“THAT LOCKET BELONGS TO MY DEAD WIFE!” BUT WHEN YOU READ THE INSCRIPTION, YOU REALIZE YOU WERE NEVER SUPPOSED TO EXIST
You stand trapped between a marble column and a man whose name can collapse companies the way lightning collapses trees. The restaurant’s chandelier light turns his gray eyes into blades, and every table around you goes quiet like the whole building is holding its breath. Your fingers clamp over the gold cameo at your throat, not because you’re guilty, but because your body remembers what your mind still refuses to name.
Sebastian Cross keeps his palm out, open and demanding, like the world owes him obedience. You can smell expensive bourbon on his breath and something sharper underneath, grief left too long in a sealed room. When he says, “Give it to me,” it is not a request. It is a verdict.
You don’t hand it over. You lift the locket instead, letting it swing slightly in the air between you like a tiny pendulum deciding your fate. Your voice cracks, but you keep it steady enough to cut. “If it’s yours,” you say, “tell me what the inscription says.”
For the first time, Sebastian Cross goes still.
The silence lands heavy. It presses on the napkins, the cutlery, the polished wine glasses, the breath in your lungs. His mouth opens like he’s about to roar again, but the sound doesn’t come.
His eyes drop to the back of the locket, and the rage drains out of his face as if someone pulled a plug. His voice turns small in a way that doesn’t match his body or his tailored suit. “It says… ‘To my love, forever.’”
You swallow hard because the English isn’t what you heard in your head. Your mother’s voice used to hum words you never understood while she rocked you, a melody that felt like saltwater and lullabies. The inscription on your locket is not English.
You rotate the cameo a fraction, just enough for the light to catch the faint engraving. And you whisper what you know is there, because you’ve traced it with your fingernail in the dark more nights than you can count.
“It says,” you tell him, “‘Sei mia per sempre.’”
The Italian hits him like a car crash that never ended.
His pupils tighten. His lips part. His hand trembles, and it makes no sense because men like Sebastian Cross are not supposed to shake. You expect him to deny it, to accuse you again, to call for security.
Instead, you watch something far worse happen.
Recognition.
He takes a step back, and the space between you feels like a cliff opening. Behind him, the restaurant manager, Van, hovers like a rat deciding whether to bite or run. The patrons pretend to look at their plates, but you can feel their curiosity buzzing in the air, hungry and cruel.
Sebastian’s voice comes out rough. “How do you know that language?”
You should lie. You should say you don’t, that you read it once online, that you guessed, that you got lucky. You should do anything to survive.
But you’re so tired of surviving by shrinking.
“My mother,” you say. “She used to sing it. She said it meant ‘You’re mine forever.’” You pause, then correct yourself because the truth tastes like iron. “She said it meant I would never be alone.”
Sebastian’s throat bobs as he swallows. He looks at the locket as if it’s a ghost wearing gold. “My wife,” he whispers, and the word wife sounds like a wound reopening, “was Italian.”
Van clears his throat, trying to reclaim control. “Mr. Cross, with respect, this is ridiculous. She’s a cleaner. She probably stole it from a locker, or from a guest. We should call the police and—”
Sebastian turns his head slowly.
He doesn’t even have to raise his voice. “Leave,” he says.
Van blinks. “Sir?”
Sebastian’s eyes flick to him, and you see what made senators avoid eye contact. “If you say one more word,” Sebastian continues quietly, “I will buy this building and fire you twice. First from your job. Then from your reputation.”
Van goes pale, mutters something like an apology, and retreats so fast he nearly trips over a chair. The restaurant’s staff scatter, pretending they suddenly have urgent invisible tasks.
Now it’s just you and Sebastian Cross and the gold between you.
He rubs a hand over his jaw, like he’s trying to grind down memory until it stops cutting. “That locket was buried with her,” he says. “I watched them close the casket. I watched the dirt fall. I watched my life end.”
Your stomach tightens. “Then why is it on my neck?”
Sebastian’s gaze snaps back to you. For a second, he looks angry again, but the anger doesn’t have a target. It’s like he’s furious at the shape of the universe.
He reaches for the locket again, slower this time. “Let me see it.”
Your instincts scream no. Your hands tighten around it, knuckles white. If you give it away, you feel like you’ll disappear, like you’re a thread and that cameo is the only knot holding you together.
So you do the only thing you can.
You bargain.
“You don’t take it from me,” you say. “Not here. Not like that. If you want to see it, you sit down. You talk to me like I’m a person.”
The tiniest flicker crosses his face, the surprise of being challenged by someone he cannot dismiss. The room is still watching, even if it pretends not to.
Sebastian exhales, long and controlled. “Fine,” he says. “Come with me.”
Your heart slams into your ribs. “Where?”
