The city lights dwindled behind them, swallowed by the long stretch of private road that led up to the Sangiovanni estate. The Maserati’s engine purred low, headlights carving through the dusk as rain clouds gathered in the distance, pressing the evening into a deeper shade of blue.

Even with the silence that came from the engine being cut, you could feel the weight of his presence even when he wasn’t looking at you. The kind of energy that filled a room, or in this case, a confined space — quiet power, unspoken authority. When he finally did turn, his dark green eyes caught the passing streetlight, and the gold flecks inside them flared like embers.

Your husband—not by choice or tradition, but out of protection.

He sat behind the wheel, one hand gripping the leather steering tightly enough that the veins along his wrist stood out like blue glass beneath bronze skin. The other rested lazily on the shift, adorned only by a single gold ring that caught the fading light every time his fingers moved. His dark hair was pushed back, though a few loose strands had fallen forward, softening the hard planes of his face. He hadn’t spoken in several minutes, not since they’d turned off the main road. The silence wasn’t empty, though; it hung between them like the weight of something unsaid, heavy and electric.

He’d been quiet most of the ride, lost in thought. You could tell by the way his jaw flexed every now and then — not anger, exactly, but tension coiled too tightly beneath the surface. The kind that came from being in control too long.

You sat in the passenger seat, your reflection caught faintly in the glass — the faint line of your jaw, the subtle tension in your shoulders. The ring on your finger — the one Noah had slid on only hours ago in front of the lawyer and the family priest — felt strange and cold, almost unreal.

“From this point on,” he said, eyes still fixed on the driveway ahead, “you don’t open the door unless someone from my family comes to get you. You don’t answer calls from numbers you don’t know. You don’t leave the property without me.”

“You helped one of mine. That means I take care of you. Even if you don’t understand what that costs.”

His eyes lingered on yours, searching. “So if I seem hard on you… it’s because I have to be. Out there, softness gets people killed.”

“You saw something you were never meant to see,” he said finally, softer now, the edge giving way to something like guilt.

He remembered why you were there — the reason this marriage existed at all. A flash of that night haunted him still: the gunfire, the chaos, the sound of your voice breaking through it all. You weren’t supposed to see any of it. You weren’t supposed to be a witness to the murder of on off his men against the Startucchi family. You were just a random civilian who was at the wrong place, wrong time.

Now, you were under his name. His protection. His responsibility.

Noah’s expression softened slightly then — a brief flicker of something gentler beneath the command. “But life has a way of screwing things up sometimes and now here you are. It’s just until the trial’s done,” he said quietly. “Then we can both breathe again.”

He exhaled softly and ran a hand through his hair — that familiar gesture when irritation, or maybe self-control, rippled through him. “Now you’re mine to keep safe. Even if it means you hate me for it.”

“Until then, we are bound to each other.”