Page 22 of Ruthless Silence
Two in the morning, seventh night in this leather chair, and I’m losing my mind watching her pretend to sleep.
Ana shifts again, the silk sheets whispering against her skin. The movement makes her nightgown ride higher up her thighs, exposing pale skin that the moonlight cuts across like accusations. She's not asleep. Her breathing is too controlled, too measured. We both maintain this fiction, her pretending to sleep, me pretending not to notice she's awake.
Seven nights since I promised not to touch without permission. Seven nights of her clutching that blade like salvation.
The chair creaks as I adjust my position, leather protesting another night of this torture. Not physical torture, the chair is comfortable enough. This is something worse. Being close enough to smell her shampoo, to hear every breath, to watch her chest rise and fall, and knowing I can't touch any of it.
Her hand twitches toward the nightstand where Papa's blade rests. Even in fake sleep, she keeps her weapon close. Good. Stay armed, little warrior. Stay dangerous. It's the only thing keeping this bearable, knowing she could try to kill me at any moment. At least that violence would be contact.
The nightgown slips higher as she turns, now barely covering her ass. My ass, technically. My wife's ass that I can't touch. The contract makes her mine, but her knife says otherwise. The contradiction makes me harder than I've been in years. Is she testing me? Seeing if I'll break my promise? My cock throbspainfully against my zipper, has been hard for the last hour watching her. The chair leather is probably permanently marked from my grip, from fighting the urge to cross those ten feet and show her exactly what she does to me.
She shifts again, and this time a small sound escapes her throat. Not quite a sigh, not quite a moan. The sound goes straight to my cock, and I have to close my eyes to maintain control. My chest tightens watching her fold into herself, something about the vulnerability in this half sleep she'd never show fully awake makes my jaw clench.
The Hadley shipment arrived during the wedding last week, thirty million while I played house with my would-be killer. Marco handled it, but the Russians are already sniffing around. I should care more. Instead, I'm sitting here composing symphonies to her violence in my head.
I need air. Space. Distance from this woman who plans my death while making my body burn with want.
I could stay. Should stay. A guardian doesn't abandon his post. But if I stay another minute watching silk cling to her skin, I'll break every promise I've made. Standing carefully to avoid waking her, though we both know she's half-asleep at best, I move toward the door. She immediately stills, that telltale tension that says she's tracking my movement. Probably wondering if I'm finally going to snap, to claim what the marriage contract says is mine.
Let her wonder. Let her stay armed and ready. The door closes silently behind me, retreat disguised as respect.
The music room door opens to complete darkness, but I don't need light to navigate here. Three steps to the right, hand finding the lamp without thought. Soft gold illuminates the space, soundproofed walls, sheet music scattered across surfaces, and in the center, my mother's Steinway grand piano.
The bench accepts my weight with familiar comfort. The same creak it made when I was fifteen, before that night stole everything. The room still smells like wood polish and old paper, but now there's something else, her scent carried on my clothes. Even here, she invades.
The piano keys are cool under my fingers, ivory worn smooth by years of my mother's playing, then mine. I run my hands over them without pressing, feeling for the music trapped in my throat. This is where I come to scream without sound, to say everything my ruined voice cannot.
I begin with Chopin's Nocturne in E-flat major, fingers finding the familiar melody. Safe. Practiced. The notes flow automatically, muscle memory from years of playing when words became impossible. But tonight, something shifts. My hands rebel against the prescribed notes, pulling the melody into a minor key that better matches the ache in my chest.
The Chopin dissolves, becomes something else entirely. Something new. The melody transforms, rising and falling like Ana's breathing in the dark. High notes like her defiant chin lift, low notes like the shadows under her eyes. My left hand finds a bass line that shouldn't work with the melody but does, dark and hungry, the soundtrack to watching her pretend to sleep while I pretend not to want her.
This isn't Chopin anymore. This is Ana. Her fury in the rapid passages, her exhaustion in the slower sections, the way she clutches for her knife even in bed translated to sharp staccato notes that cut through the legato phrases. This ascending run, her fingers correcting her knife grip after I showed her the proper angle. These bass notes, the weight of her in my arms when I carried her through the broken glass. This discord, the sound the plate made shattering against our wall.
My chest tightens with something I can't name. My hands move without conscious thought, chasing it through the keys. The music builds, violent in places, tender in others.
Years of silence have taught me that the piano holds every word I cannot speak. Tonight, it holds words I don't even have signs for. The particular way her nightgown clings. How I force myself to look away, then fail and look again.
The minor key deepens, the melody growing more complex, layering her contradictions into harmony and discord.
My hands freeze mid-phrase. I'm composing. Actually composing for the first time in years.
The realization hits like cold water. Since the night I lost my voice, I've only played other people's music. Pieces written by dead men who never had their throats carved open, who never watched their wives plot murder over breakfast. But now, because of Ana, something new demands to escape.
I grab sheet music from the side table, pencil flying across the staff lines as I capture what my hands just discovered. The notation is messy, urgent, but I can't lose this. Not when it's the first thing I've created instead of destroyed in a decade.
The composition is violent in places, beautiful in others, complex everywhere. Like her. Like us. Like this marriage built on blood and contracts and the way she signs death threats with graceful fingers. I title it in my mind: "The Widow's Waltz", except she's not a widow yet, though not for lack of trying.
My fingers return to the keys, developing the theme. Each section ties to memory: her throwing the plate, learning to sign just to curse me properly. And this aching melody that keeps returning, the torture of proximity, of being so close to what I cannot have.
The piece builds toward something I don't understand yet. My hands search for resolution that doesn't exist, just like our marriage. We're suspended between violence and… what? Notpeace. Never peace. But something else. Something that makes me compose at two in the morning while she pretends to sleep one floor above.
I write faster, trying to capture every nuance before it escapes. This is her music, born from watching her exist in my space. She's invaded more than my home, she's invaded my creativity, broken through ten years of musical silence.
A soft creak from above stops my hands on the keys. The sound is deliberate, controlled, our bedroom door opening. Ana is listening. My little killer is curious about the monster's music.
Without conscious thought, I gentle the melody, softening the violent edges. If she's going to listen, let her hear something that might make her wonder. The music shifts, becomes less about my hunger and more about protection. These notes say what I cannot sign: You're safe with me. Even as you plot my death, even as you clutch your knife, you're safer with me than anywhere else in this world.
The melody transforms into something almost like a lullaby, if lullabies could hold violence at their edges. My hands find phrases that speak of patience, of waiting, of a man who could snap her neck but chooses to sleep in a chair instead. This is my confession through keys, that her hatred is safer with me than her love would be with anyone else.
