Chapter 3

ELENA! WHERE ARE YOU?!"

My father's voice boomed through the villa, bouncing off the marble and the high ceilings.

Jace's hand was still on my face. His wet shirt was dripping onto my dress. The trail of muddy footprints from the staff quarters to the kitchen was clear as day on my mother's white marble — like a map to our crime.

And outside the kitchen window, Chiara stood under her pink umbrella, her iPhone pointed straight at us. Recording.

My whole life flashed in front of me. If my father saw Jace kissing me in his kitchen, he would not just fire Sofia. He would destroy them. He would call every villa on Lake Como and tell them not to hire a widow who raised a thief who seduced his daughter. In Como, reputation is everything.

Jace saw it too. In one second, his face changed from soft to cold stone.

He let go of me.

"Go," he whispered. "Go to him."

"What about—"

"GO!"

I ran, my heart exploding, out of the kitchen and into the main hallway, just as my father walked in from his office, his reading glasses still on his head, his face red.

"Papà!"

"Why are you wet?" He looked at my dress, my hair. "And why are there muddy footprints from the back? Did that dog get in again?"

My mind raced. "Sofia! Sofia was mopping and I — I knocked over her bucket. I was helping her. Sorry, Papà."

It was a stupid lie. My father looked like he didn't believe me, but he was distracted. His phone was ringing — a call from Milan.

He waved me away. "Go change. You look like a mess. And tell Sofia to clean that floor before your mother returns from Milan."

I nodded and ran upstairs. From my bedroom window, I saw Jace slip out of the back kitchen door, back into the rain, back to his small stone room. No one saw him except Chiara.

Chiara was still standing there.

I grabbed my phone.

ME: Delete it. Please.

CHIARA: Elena Bianchi kissing the houseboy??? Girl are you insane? Your father will kill you AND him.

ME: Chiara please. I will explain tomorrow. Delete it, I beg you.

Three dots. Then: CHIARA: I deleted it. But you owe me the full story. At school. And Elena... are you sure? He's... poor.

I collapsed on my bed. My pink Versace dress from last year still had a faint red Chapman stain from my 16th birthday. Now my new dress was wet from Jace's rain.

I touched my lips. They were still cold from his kiss.

That night, at 1 AM, when the whole villa was asleep and the lake was silent, I got a message.

Unknown number. But I knew who it was.

JACE: Staff quarters. Back window. Come if you want. If not, forget today.

My hands shook. My father and mother were asleep upstairs. Sofia slept in the small room next to Jace, a thin wall between them. If she woke up and saw me, it was over.

I put on my father's old large coat over my pajamas, took off my slippers so my feet were bare, and sneaked out through the kitchen door I had just lied about.

The rain had stopped. The garden smelled like wet earth and roses. The stone path to the staff quarters was cold under my bare feet.

The back window of his room was open, just a crack, with a dim yellow light inside.

I knocked softly.

He opened it. He was shirtless, wearing only old sweatpants. His hair was still damp. He had been waiting.

"Principessa," he whispered, his voice rough with sleep.

"You told me to come," I whispered back, my breath making fog in the cold Como night.

"I didn't think you would. Rich girls don't walk barefoot in the mud for poor boys."

"I'm not a rich girl right now," I said. "Right now I'm just Elena."

He stared at me for a long second, then reached out and pulled me through the window in one movement. His room was tiny. Smaller than my closet. But it was warm from his body heat. His bed was neatly made, his textbooks stacked perfectly.

"My mother sleeps next door," he whispered, his mouth close to my ear. "You have to be quiet."

"I know how to be quiet," I whispered back, though my heart was so loud I thought Sofia would hear it through the wall.

That was the first night of our secret.

For the next two years, that small stone room behind the villa on Lake Como became our whole world.

Every night after 1 AM, when my parents were asleep, I would sneak out. Barefoot. In my father's coat. Through the rose garden to his back window.

We didn't have money for dates. We couldn't go to restaurants in Como like other couples. We couldn't post photos. We couldn't even walk together at school.

Our dates were: sitting on his tiny bed, sharing one plate of pasta Sofia made, doing our homework together. He tutored me in math — he was a genius — and I tutored him in English. We listened to old Italian songs on his cracked phone. We talked about leaving Como.

"I will build something," he told me one night, his head on my lap, looking up at the low stone ceiling. "Something that will make me not be 'the staff quarters boy' anymore. And then I will come to your father and ask for you properly. Not like this, hiding."

"When?" I asked, playing with his hair.

"Two years. Give me two years after university. I have an idea for an app. For the boats on the lake. Tourists need it."

I laughed. "A billionaire app?"

"A millionaire app first," he said seriously. "Then billionaire."

I believed him. God, I believed every word that boy said.

On our first anniversary, he didn't have money for a ring. So he made one. From a thin copper wire from an old engine. He twisted it into a small, imperfect ring.

"Elena Bianchi," he said, kneeling on the dirty floor of his staff quarters, holding that wire ring, "Will you be my girlfriend, even though I have nothing?"

I cried. Real tears this time, not the fake ones from when we were ten.

"Yes, you stupid houseboy. Yes."

I wore that wire ring on a chain around my neck, hidden under my school uniform every day. No one knew. Only us.

At school, we pretended to hate each other. He ignored me. I rolled my eyes at him. Chiara thought we had stopped talking after the kitchen incident. My father thought I was dating Matteo, the hotel heir.

We were perfect liars.

Until the last week of our final year exams.

My father called me into his office. The same office where he had fired Sofia when we were ten. He was smiling, which was rare. On his desk was a bottle of expensive Barolo and two glasses.

"Elena, principessa mia, sit."

I sat. The wire ring was hidden under my shirt. It felt hot.

"You know our friends, the Lombardis from Milan?"

I knew them. Old money, steel factories, richer than us.

"Their son, Alessandro Lombardi, just finished his MBA at Bocconi. Twenty-five. Handsome. Rich. He saw you at the charity gala last month. He asked about you."

My blood went cold.

"Papà, I—"

"He is coming to dinner tomorrow. With his family. To discuss the future. Our two families. Our two companies. This is good for you, Elena. Very good. You will be a Lombardi wife. You will live in Milan, not in this small lake town."

"I'm in my final exams! I can't think about marriage!"

"Exactly why you need to stop distracting yourself," he snapped, his smile disappearing. "I have seen you sneaking around. I have seen you looking out the window at the staff quarters. Do you think I am blind? That boy is nothing. He will always be nothing. He lives behind my bins. You will not ruin my name for a servant's son."

My heart stopped. He knew. He knew.

"Tomorrow, 8 PM. Wear the red dress. Be nice. And Elena..." He leaned forward. "If you embarrass me in front of the Lombardis, I will make sure Sofia and her son are on the street tonight. In the rain. With nowhere to go. Do you understand?"

I understood.

I ran to the staff quarters. It was 4 PM, broad daylight, risky. Jace was there, reading.

I burst in, crying. "They want me to marry Alessandro Lombardi. From Milan."

Jace stood up slowly. His face went white.

"What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything. But my father knows about us. He said he will throw you and your mother out if I embarrass him tomorrow."

Jace didn't speak for a long time. He just looked at our small room, our bed, the copper wire ring around my neck.

Then he said, very quietly, "So what are we going to do, Principessa?"

I wiped my tears. I had to be the strong one now. For his mother. For him.

"We need to break up," I whispered. "Just for now. Just until my exams are done. Just until the Lombardi dinner passes. Then we can run away. You said two years, remember? Let's do it. Let's just pretend we are done, so my father stops watching."

Jace stared at me. His dark eyes, the same angry eyes from when we were ten, were now full of something I had never seen before. Hurt. Deep, boyish hurt.

"You want to break up?" he said.

"Just pretend! Jace, please, it's for—"

"Get out."

"What?"

"GET OUT OF MY ROOM!" he shouted, so loud Sofia next door banged on the wall. "Get out, Elena! Go marry your Milan billionaire! Go be a Lombardi wife!"

"Jace, listen—"

"I said get out!"

I ran. Barefoot, crying, back to the main villa, leaving the wire ring hidden under my shirt.

I thought he would understand tomorrow. I thought it was just a pause.

I didn't know that tomorrow, I would say something even worse.

And I didn't know that Chiara, my best friend who had deleted the video a year ago, had just heard everything through the thin stone wall — and was already texting Alessandro Lombardi's sister.