The days after the dinner settled into something that felt dangerously close to normal.

Dante still left for meetings, but he returned earlier. He still gave orders—how I should wait, what I should wear, when I should kneel—but the edges of them had softened. Some evenings he simply sat on the couch with my legs across his lap and read reports while his fingers absently stroked the inside of my knee. Some nights he took me slowly, almost carefully, eyes locked on mine the entire time, as if he were searching for something he hadn’t named yet.

I started falling without meaning to.

It happened in small moments. The way...