Chapter 77 Seventy seven
Elena's POV
Days passed after the gala. I thought about his words on the balcony every night, turning them over in my mind like smooth stones. You could have this. You could run this place. You could have your old world back, but on the throne, not in the trenches. The champagne glass sat on my nightstand for two days before Sophie quietly removed it. I had never taken a single sip.
He did not push. He did not ask. He went about his business, the Don in his office, the man in the halls, the stranger who slept on the other side of the bed and never reached for me in the dark.
Then one evening he walked into my room with a rolled up tube of paper in his hand.
I was sitting by the window, doing nothing, being nothing, just watching the light fade. He crossed to the small table near the bed and unrolled the papers, smoothing them flat with his palms. I recognized them immediately. The blueprints from his office. The plans for the studio.
He stepped back and looked at me.
"Approve them," he said. "Modify them. Burn them." His voice was quiet, steady, giving nothing away. "It is your choice."
I stared at the blueprints. At the north facing windows. At the space that had my name on it. At the future he had drawn for me without asking, without telling, without anything except this moment now.
He turned to leave.
The word came out of me before I could stop it, hoarse from disuse, cracking like ice breaking on a frozen river.
"Why?"
He stopped. His back was to me, broad and still, his hands at his sides. The silence stretched between us like a wire pulled tight.
"Why what?" he asked, and his voice was different now. Softer. Unsure in a way I had never heard before.
I stood up. My legs felt weak. My heart was doing something strange in my chest. "Why any of this? The lie. The effort. The studio, the books, the driving lessons, the gala, all of it." My voice cracked again but I pushed through. "You could have just kept me in a room. You could have forgotten I existed. You could have taken what you wanted and moved on. So why?"
He did not turn around. For a long moment, he just stood there, his back to me, and I watched the rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed.
Then he spoke.
"Because a crown won by deception is hollow."
His voice was raw, stripped of all the polish and control he wore like armor. He finally looked over his shoulder, just enough that I could see his profile, the sharp line of his jaw, the darkness of his eyes.
"I want it earned." He paused, and when he spoke again, the words seemed to cost him something. "And I want you to be the one to crown me."
He left before I could answer. The door closed softly behind him, clicking into place with a sound that felt final and permanent.
I stood there for a long time, staring at the door, my heart pounding, my hands shaking, the blueprints spread out on the table like a question I did not know how to answer.
A crown won by deception is hollow.
He wanted me to choose him. Not because he had trapped me, not because I had no other options, not because I was his wife and bound to him by law and debt and everything else. He wanted me to choose him freely, to give him something he could not take, to crown him with my own two hands.
I walked to the table and looked at the blueprints. The windows were perfect. The space was perfect. He had thought of everything, every detail, every shelf and sink and rack, all of it designed for me, for my work, for the part of me that had nothing to do with him.
And I want you to be the one to crown me.
I touched the paper, tracing the outline of the studio with my fingertip. The north facing windows would let in light all day, soft and steady, perfect for painting. The walls were thick, the space was huge, and at the top, in his bold handwriting, my name.
Elena's Wing.
Not the Don's wife. Not the prisoner. Not the trophy. Elena.
I did not know what to do with any of this. The anger was still there, buried deep but alive, because he had lied and manipulated and trapped me in ways I was still discovering. But something else was growing alongside it, something that looked at those blueprints and felt hope.
He was trying. In his own twisted, controlling, impossible way, he was trying to give me something real.
I stood at the table until the light faded completely and the room went dark. The blueprints were just shapes now, shadows on paper, but I could still see them in my mind. The windows. The walls. My name.
Why any of this?
Because he wanted to earn what he had stolen. Because he wanted me to give him what he could never take.
I did not know if I could do that. I did not know if I even wanted to try.
But for the first time since the truth came out, I did not know how to say no.