DESPERATE LOVE

The bruise on Viola's wrist had turned black-purple overnight, and the sleeves of her oversized sweater were the only thing keeping it hidden.

She tugged the wool down over her knuckles as she crossed the hallway of the Hierro estate, keeping her head low, letting her hair fall around her face. Stay quiet. Stay invisible. Maybe the evening would pass without blood.

"Stand up straight, Viola." Octavia's voice cut through the hallway, as cold and polished as the marble floor. "And for God's sake, fix your hair. You look like you climbed out of a gutter."

Viola flinched and tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. "Sorry, Mother."

Vanessa brushed past her, smelling of expensive perfume, effortless in a tight midnight-blue dress. Then she stopped. Turned. Something red dangled from her fingers.

A cheap, neon-red mini dress.

"Mother," Vanessa said smoothly. "Look what I found in Viola's wardrobe."

Viola's chest seized. She stared at the red fabric, and for a second she couldn't pull air in. She had never seen that dress in her life.

Octavia's face hardened as she looked at it. "What is this?"

"Red, Viola?" Vanessa tilted her head, all false concern. "Where exactly were you planning to wear this?"

Viola shook her head, taking a small step back. "Mother, it isn't mine. I didn't—"

Crack.

The slap snapped her head to the side.

For a moment there was only the ringing in her ears. Her cheek lit up with fire. Her eyes stung, and the taste of iron sat at the back of her tongue. She didn't touch her face. She didn't cry. Crying only ever made it worse.

Her mother stepped closer, lip curling with disgust. "I go to church. I pray to God every day to keep filth away from this family. And this is what you bring into my house."

Viola stared at the floorboards, breathing shallow, shame crawling hot up her neck. Behind Octavia's shoulder, Vanessa was smiling. Small and satisfied, like she had just won something.

"Go fix yourself," Octavia ordered. "Your stepbrother is arriving today. After years." She looked Viola up and down. "If it were not for Rafael, I would not even let you attend. I don't know why he wants you there to embarrass us."

Vanessa let the dress slip from her fingers onto a chair, a soft, amused breath escaping her.

"Do not embarrass me tonight," her mother warned. "Do not speak unless spoken to."

"Yes, Mother."

Upstairs, Viola pressed a cold, damp cloth to her cheek and watched her own eyes in the mirror. The red mark was already dulling into something quieter. By morning it would be faint enough to hide under a layer of cheap foundation. Marks on the face were bad manners in this house. Marks anywhere else were fine.

She pulled her sleeve back down over the bruise and smoothed it flat.

One day, she promised herself, she would leave this house and never come back. She didn't know how yet. But that one small thought was the only thing that got her down the stairs.

Dinner was suffocating. Rafael Hierro sat at the head of the table, older than she remembered, slower, but his eyes still tracked everything. Nobody spoke much. There was only cutlery and the clock on the wall, and Viola kept her eyes on her plate and her hands in her lap, sleeves pulled down tight.

Then the doors opened, and the air vanished from the room.

Every head at the table turned toward the doorway.

The man standing there didn't walk into a room. He consumed it. Six-foot-three, broad-shouldered, with the dense, heavy muscle of an executioner pressed into a dark suit. He did not look civilized in it.

Viola had never seen him before in her life, but the room told her who he was. Her mother sat up straighter. Rafael's eyes sharpened. And beside her, Vanessa's lips parted on a soft, hungry breath.

"Sebastian," she breathed, barely a sound at all.

Sebastian Cain Hierro. Her stepbrother. The one the staff whispered about.

Viola's stomach dropped. So this was him.

He ignored everyone and stopped only at Rafael's end of the table.

"You're late," Rafael said, his voice gravelly and thick with authority.

"And you're still breathing," Sebastian replied, smooth, careless, utterly without warmth. "We all have our disappointments."

Rafael's jaw tightened. He didn't snap back.

Sebastian pulled out the chair directly across from Viola and sat back heavily, arms resting on the table. He looked bored. He looked like he wanted to burn the house down with everyone inside it.

Viola kept her eyes on her plate. Her heart was beating too fast, and she couldn't make it stop.

"Sebastian." Vanessa leaned forward just enough to display the neckline of her dress, her voice pure honey. "It's been a long time. You look... well."

His eyes moved to her. Slowly. They dragged from her face down to her neckline and back up again, and his lip curled, barely, like he had caught a bad smell.

"Don't," he said.

Vanessa blinked. "Don't what?"

"This." He flicked two fingers in her direction, already turning away, pulling a silver lighter from his pocket. "It's embarrassing to watch."

The table went quiet. Vanessa's face went rigid, a blotchy red creeping up her neck. Octavia's mouth pinched into a line, but even she didn't step in.

Then Vanessa's eyes found Viola across the table. Sharp with humiliation. Looking for somewhere to put it.

Viola knew that look. It never ended well for her.

"Viola." Vanessa's voice was honey again, the kind that always came right before the knife. "Pour the wine. Or is sitting quietly all you can manage?"

Her mother didn't object. Her mother would never pour her own wine while Viola sat there breathing.

Viola stood and reached for the bottle. It was heavier than she expected, and she needed both hands, and as she stretched to fill Rafael's glass, the sleeve slid up two inches.

She felt it happen. She set the bottle down fast and yanked the wool back into place, her face on fire.

Nobody commented. Rafael didn't even glance at her. Vanessa's smile went sharp at the edges, like she had smelled something and filed it away for later.

"The girl is clumsy," her mother said smoothly, reaching for her glass. "She walks into doors."

Across the table, the silver lighter had stopped turning.

Sebastian's eyes were on her wrist, on the place where the wool had slipped. Then, slowly, they lifted to her face, and for the first time since he had walked in, he actually looked at her.

His eyes were a striking, impossible amber. Cold. Sharp. Predatory. They dragged over her pale face, lingered for a second on her nervous lips, then locked onto her violet eyes.

Viola froze. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't look away. People always looked away from her eyes. Sebastian didn't. He watched her like she was something he had just decided to open.

"Who," he finally said, his voice deep and rough, wrapping around the room like a threat, "is this?"

He didn't point. He didn't blink.

"My youngest daughter," Octavia answered, her voice tight with irritation. "Viola."

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. "I never knew you had another daughter."

"She was shy when you were here," her mother said quickly. "She didn't meet anyone before you moved out."

The corner of his mouth twitched, a smirk that didn't reach his eyes. He leaned forward on his elbows.

"Viola," he repeated softly. He made her name sound dangerous.

She couldn't answer. Her hands were trembling in her lap.

He held her gaze for one more agonizing second, then leaned back and broke it. "Quiet little thing, aren't you?" he murmured, pulling a cigarette from his pocket.

He struck the silver lighter and lit it, the small flame dancing between his long, scarred fingers as he exhaled the first thin stream of smoke.

Viola kept her eyes down, but she felt the shift at the table anyway. When she dared a glance, Vanessa's smile had gone stiff with disbelief, like she couldn't understand what had just happened. And beside her, her mother was watching Viola with a cold, deadly glint in her eyes.

Viola knew that look. She had grown up under it. It meant punishment. It meant she would pay for this later, for being looked at, for daring to exist where Sebastian Hierro's eyes had chosen to land.

Her body understood before her mind did. Her shoulders jerked, a small, helpless flinch she couldn't stop, and her nails bit crescents into her palms under the table.

She forced herself still. Forced her gaze back down to her plate.

The conversation restarted around them, slow and awkward. Vanessa's brittle, desperate attempts to pull his attention back. Rafael asking about shipments. Octavia laughing at things that weren't funny.

Viola stared at her plate and willed her heartbeat down. It didn't work. She could feel the weight of his eyes, ignoring the beautiful sister entirely, fixed on the quiet, terrified one.

Dinner finally, finally ended. Sebastian rose first, and the table seemed to rise a half-second late, like the room answered to him.

"You'll stay, then?" Rafael asked, watching his son.

Sebastian buttoned his jacket. His gaze moved once around the table, bored, and for one brief second, it landed on her.

"This house might not bore me after all," he said.

Then he walked out, and the room remembered how to breathe.

Everyone at that table heard a man talking about business. About whatever kept a cartel prince entertained.

But Viola sat there trembling, her wrist throbbing under the wool, and she knew, with a certainty that turned her stomach, that he hadn't been talking about business.

Being noticed by Sebastian Hierro didn't feel like a compliment.

It felt like being prey.