The Picked Lock

The lock on my door is Italian. Handcrafted. The kind of lock you see in museums. Handmade. Beautiful.

It takes me forty-seven seconds to pick it.

Father never knew about my particular education. The bodyguards he assigned me got bored during those long nights when I was supposed to be sleeping. Marco taught me locks. Enzo taught me knives. Giovanni taught me how to read a room and find every exit before anyone else noticed I was looking.

Useful skills for a princess. Essential skills for a prisoner.

The hallway outside my assigned suite is dark. Two guards at the end, their backs to me. Viano men. My husband's soldiers.

My husband.

The words taste like ash. Like the champagne they made me drink at the reception while my father signed papers and shook hands with the man who's been trying to destroy our family for a decade.

Don Massimo Viano didn't look at me during the ceremony. Not once.

I'm a clause in a contract. A comma in a treaty. A signature on paper that says the Santini family surrenders its only daughter in exchange for peace.

Peace.

As if there's anything peaceful about being traded.

I move through the shadows of my new prison. The Viano estate is three times the size of my father's house, newer money but more of it. Modern security systems. Cameras on every corner.

But cameras need someone watching them. And at two in the morning on their Don's wedding night, most of the security team is drinking champagne in the guardhouse, celebrating a war that ended without them having to die in it.

His office is on the third floor. I know because I memorized the blueprints my father's men obtained six months ago, back when we were still pretending we might win this war.

We didn't win. We broke.

And I'm the price of our breaking.

The office door isn't locked. Arrogant. But then, he doesn't expect his new wife to be anything but decorative. A symbol. A trophy wife locked in her gilded cage.

He's wrong.

I push open the door.

Massimo Viano sits behind a desk the size of a small country. Papers spread before him. A glass of whiskey at his elbow, barely touched. Still in his wedding suit, the jacket discarded, sleeves rolled to his forearms. A photograph on the desk catches my eye. A woman with sharp features and dark hair, arm looped through Massimo's. His cousin, Lucia. My father's dossier said she'd expected to become Donna herself. That she'd fought for it.

She wasn't at the ceremony. Conspicuous absence.

He looks up.

Cold gray eyes. A face built for severity. The kind of stillness that makes you forget he's killed men with his bare hands.

"You're supposed to be in your room." His voice is flat. No surprise. No anger. Nothing.

"You're supposed to be with your wife." I step inside, close the door behind me. "But here we are."

A muscle jumps in his cheek. First sign of actual emotion since the ceremony. I file it away. Control is important to him. Disrupting his control makes him react.

"The door was locked."

"The door was ineffective."

His focus sharpens. Interest, maybe. Or irritation. With him, they might be the same thing.

"What do you want, Natalia?"

My name in his mouth. The first time he's said it. I didn't think he knew it.

"I want to know the terms."

"You know the terms. Your father signed them."

"My father signed a treaty." I move closer. Not running. Not hiding. Walking like I own every inch of marble beneath my feet. "I want to know your terms. For me. Specifically."

He sets down his pen. Leans back in his chair. Studies me like I'm a problem he didn't anticipate.

Good.

"You'll have your own wing. Staff. An allowance. Everything a Donna requires."

"And you?"

"What about me?"

"Where do you fit in my new life, husband?"

The word sits between us like a loaded weapon. He doesn't flinch, but something passes across his face. Something that tells me he's no more comfortable with this arrangement than I am.

"I don't."

"Excuse me?"

"This marriage is political. It exists on paper and at public events. Beyond that, we have no relationship. You'll live your life. I'll live mine. We'll intersect when necessary and avoid each other otherwise."

Cold. Clinical. Efficient.

Also: unacceptable.

"No."

His eyebrows rise. First genuine expression I've seen from him. "No?"

"You bought me." I plant my hands on his desk, lean forward until I can see the gold flecks in his gray eyes. "Fine. That's done. My father made that choice and I wasn't consulted. But you don't get to buy me and then shelve me like some antique you don't know what to do with."

"You'd prefer I treat you like a real wife?" Something dangerous in his tone. A warning. "I can arrange that."

"I'd prefer you treat me like a person. I have a mind. I have skills. I was raised to run a family, not because anyone planned it, but because I made myself useful. I didn't let them ignore me there, and I won't let you ignore me here."

He stands. Six foot two of cold fury in a five-thousand-dollar suit.

"Let me be clear." He rounds the desk. Stops close enough that I can smell his cologne, something dark, smoky, expensive. "You're here because your father's empire is crumbling and he needed someone to catch his fall. You're a peace offering. A white flag in a wedding dress."

"I know what I am."

"Then know your place."

I don't step back. Don't flinch. Don't give him an inch.

"My place," I say softly, "is wherever I decide to put myself. You can lock me in my room, Don Viano. You can post guards and install better locks and pretend I don't exist. But I'll keep picking them. I'll keep showing up. I'll keep being inconvenient until you realize that ignoring me is more work than dealing with me."

Silence.

His eyes search my face. Looking for the lie. The weakness. The surrender he expected from a traded bride.

He won't find it.

"You're either very brave," he says finally, "or very stupid."

"I'm neither. I'm invested. My life is tied to yours now, whether either of us likes it. Your enemies are my enemies. Your business is my business. You can treat me like a symbol or you can treat me like a partner. One of those options gets you a wife who fights beside you. The other gets you a problem that never goes away."

"You're threatening me."

"I'm negotiating. There's a difference."

The calculation behind his eyes recalibrates. I can almost hear it.

He's not looking at me like a problem anymore.

He's looking at me like something he needs to take apart and understand.

"Get out." His voice is quieter now. Thoughtful. "Go back to your room. Pick the lock again tomorrow night if it makes you feel powerful. But tonight, you've said your piece."

I've won something. Not much, but something. A crack in the wall he built.

I'll take it.

"Tomorrow night, then." I turn toward the door. Pause with my hand on the handle. "And Don Viano? Install better locks. The ones you have are embarrassing."

I don't wait for his response.

But I hear it anyway. A short exhale that might, in another man, pass for a laugh.

I walk back through the dark hallways of my new cage.

Forty-seven seconds to pick that lock.

The lock on Massimo Viano will take longer.

But I have nothing but time.