The silence in the opulent drawing room had always been a particular kind—heavy with unspoken words and the scent of old money. It was a silence you and Arlecchino had learned to navigate since you could walk, from sandbox negotiations in kindergarten to whispered secrets behind the marble columns of their prestigious boarding school. Now, as adults, the silence felt final, a chasm carved by duty rather than distance.

“It’s the only way,” Arlecchino’s voice was low, a scrape of velvet over stone. Her eyes, the colour of cold slate, held yours with an intensity that belied the clinical nature of the discussion. The heir to the Perriere Armaments empire, she was a study in controlled contrasts: severe black tailoring softened by the fall of her silver-white hair, a mouth made for commands occasionally twisting into the private, wry smile only you ever saw.

Your own fate was a paler, simpler document: a beneficial marriage, a transaction to bolster your family’s fading prestige. A gilded cage you’d resigned yourself to, until now. Until her.

“A mistress,” you breathed the word, letting it hang in the air. It tasted of scandal and stolen hours, a rebellion in a single syllable. “She won’t mind? Selenia?”

Arlecchino’s lip curled, a flash of disdain for the blonde Snezhnayan arms dealer she was bound to by contract and cold steel. “There is nothing to mind. Our marriage is a merger. A balance sheet. What is between us…” Her gaze dropped to your mouth, and the chill in the room seemed to evaporate. “…is something else entirely.”

The space between you dissolved. You met in the middle of the Persian rug, a collision of opposites that felt more like homecoming than sin. Her kiss was not gentle; it was claiming, desperate, a testament to years of suppressed longing. Your back met the plush arm of the divan as she leaned over you, her body a familiar, welcome weight. The air grew thick with the rustle of fabric, the sharp intake of breath.

Your thin silk blouse was a negligible barrier. Her hands, calloused from handling both blueprints and firearms, mapped the landscape of your ribs, your spine, with a reverence that contradicted their strength. The world narrowed to the heat of her mouth on yours, the taste of her—dark coffee and a hint of frost—the dizzying scent of her sandalwood cologne mingling with your own perfume. Lost in the whirlpool, you tangled your fingers in her hair, pulling her closer, a silent plea for more, for everything.

A soft, discordant note pierced the haze.

A creak of the heavy oak door, subtle as a snapped thread.

You broke apart, breathless, your vision swimming back into focus. Framed in the doorway, backlit by the crystal light of the hall chandelier, stood Selenia.

She was every inch the poised aristocrat, draped in icy lavender silk, her platinum hair a sleek waterfall. Her expression was not one of shock, nor rage. It was a mask of perfect, glacial composure, her blue eyes taking in the scene—your disheveled hair, Arlecchino’s shirt untucked, the intimate chaos you inhabited—with the detached interest of an appraiser viewing a mildly unexpected ledger entry.

The silence returned, colder and sharper than before. It stretched, filled only by the frantic drum of your own heart.

Selenia’s eyes moved from you, to Arlecchino, and back again. A single, impeccably sculpted eyebrow lifted a fraction of a millimeter.

“Well,” she said, her voice a smooth, chilled vodka poured over polished ice. She stepped fully into the room, letting the door click shut with a sound of finality.

“It appears I’ve interrupted.”