Vittorio stood up.
Not out of kindness. One more second watching them would have meant breaking something. He needed to leave.
Immediately.
"I'm making something to eat." His voice sounded irritatingly neutral to his own ears, an exercise in self-control that cost him physically. "We've all been up too long."
He forced himself to watch Luca lift his head with that weak, grateful, human smile. Too human.
"Yes," he heard him say, rubbing a hand over his tired face. He saw him cling to that mundane suggestion as if it were a divine revelation. "Spaghetti at three in the morning is always the right solution. Maybe... maybe that's what we need."
The right solution.
A reassuring cliché to convince himself the world wasn't falling apart.
Pathetic.
Elena nodded without even getting up from the sofa, without detaching herself from Luca's side. She was lost in the task of keeping Luca's eyes away from Vittorio.
Vittorio sought her eyes. She had never stopped watching him.
Thank you. Now breathe.
"Good idea," she said.
Vittorio pocketed that consent, turning before his eyes could betray the urge to rip her away.
The kitchen welcomed him with its sterile order, but it wasn't enough to calm him.
The water started boiling, a bubbling that clashed violently with the white noise filling his head.
His hands performed the choreography they knew by heart. Salt raining down. Pasta sliding into the water. Oil sizzling. But his mind remained in the living room, nailed to that scene.
What is she saying now? Why can't I hear her voice anymore? Did she drop her voice to shut me out?
He felt his hands pressing against the cold marble of the countertop, trying to anchor himself to reality, but reality was slipping away. The cold of the stone wasn't enough to lower his temperature.
What is happening to me?
He had never been like this. He was absolute control. He was detachment. He was the predator watching the world from the top of an ivory tower, never the one craving from below, dirty with need.
And yet here he was.
Here I am.
Reduced to cooking spaghetti at four in the morning, muscles straining to catch a whisper, a laugh, any sound coming from the woman who was undoing him without even touching him.
The thought of the control she had over him hit him like an allergic reaction. Irritated him. Terrified him.
He drained the pasta with brusque, perfect, automatic gestures.
But inside he was burning. He felt the fire physically.
Returning to the living room was like taking a punch to the sternum.
Elena was sitting next to Luca. Not just nearby. Beside him.
He saw her hand resting on the other man's shoulder. He saw the way she leaned toward him, weaving words Vittorio couldn't hear over the voice in his head, that soft, reassuring tone that should have been his alone, not currency spent to comfort the weak.
And Luca... how dare he look at her with that desperate gratitude? As if she were the only lifeline in a storm he didn't know how to navigate.
Vittorio set the plates on the table with a sharp noise, the only warning he allowed himself.
"Eat."
He sat down. Picked up his fork. Ate.
The food had no taste, or maybe it tasted of ash. His eyes couldn't leave Elena.
He absorbed every detail like a torturer. The way she leaned toward Luca. The familiarity of that touch on his arm. The intimacy creating itself right under his eyes.
He knew, rationally, that she was doing it for him. He knew it was strategy, that she was handling Luca to protect their world.
A world they hadn't even built yet, one she was already defending with fierce dedication.
He knew he didn't have the same patience. Not in that state.
Rationality is useless when the knot in your stomach tightens until it steals your breath.
Elena sensed it in the air, and he knew she had felt it.
The sulfur of the lit fuse. She didn't need to look at him, she had perceived the shockwave of his black rage crossing the room.
Yet Luca continued to eat slowly.
Blind. Lost in his trauma. Deaf.
Elena continued to speak to him softly.
Words meant for someone else. Excluded in his own home.
Not by her. By himself.
Vittorio's fork stopped in mid-air.
His hand trembled imperceptibly.
It didn't matter why she was doing it. The strategy didn't matter.
He set the fork down on the plate with a definitive clink.
I can't stand it.
Elena felt it again.
The same smell. Sulfur.
It wasn't coming from the kitchen. It was coming from the man sitting at her side. The hand she had placed on his thigh hadn't been enough. He needed more and she wanted more. More of him. More solitude. More us.
She turned slowly.
Every fiber of her body just wanted to dedicate itself to Vittorio, to erase that tension from his jaw, but he himself was making it impossible by acting like a ticking time bomb.
I have to protect you from yourself, you stupid man.
She brought her face close to his.
"The food is exquisite," she said, resting her head on his shoulder.
She closed her eyes for an instant. It wasn't strategy. Not with him. It was naked truth. It was what she wanted. If only he would stop being blinded by that childish possessiveness, she could afford the luxury of thinking only of him.
She turned, placing herself between him and the rest of the room.
She blocked Vittorio's view of Luca.
Not to distract him. To show him the only thing that mattered. Them.
She pressed her palm flat against his stomach, right over the knot she knew was crushing his insides. She felt it hard, contracted under his shirt.
"Breathe," she whispered, a command that was a prayer. Only for him.
She lifted her face to capture his gaze.
"Don't frown, Vittorio." The voice was low, intimate, stripping away the rest of the world. "You know strays get fed to stop them barking..."
She caught a slick of oil from his plate with her finger, bringing it to his lips.
"...but you cook only for those who truly appreciate the flavor."
She nailed him with her gaze.
"He is here out of necessity. I am here by choice. Do you feel the difference?"
"I feel it," he said.
His voice was hoarse. He looked down, and Elena saw the flash of shame for his error in judgment mix with frustration.
He couldn't do it.
He still felt the muscle under her hand vibrating with tension. He couldn't send that sensation away, despite logic, despite her.
He turned toward Luca for a single instant. One too many.
He was staring at them.
Eyes wide, confused. He still saw a victim seeking comfort, a predator tolerating her.
Damn it, Luca. Give me some peace.
She sighed, pulling away from Vittorio's warmth to return to the cold duty of handling the stray.
That was when the glass finally cracked.
He watched Elena pull away from him to return to Luca. He saw her attention shift. He felt the sudden cold where her hand had been.
He couldn't digest it.
Enough.
He stood up. The scrape of the chair on the floor tore through the silence.
"Vittorio?"
He saw her seek his gaze out of the corner of her eye, alarmed.
"Are you okay?"
He didn't reciprocate. He couldn't.
"I need something in the kitchen."
He walked away.
Voice tense. Too tense for "something in the kitchen."
He left the living room before his legs gave out or his hands did something.
The kitchen. White. Cold. Silent.
His hands gripped the countertop, trembling.
His eyes landed on the knife block.
His right hand moved on its own. His fingers closed around the black handle of the chef's knife.
He drew it out.
The blade shone under the sterile light.
For a second, he just stared at the steel, lost in a terrifying void.
Why did I take it?
His rational mind, the lawyer in him, grasped at a pathetic excuse:
Bread. We need more bread.
But his instinct, that snarling beast stirring in his chest, saw only one way to stop that itch under his skin.
Eliminate the problem.
Silence the noise.
Cut that grateful look off Luca's face.
He stared at the edge of the blade. He wasn't thinking. He was feeling.
What is happening to me?
He had never been like this. Never. He was control. He was detachment. He was the predator who observed, never the one who craved.
But now...
She will be mine. Or no one's.
The thought shook him. It was irrational. It was toxic. It was dangerous.
But what Vittorio was forgetting, in that moment of possessive blindness, was the simplest truth: Elena was not a victim.
Elena was not his because he possessed her.
She was his because she gave herself.
She chose to stay. Because she wanted to. Not because she had to.
That knife would have had no power over her. He would have known it, if he had kept his instincts at bay. He would have seen it, if jealousy hadn't blinded his sight.
He should have been afraid of her.
She had understood him better than anyone.
But did he know her as well?
Because in that moment of blindness, it didn't seem so.
In that moment, he saw only what he wanted to see.
He felt pathetic. Desperate. Human.
I look so... Luca.
He didn't put down the knife.
He returned to the living room.
Elena and Luca looked up when his shadow fell on the table.
Vittorio stood in the doorway. His breathing heavy. Gripping the knife in his right hand, the blade hanging by his side.
Elena saw the knife.
She saw Vittorio's eyes. Dangerous.
On the verge of exploding.
Luca went pale, stepping back. "Vittorio... what..."
But Elena was already on her feet before he could finish the sentence.
In one fluid movement, she placed herself between Luca and Vittorio. She blocked the view. She blocked the trajectory.
She wasn't blocking Luca from Vittorio's sight. She was blocking Vittorio from Luca's, forcing him to stare at her nape while her eyes stayed fixed on the monster.
My beautiful monster.
She did it so Luca wouldn't have time to reconsider the shadow he had already sensed.
And to give Vittorio time to shove it back down into the dark, away from the light.
She smiled at him. A radiant smile, fake as a coin out of circulation.
"Oh, perfect," she said, her voice cheerful, light. "You remembered that..."
Think, Elena. Think.
"...I cut my spaghetti."
She extended her hand, palm open.
Cutting spaghetti.
As she said it, she felt her stomach twist.
It was something she hated. She would never do it. An outrage. A crime against humanity, against Italy, against every culinary principle she respected.
And yet.
For him.
Damn it.
"Thank you for bringing it to me," she said, voice firm, smile unwavering.
For an instant, time stopped.
Vittorio's eyes met hers.
She didn't tremble. She didn't retreat. She wasn't afraid.
She challenged him. She anchored him. She brought him back.
Luca, behind her, held his breath.
Something is wrong.
But Elena's calm voice, the grotesque normality she was conjuring from thin air, suffocated the instinct before it could take shape.
Vittorio looked at Elena's outstretched hand.
The blade shone.
Then, slowly, he placed the knife on her palm.
And he couldn't help but laugh. Not smile... a loud, belly laugh, which at five in the morning sounded even louder.
"For the spaghetti," he teased her, his voice still vibrating with adrenaline.
Elena closed her fingers around the handle.
"Exactly."
She turned toward her plate. She plunged the blade into the pasta. A sound that hurt her heart.
"For the spaghetti."
She laughed too. With genuine self-deprecation.
But inside, in that moment, she was mentally ripping his hair out for the humiliation he was forcing her into.
How dare he tease her for that tightrope act she had to perform just for him?
She leaned toward him to set down the knife, but stopped halfway.
A whisper against his neck, near his ear.
"Next time you make me cut spaghetti," she murmured, voice sweet as poisoned honey, "I'll draw the veins out of your wrists."
And threatening him with death over pasta made her laugh too, for real this time.
The laughter doused the tension like rain on a fire.
They finished eating without incident.
The only thing out of tune was Luca, who couldn't bring himself to leave the apartment: now he had settled on the sofa reading a magazine. Maybe, in that moment, he had felt at home and his tormented thoughts had disappeared.
But Vittorio's hadn't.
And Elena's hadn't either.
Their eyes met from across the room.
There was no peace in that look.
There was hunger.