chin, the slick mess over your breasts. He is methodical, almost gentle, the movements so unlike the violence that came before you want to claw at him for the contradiction. You’d planned to meet his eyes, maybe spit a retort or something wounding to break the spell, but the look on his face is so devastating, so utterly intent on you, that you can only stare back and let him do what he will.

He wipes his hands and sets the towel aside. Then leans back, surveying you. He should be satisfied, should be spent, but you feel the air thicken again—the promise of more, of escalation. Without further warning, Andy slides his hands under your shoulder and thigh and flips you face-down to the mattress, your body a ragdoll in his grip. You are so dazed you don’t even register the force of it, the way he wrests your upper half down to the pillows while yanking your hips up with his other hand. You wind up face down, arms crushed beneath your chest, your ass arched in the air and on display, vulnerable and wide open.

You whimper, not even sure if it’s resistance or anticipation, and try to close your legs, but Andy just presses your knees wider, immobilizing you with a ruthlessness that’s almost tender.

He presses your chest to the mattress with one palm, weight pinning you flat, the other hand palming your ass, squeezing, kneading, as if cataloguing every inch of you before making a decision. You can’t see him, but you feel the heat of his breath ghost over your skin, and then—his tongue, hot and slick, working a slow, punishing stripe from your cunt to the rosebud of your asshole. You buck, shocked at the invasion, but Andy’s grip on your hip is iron.

The first lick is speculative, as if Andy is testing the edge of your reaction, what you have left in you tonight, but when your hips jerk and you press back, he doubles down, dragging his tongue in slow, obscene circles around your rim, then spearing it in with a precision that leaves you keening into the bedding. He holds you wide, open, and feasts on you, his tongue circling and plunging, working you in both places with obscene, relentless pressure. It is too much, and not enough, and you cannot believe you are so needy that when he works his thumb inside your ass, you nearly come from just that.

He fucks you with his tongue and his fingers and then both, alternating, escalating, until your thighs are slick and the sheets beneath them are soaked, and you have lost the thread of yourself entirely. There is no air, no sound but your own voice breaking, the wet slick of his mouth and the way your body trembles and begs for more. You arch, you plead, you scream into the mattress, devoured, mindless, reduced to a surface of nerves and a single quaking need. It is worse—better—when he spits on your asshole, massaging it with two wet fingers before working them in, stretching, filling, never ceasing his licking and sucking at your clit.

You sob, humiliated and mind-shattered, when Andy’s fingers press deeper, opening you; you arch and shudder, every part of you stinging, burning, exquisitely ruined. He pushes three fingers into your cunt, then adds a second into your ass, the double invasion so intense it makes you come almost instantly, the orgasm breaking through you like a blackout. You can’t move, can’t even process the pleasure—just take it, and take it, every aftershock.

Andy finishes you, and himself, in a blur of escalation and satisfaction, then, without ceremony, lifts you from the wreckage of the sheets—one arm under your knees, the other braced at your back. You’re so limp he might as well be carrying a sack of flour. He deposits you so achingly gently onto the still cool and untouched side f te bed, then climbs in beside you. He wraps both arms around you, winding you tight into his chest, flushed naked skin next to his flushed naked skin. You don’t fight him. In fact, you’re still so strung out that you cling to him, so spent it takes you a minute to realize he’s murmuring something—a string of words, low and urgent, nearly inaudible above the static in your ears.

You scrabble for a reply, but your own pulse is so loud it drowns out everything; your only coherent thought is the feel of his hand in your hair, the rough sweetness of it, an anchor to reality.

You drift toward sleep. Andy holds you so tightly you can’t tell if your ribs ache from the aftershocks or from the pressure of his arms. His breath comes in a slow, deliberate cadence, each inhale a claim, each exhale an ironclad reassurance.

He never releases you. Even as your breathing slows, even as your mind empties out, he keeps you pinned to him, chest to chest, as unwilling to let you drift in sleep as he is this marriage. You can’t move. You don’t want to. There’s nothing left in you that isn’t claimed, nothing untouched by Andy’s insistence. Even your bones feel different.

Andy presses a solemn kiss to your forehead, and the weight of it is so grave, so final, that for a moment you are sure you will never be released.

You try to stay awake, to hold on to something—anger, maybe, or identity—but it dissolves, every thought leaching out of you until only Andy’s grip remains, steady and absolute.

You wake at dawn with your thigh thrown over his hip, his hand still buried in your hair. The room is cold, but your body is kept warmed by his. He still has you locked, but the violence is gone, replaced by a solemn stillness that feels almost, but not quite, like peace. You move to extricate yourself, but he anticipates the

As the waves of everything that transpired the night before roll over you, battering your memory, your throat aches, and your eyes burn, and softly you start to cry.

The last time you were held like this was years ago, childhood, your mother tucking you in on the worst night of your life. The same hush, the same grave quiet, as if by clutching close she could keep the world from breaking you. Some animal core in you recognizes the shape of this hold, the way it’s designed not just to possess but to comfort, to render you safe against your will.

You hate him for it. You hate him in a way that loops back on itself and becomes something else entirely. You hate that he’s devastatingly handsome, that he’s capable, that he’s clever and so good at loving you—yes, loving, you are not a fool. You hate that he can make you want him even after he’s destroyed you, that he can ruin your body for anyone else and then hold you like you are a thing to be treasured.

Andy wakes exactly when you need him to, which is to say, when you are at your worst, about to break down. His arms shift; his breath changes. You sense him resurface and look at you, then the thumb at your cheek, rough but oddly tender, and he wipes away a tear.

“Don’t cry,” he soothes, and you lean into his touch for one brief last moment.

When you push to roll away, Andy lets you go. You shift to the other side of the mattress, heft your legs over the side, and pull yourself out of bed. “I want to go back,” you say, voice sanded raw. You don’t say back to where—you both already know.

Andy props himself on an elbow, gaze unreadable. “Good,” he says. “I already arranged it.” His tone is flat, businesslike. “But not until the end of the week.”

You blink, waiting for the justification, and he gives it without you having to ask. “We’re expected for dinner at Paolo’s tomorrow, brunch at Sarah’s on Thursday, and we owe our neighbors a few more nightly dinners, so they don’t think anything’s awry.”

“You just expect me to play house with you until you let us leave?”

“That’s exactly what I expect of you. The charming newlyweds who’ve welcomed so many new friends to their home wouldn’t leave without inviting everyone over for a farewell-for-now dinner.”

It takes everything in you not to stamp your foot. “You’re unbelievably infuriating.”

You don’t wait for Andy to respond, biting down the taste of an argument you know he won’t let you win. You dress in whatever shirt is closest, clambering into soft pants and hissing at the burn between your legs as you do. You stalk through the villa and out onto the upper terrace. The sun is not fully over the mountains, and wind off the lake stings your face, cooling the sweat and salt and tears you haven’t yet washed off.

You pace the perimeter path above the water for an hour before you realize you haven’t brought anything with you—no phone, no shoes, not even the scarf you’ve worn every morning for weeks. It doesn’t matter. You don’t need anything but the sensation of your feet striking the cold flagstones, don’t need anything but the air to burn out the memory of last night and everything that led to it.

You re-enter the villa through the kitchen, hoping for empty space, but Andy’s already there, leaning over the marble island, hunched in concentration as he prepares your preferred morning drink right alongside his. He doesn’t look up right away, only when he’s poured your cup and slides it across the counter to you.

You take it, despite yourself, and let the liquid sooth the rawness in your throat.

“Chef’s been notified to resume evening meals,” he says without any undercurrent. “I told her to stock us up for the week, until we leave. If there’s anything you want, just let me know.”

“I’d like to have no plans,” you say, and the words come out so blunt it surprises even you. “No social obligations. No guests. No performances.”

Andy shakes his head. “You already know that’s not up for negotiation.”

“I won’t share a room with you here anymore.”

Andy takes a beat, then nods. “Fine,” he says, and you can feel the shift in him—the hard retraction of self.

You did not expect him to agree to that. And certainly not so easily.

So you quickly add, “I don’t want to share a room when we get back to Boston, either.”

Andy scoffs, and his eyes narrow. “No deal. We both own that this honeymoon has been a suspension of real life, so separate rooms will do us both good to recalibrate. But when we get back to Boston, you are my wife. My wife, not my guest. We start our real life then.”

You wonder if Andy’s version of real is something you will even recognize, let alone want.

You set your mug down with care, fingers curling around the handle as if to anchor yourself. Andy watches, lips pressed thin, and you can see he's expecting a counter or a protest. Instead, you say, “I don’t know if why you never believed me or never understood, but I said it in the beginning, I said it last night, and I still mean it now: you never should have forced me into you bed or to accept your proposal. You keep making these choices for us, and you keep assuming I would have run if you hadn’t forced it.” You wait for him to look at you, to meet your eyes, and when he does, you let out a breath that tastes like iron. “But that night—the first night—if you’d asked, really asked, I would have chosen you. No threat, no blackmail, no war. I would have said yes.”

You say this, and your hands shake around the mug, but you don’t look away. Andy doesn’t either. The stillness is absolute—so sharp you hear the tremor in your pulse, the old house humming with the tension of two people who want, and are ruined, and will not concede.

You really would have said yes to that first night and undoubtedly so much more.

You didn't know he was this—the depth and breadth of so much good, so much bad, so much ugly—but part of you had wanted him and assumed he'd never seriously entertain your as an option.

He’d taken you so seriously you never saw him coming.

A fairytale honeymoon had been the curse, not the breaking of a spell, and the next chapter awaiting you in Boston? You truly didn’t know where you would land, how it would mold and carve itself, especially now that you knew what had existed here with him in Lake Como, both of you transformed, and now seemingly all of it lost.

This is how I feel posting this chapter. I've questioned going back on it all week, but ... I think the fact that I'm so conflicted means it was what needed to happen. I'm not second-guessing the longterm plot, I only feel bad about how it hits in this moment right now.

NEXT PART: Cold Ashes

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