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Favny's library 2, Port Harcourt (2026)

18/04/2026

I just launched my podcast. It is called In Progress and it is about everything nobody tells you about building something from scratch. First episode is live. Go listen and tell me what you think — link in comments.

04/04/2026

💎 BROKEN VOWS

**ELENA & LEONARDO**
**Chapter 25 — reedited**

**POV: Elena**

Leonardo Vincenzi opened my car door.

Not in a rushed, let's-keep-moving kind of way. He actually stopped. Waited. Like he had all the time in the world and I was supposed to just get in without making it weird.

I got in without making it weird.

But I noticed. Trust me, I noticed.

He came around to the driver's side and I was already looking out the passenger window by then, because if he caught me with that look on my face I was never going to hear the end of it. Or worse — he wouldn't say anything. He'd just know. And somehow that felt worse.

The drive started quiet. Normal quiet, or so I told myself.

Except nothing about the last two hours had been particularly normal. I'd walked into a hotel for a lunch that got cancelled, and somehow ended up sitting next to my husband at a table with the Prime Minister of the country, making small talk like that was just something that happened on a Wednesday.

And Leonardo had just — invited me. Like it was nothing. Like the thought had come to him and he'd acted on it without running it through whatever seventeen filters he usually used before he spoke.

That was the part I couldn't shake.

Outside the window the city was doing its usual thing — noisy, indifferent, moving too fast. I tracked a woman on the pavement struggling with two shopping bags and an umbrella and felt very normal watching her because at least her afternoon made sense.

"You were good in there."

I turned. "Sorry?"

Leonardo kept his eyes on the road. "With Crane. You were good."

I stared at the side of his face for a second. "Was I supposed to be bad?"

"Most people are." He said it like a fact, not a compliment. "They either talk too much or go too quiet. You didn't do either."

"I had ninety seconds of preparation and no warning," I said. "There wasn't time to do either."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. Leonardo didn't really do smiles — he did these small fractional shifts that lasted half a second and disappeared before you could be sure you'd seen them.

I'd started cataloguing them without meaning to. That was a problem for another day.

We drove. I shifted in my seat and crossed one leg over the other and was very busy looking unbothered when he reached over without a word and turned the air conditioning down.

I looked at the vent.

I looked at him.

He said nothing. Just drove.

I had been cold. I hadn't said anything about being cold. I'd been rubbing my arm for maybe a minute, barely even aware I was doing it, and he'd just — caught it. Fixed it. Moved on.

Like it was automatic.

Like I was someone he paid attention to without deciding to.

I pressed my back against the seat and stared forward and told myself to calm down. It was air conditioning. It wasn't a declaration. People adjusted air conditioning for other people all the time.

But the thing was — this was Leonardo. The man who, three weeks ago, had walked past me in the hallway without a word because he was mid-thought and the world didn't exist when he was mid-thought. The man whose idea of checking in was appearing in a doorway, looking at me once, deciding I was alive, and leaving.

So.

You know.

It was a little bit of a thing.

"There's something on Friday," he said.

I blinked. "The Whitmore dinner. Yes, I know, we discussed—"

"Before the dinner."

I waited.

He didn't continue immediately. Which — okay. That tracked. This was a man who sometimes paused mid-sentence long enough for you to wonder if he'd changed his mind entirely and just wasn't going to tell you.

"There's a restaurant," he said finally. "Near the venue. It's — the food is good."

I turned to look at him fully. "Are you recommending a restaurant to me right now?"

"I'm saying we could go."

"We."

"Before the event." He shifted lanes smoothly, unhurried. "It would make more sense than arriving on an empty stomach."

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

He was staring straight ahead, both hands on the wheel, expression completely unreadable. To anyone watching this man right now he would look like someone discussing a logistics decision. Traffic flow. Scheduling.

But I had been living in his house for weeks. I had learned the difference between Leonardo being business-like and Leonardo hiding behind being business-like.

This was the second one.

"So," I said slowly, "you want to take me to dinner. Before the dinner we are already attending."

"That's what I said."

"You said the food was good."

"It is good."

"Leonardo."

"Elena."

I bit the inside of my cheek. Hard. Because I almost laughed — not meanly, it wasn't funny like that. It was funny like watching someone extremely dignified trip on flat ground and recover before anyone else caught it. Except I caught it. I always caught it with him and I didn't know when that had started.

And underneath the almost-laughter was something else. Something quieter and warmer that I was absolutely not going to examine in a moving vehicle.

"What time?" I said.

He blinked. Just once. "Five-thirty."

"Fine."

A beat of silence.

"Fine," he repeated. Like the word surprised him a little.

"Yes." I turned back to the window. "Five-thirty. Don't be late."

He didn't respond. But a few seconds later I heard him exhale — slow, barely there — and I don't know what it was about that sound. Just a breath. Just air leaving a person's lungs. But it landed somewhere in my chest and stayed there like it had decided to move in.

I watched the trees start to replace the buildings as we got closer to home. The light was going golden the way it did in the late afternoon, soft and warm, making everything look a little more than it was.

Or maybe everything just was more than it was. Maybe I was only now catching up to that.

"For the record," I said quietly, not looking at him.

"Mm."

"You could've just said dinner."

He was quiet for a second.

"I know," he said.

Just that. Nothing else.

I smiled at the window where he couldn't see it.

To be continued ❤️✨🩵

04/04/2026

💎 BROKEN VOWS💎

**ELENA & LEONARDO**
**Chapter 24**

**POV: Leonardo**

She still hadn't seen me.

I crossed the restaurant floor with the kind of measured pace that didn't draw attention — not rushing, not hesitating, just moving with purpose the way I always did. The hotel staff near the entrance stepped aside without being asked. People generally did.

Elena was finishing her exchange with the front desk attendant. She had a small card in her hand — a reservation slip, from the look of it — and she was sliding it into her purse with the particular efficiency that told me she had arrived with an agenda and was already three steps into executing it.

"Elena."

She turned.

For exactly one second — just one — something crossed her face. Not guilt. Not panic. Something quieter than that. Surprise, maybe, or the rapid, invisible recalculation of someone who had not expected a variable and was already adjusting.

Then it was gone. And she looked at me the way she always did.

Steady. Composed. Completely unbothered.

"Leonardo." Her voice was even. "I didn't know you'd be here."

"Clearly." I stopped in front of her, close enough to speak without being overheard. The lobby noise was sufficient cover. "What are you doing here?"

She tilted her head slightly. The way she did when she found a question mildly unreasonable but was deciding whether to say so. "Having lunch."

I looked at her.

She looked back.

"Alone," I said.

"I'm aware of how many people I came with, yes."

I exhaled once, slowly, through my nose. "This isn't a question about your arithmetic, Elena. This hotel — why here, specifically?"

She studied me for a moment with those dark, patient eyes. Then she said, "I was meeting someone. A friend. She cancelled twenty minutes ago." A small pause. "I'd already driven here so I thought I'd eat before going back. Is that a full enough explanation or would you like my itinerary for the rest of the afternoon?"

The dryness in her voice was very light. Barely there. But I heard it.

And for reasons I did not examine too closely, the tight thing that had pulled across my shoulders the moment I saw her standing here alone — that eased. Slightly.

"Which restaurant?" I asked.

She blinked. "What?"

"Where were you going to eat?"

She looked faintly confused, the way she sometimes did when I changed direction mid-conversation without announcing it. "I was going to ask for a table at the bistro. The one on the ground floor."

I was quiet for a moment.

Crane was upstairs. His time was scheduled, and I was not a man who wasted the schedules of prime ministers. I was also not a man who left things unresolved — and there was something about the image of Elena sitting alone at a hotel bistro table, friend cancelled, perfectly composed about it in that way she was perfectly composed about everything, that sat in the back of my mind at an angle I didn't like.

"Come upstairs," I said.

She stared at me. "I'm sorry?"

"I'm having lunch with someone. A business associate." I kept my voice even, matter-of-fact. "There's enough room at the table."

She stared at me a little longer. "Leonardo, you're in a business lunch. I'm not going to—"

"I'm not asking you to conduct business. I'm asking you to eat." I looked at her steadily. "You're here. The food upstairs is considerably better than the bistro. It's not complicated."

A beat of silence stretched between us.

Elena's expression was doing the thing it did when she was deciding whether I was being practical or something else, and hadn't landed on an answer yet. I was familiar with that look. I had learned, over the past several weeks, that when she gave me that look, it was best to say nothing further and let her arrive at her own conclusion. Pressing her produced the opposite result of whatever I was after.

I waited.

She looked down at the card in her purse. Then back at me.

"Who's the associate?" she asked.

"Prime Minister Crane."

Her composure held. Impressively, I thought. Most people's eyes widened. Hers simply held mine for an extra second, processing, before she said with complete evenness, "You're having lunch with the Prime Minister."

"Yes."

"And you want to bring your wife who showed up at the same hotel coincidentally."

"I want to bring my wife," I said, "because she's here and she needs to eat. The rest of it is detail."

She was quiet for another moment. Then she closed her purse.

"Fine," she said. "But if this becomes a thing—"

"It won't become a thing."

"If it does—"

"Elena." I looked at her. "It won't."

She held my gaze for precisely long enough to let me know she wasn't fully convinced, and then she straightened and said, "Lead the way."

I did.

---

Crane stood when we approached the table. That was Crane — old world courtesy, regardless of circumstances. His eyes moved to Elena with the smooth, practiced assessment of a man who had spent decades reading people and reading rooms.

"I apologize for the interruption," I said, settling back into my seat as Elena took the chair beside me. "My wife. Elena."

"Elena Vincenzi." Crane smiled — warm, genuine, the particular warmth of a man who actually enjoyed meeting people and hadn't been worn out of it by decades of politics. "A pleasure. I had no idea you'd be joining us."

"Neither did I," Elena said pleasantly.

There was something in the way she said it — perfectly polite, faintly amused at her own situation — that made Crane laugh. A real one, the same way he'd laughed earlier.

"Refreshing," he said, settling back and reaching for his wine. "Most people I meet have known they'd be meeting me for several weeks."

"I had about ninety seconds," Elena said. "I think I'm adjusting well."

Crane laughed again and looked at me with an expression I recognized from older men who thought they were being subtle. They rarely were.

I picked up my water glass and said nothing.

The food came. Conversation resumed — careful, away from anything consequential now that the table had changed, moving instead through lighter territory. Crane had a particular gift for drawing people out without appearing to try, and Elena, I noticed, was exactly comfortable enough to be charming and exactly guarded enough to reveal nothing she hadn't decided to reveal.

She was good at this.

I found myself watching her more than was strictly necessary. The way she listened — fully, without filling silence too quickly. The way she smiled — measured, never too wide, like she was always keeping something in reserve. The way she held herself in a room full of weight and influence and simply... belonged in it. Without trying. Without performing.

At some point Crane asked her something about the city — a restaurant she preferred, I think — and she answered, and he nodded, and the conversation moved on.

But at some point during her answer, her hand had moved to rest on the table near mine. Not touching. Just close. The way things were sometimes, between people who were still learning the edges of each other.

I didn't move my hand either.

We stayed through dessert. When Crane finally stood to leave, he shook my hand and then took Elena's, and said something to her quietly that I didn't catch — too low, meant for her. She smiled in response. Not the measured one.

A different one.

In the elevator down, I looked at her.

"What did he say to you?"

She glanced up at me. "That you looked at me the way his late wife used to say a man should look at his wife." She paused. "And that it was good to see."

I said nothing.

Elena faced forward again as the elevator descended.

"He's a nice man," she said simply.

I looked at the elevator doors. At our faint reflection in the polished metal — her shoulder near my arm, both of us facing forward, the city waiting below.

"Yes," I said quietly. "He is."

Neither of us said anything else.

But she didn't move away from me either.

And I didn't move away from her.

To be continued ❤️ ✨ 🩵

Chapter 24 done! 😭🔥 Crane just called him out and Elena delivered that last line like a quiet knife. Leonardo is so deep in denial it's beautiful.

Ready for Chapter 25 — just tell me where to take it and what you expect from the next chapter!👇

15/03/2026

💎Broken Vows 💎

**ELENA & LEONARDO**

**Chapter 23**

POV: Leonardo

I run my meetings the same way I run everything else.

Efficiently. Without sentiment. With the understanding that every person seated around that table is there because they are useful, and the moment they stop being useful, the seat gets filled by someone who is.

It was eleven-fifteen when I called the room to order. Twelve of them — department heads, senior analysts, two members of the legal team. The quarterly review had been circulated the night before. I didn't believe in wasting the first twenty minutes of a meeting explaining documents that adults had been given ample time to read.

"Acquisitions," I said.

Marcus, my head of acquisitions, straightened in his chair and began. I listened with the part of my mind that was always listening — cataloguing numbers, flagging inconsistencies, measuring confidence against actual data. The other part was already moving ahead, sorting through the rest of the agenda.

We moved through the table. Finance. Logistics. The restructuring of the Harlen portfolio. A contractual dispute that legal was handling poorly and would need to handle better by end of week.

I did not raise my voice once. I rarely do. I have found that a quiet correction lands harder than a loud one — people lean in, and the leaning in is its own kind of discomfort. By the time we reached closing remarks, the room had the particular energy of people who had been reminded, without being told directly, that standard was not the ceiling. It was the floor.

"That's all," I said.

Chairs shifted. Laptops closed. The low murmur of people exhaling properly for the first time in ninety minutes filled the room as they filed out.

"Mr. Vincenzi."

I was already standing, buttoning my jacket. My secretary, Diane, had appeared at my elbow with the quiet efficiency I paid her specifically for. Mid-forties, sharp, loyal, and sensible enough to know when to speak and when to wait.

"Your car for the Prime Minister's lunch is confirmed for twelve-forty-five," she said. "The hotel has your table—"

"Before that." I kept my voice even and my eyes on the documents I was closing. "The Warren Group."

A small pause. "Sir?"

"Buy out their stocks. All of it. Every available share on the open market, every private holding our legal team can move on quietly. I want it done before end of business Thursday." I picked up my phone from the table. "Start with the subsidiaries."

The pause this time was longer.

I looked up.

Diane had the expression of someone who had learned, over years of working for me, to keep her face neutral — but the effort was showing at the edges. Her brows had pulled together by a fraction. She was thinking about the Warrens. Thinking about Enoch Warren's handshakes with my father, the dinners, the decades of carefully maintained proximity between our families.

"Sir," she said carefully. "The Warren Group — their family has had ties to Vincenzi holdings for quite some time. If this moves quickly, Enoch Warren will—"

"Diane."

She stopped.

I looked at her with exactly the level of patience I had remaining, which at that moment was very little. "Do I pay you to execute instructions, or do I pay you to question them?"

The color shifted slightly at her collar. "To execute them, sir."

"Then I suggest you begin." I straightened my cuffs. "Quietly. Quickly. And thoroughly. I don't want a single share left for them to stand on. Are we clear?"

"Yes, Mr. Vincenzi."

"Good." I picked up my jacket from the back of the chair. "Have the car ready in twenty minutes."

She left without another word.

I stood alone in the emptied boardroom for a moment after she did. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city moved the way it always did — indifferent, relentless, entirely unaware of what had just been set in motion.

The Warrens had enjoyed their position long enough. Lorraine had walked into my daughter's afternoon and pressed her fingers into spaces that did not belong to her.

People who didn't understand boundaries had to be taught them through the only language they consistently heard.

Loss.

I picked up my phone and walked out.

The hotel was the kind of place that understood discretion as a service.

Marble floors that absorbed sound. Staff who moved like shadows and spoke in measured tones. The restaurant on the second floor was reserved, in the way that only certain restaurants in certain cities were reserved — not by sign or rope, but by reputation alone. If you needed to be told you couldn't afford it, you couldn't.

Prime Minister Aldous Crane was already seated when I arrived. Late sixties, silver-haired, the particular kind of unhurried that came from decades of being the most important person in every room he entered. He stood when he saw me — a courtesy between equals, or close enough — and we shook hands the way men like us did. Firm. Brief. No performance.

"Leonardo." He gestured to the seat across from him. "I was beginning to wonder if Vincenzi Industries had swallowed you whole."

"Not yet." I sat. "Give it a quarter."

He laughed — a real one. That was what I had always appreciated about Crane. He laughed when things were actually amusing and not a moment before.

We ordered. The conversation moved the way these conversations always did — surface pleasantries first, a kind of verbal clearing of the table, and then the real discussion settling in underneath. An infrastructure proposal his office was quietly shepherding. Certain regulatory considerations that would affect three of my current projects. The kind of alignment that didn't exist in any document but shaped decisions for the next two years regardless.

I was precise. He was careful. We understood each other.

The food arrived. I was mid-sentence — something about the timeline on the eastern corridor development — when the movement at the entrance of the restaurant caught the edge of my attention the way movement sometimes does when something is familiar before you've fully registered what it is.

I looked up.

Elena.

She was standing near the entrance, speaking to one of the hotel staff. She was dressed well — she always was, in that quiet, deliberate way of hers — and she was alone. No Amelia. No one I recognized beside her. She had the unhurried posture of someone who was exactly where she intended to be, and yet I could not account for why she was here, in this hotel, at this hour, without my knowing.

She hadn't seen me.

I watched her for a moment. Three seconds, perhaps four. Long enough to confirm it was her, and long enough to notice that something in my chest did a thing I chose not to name.

"Leonardo?"

I turned back to the Prime Minister. Crane was watching me with the mild, knowing expression of a man who had read people across negotiating tables for thirty years and missed very little.

I set my napkin down. "Forgive me." I kept my voice completely level. "Will you excuse me for just a moment?"

Crane followed my line of sight toward the entrance, then looked back at me with the smallest possible smile. "Of course," he said.

I stood, buttoned my jacket once, and walked toward the entrance of the restaurant.

I had no particular plan for what I was going to say.

I told myself I simply wanted to know what she was doing here.

That was all.

To be continued! ❤️💎🌟

It's a great day today. How's your day going??

09/03/2026

💎 Broken Vows 💎

Chapter 22

Leonard's pov❤️

I am not a man who hesitates.

I have closed multi-million dollar deals across a table from men who built their careers on intimidation. I have walked into rooms where every person present wanted something from me and left with exactly what I came for. I have faced my mother's disapproval, my board's skepticism, and the particular silence of an empty house after my daughter stopped asking when her mother was coming back.

I do not hesitate.

So I could not explain — not to myself, not to any reasonable version of logic — why I had been standing outside the door of my own study for the past four minutes, unable to simply open it.

Elena was inside. I knew because I'd watched her walk in there twenty minutes ago with a book and a cup of tea, completely unbothered by the world, the way she was unbothered by most things. I had a reason to speak to her. A perfectly legitimate, entirely straightforward reason.

I needed to attend a dinner.

A business dinner. A social obligation — the kind my position required several times a year. The Whitmore event. Formal. Prestigious. The sort of evening where a man was expected to arrive with someone, and arriving alone sent a message I had no interest in sending right now.

That was all this was.

I was going to ask her to accompany me. As my wife. Because that was the arrangement. She would understand that. It was practical. Logical. Clean.

I opened the door.

Elena looked up from her book without surprise. She had that quality — she never looked like she'd been caught off guard, even when she had been. She simply recalibrated and looked at you like she'd been expecting you all along.

"Leonardo." A statement, not a question.

"Elena." I moved into the room, hands folded behind my back, and stood near the edge of the desk. I had a whole sentence prepared. Clear. Concise. *There is a dinner on Friday. Your attendance would be appropriate given our current arrangement.* Eleven words. I had said harder things in front of larger audiences.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

"No."

She waited.

I cleared my throat. "There is an event."

She closed her book — slowly, watching me with that particular patience she had. The kind that didn't pressure you but somehow made silence louder. "What kind of event?"

"A dinner." I kept my voice level. Even. Entirely normal. "The Whitmore Foundation holds it annually. It is — attended by a number of people in my professional circle. Associates. A few clients. The usual."

"Alright," she said simply.

I looked at her. She looked at me.

"It is on Friday," I added.

"This Friday?"

"Yes."

She nodded slowly. "Is there something you need from me for it? Guest list, seating arrangements, something with the house—"

"I would like you to come."

The words came out with somewhat less authority than I intended. Not poorly delivered — I don't deliver things poorly — but there was a fraction of a pause before them that I was aware of. A small hesitation that a less observant woman would have missed entirely.

Elena was not a less observant woman.

Something shifted at the corner of her mouth. Not a smile — she was too composed for that. Just a small, subtle movement that told me she had noticed, filed it, and chosen, graciously, to say nothing about it.

"To the dinner," she said.

"Yes. To the dinner." I maintained eye contact. Completely natural. "As my wife. It would be expected. Given — the arrangement."

"Of course," she said.

"It is a formal event. Black tie."

"I understand what formal means, Leonardo."

I looked at her. She looked back at me with those steady dark eyes, perfectly calm, and I had the distinct and irritating sense that she was enjoying this slightly more than she was letting on.

"I'll need to know the time," she said, reaching for her tea. Unhurried. Completely at ease.

"Seven. The car will be arranged."

"And the dress code — you said black tie." She tilted her head. "Any specific color preference? Some wives dress to coordinate."

I had not considered that. "No," I said, after a beat that was perhaps one beat too long. "Wear whatever you like."

She nodded. "Then I'll find something."

"Good." I straightened. Perfectly composed. "That's settled then."

"That's settled," she agreed.

I turned to leave. I had made it three full steps toward the door when her voice reached me, quiet and entirely too unbothered.

"Leonardo."

I stopped. Turned.

She was looking at me over the rim of her teacup, one brow lifted the smallest degree. "You could have just asked. It wasn't complicated."

I held her gaze for exactly one moment.

"I did ask," I said.

"Mhm." She opened her book again.

I left the room.

In the hallway, alone, I stopped walking. Stood still. Stared at nothing in particular for approximately three seconds.

Then I continued to my office, sat down, opened my laptop, and said absolutely nothing about it to anyone.

It was a dinner. A business obligation.

That was all.

I almost believed it.

To be continued ❤️✨

09/03/2026

💎 Broken Vows💎
Chapter 21

**POV: third person**

The house was quiet.

That was the first thing Leonardo noticed when he stepped through the front door at half past nine. No television. No Amelia padding around in her socks asking for one more glass of water. No sound of his mother's voice carrying down the hallway like a verdict being read aloud.

Just quiet.

He loosened his tie as he walked further inside, his briefcase set beside the console table the way it always was. Old habit. The kind of thing a man did without thinking after enough years of coming home to the same house.

Except nothing about this felt the same as it used to.

He followed the faint smell of something warm. Something that didn't belong to the cold, formally decorated rooms of this house — something softer. Domestic. He rounded the corner into the kitchen and stopped.

Elena was at the counter.

She hadn't heard him. She had earphones in — one side only, her habit — and she was cutting fruit with the kind of careful, unhurried focus she gave most things. A small pot sat on the stove. Steam rose from it in slow curls. She was still in her day clothes, but her hair had been pulled back loosely, a few strands falling at her neck.

Leonardo stood in the doorway for a moment longer than he needed to.

He told himself it was because he didn't want to startle her. That was reasonable. That was the practical explanation.

He cleared his throat.

She turned, pulling out the earphone. She didn't jump — Elena rarely jumped. She simply looked at him with those steady, dark eyes and said, "You're late."

"I'm aware."

"Amelia asked about you before bed." She turned back to the stove, adjusting the flame slightly. "I told her you'd check on her."

He set down his jacket on the back of a chair. "Is she asleep?"

"Barely. She was fighting it." A small pause. "She had a good day. She told me she wants to start learning how to bake properly. Not the easy stuff — she said she wants to make *real* pastry."

Despite himself, the corner of his mouth moved. "She's eight."

"She's ambitious." Elena glanced at him over her shoulder. "She gets it from somewhere."

He didn't answer that. He moved to the cabinet and poured himself a glass of water, standing a few feet from her, watching her work without meaning to watch so openly. She moved around the kitchen like she'd always been in it. Not tentative. Not performing comfort — just... comfortable.

It was unsettling, how natural it looked.

"You don't have to do this," he said.

"Do what?"

He gestured vaguely at the stove, the fruit, the quiet organized order of it all. "Cook this late. It's not required."

Elena set down her knife slowly. She turned to face him fully, leaning against the counter with her arms crossed — not defensively, just in the measured, unbothered way she did most things. "I know it's not required," she said. "I was hungry. I made enough for two. That's not a declaration of anything, Leonardo. It's just food."

He looked at her.

She looked back.

There was a version of himself — the version that existed in boardrooms, in contract negotiations, in conversations with men twice his age who thought they could pressure him — that always knew what to say next. Controlled. Precise. A sentence ready before the last one finished.

That version of him went oddly quiet around Elena.

"Sit down," she said, turning back to the stove. "It's almost ready."

He sat.

He didn't know why he sat without argument. He might have examined that more closely if he were a different kind of man. Instead, he rolled up his sleeves, rested his forearms on the kitchen table, and watched her move.

She plated two portions with the same efficiency she did everything — no ceremony, no fuss. She set one in front of him and took the seat across the table with her own, tucking one leg beneath her the way she apparently did when no one important was watching.

He noticed she'd forgotten he was there. Or rather — she'd stopped adjusting herself for his presence. That was new.

They ate without speaking for a while. The quiet was different now. Less empty.

"My mother spoke to you today," he said. It wasn't a question.

Elena's expression didn't shift. "She did."

"About the menu."

"Among other things."

He set his fork down. "Elena."

She looked up at him. "It's handled, Leonardo. I don't need you to intervene every time your mother decides I'm not running her son's house to her standard."

"That's not what I was going to say."

"Then what were you going to say?"

He studied her for a moment. The way she held herself — back straight, chin level, completely unintimidated. Not performing toughness. Just genuinely unmoved in a way that most people weren't when they sat across from him.

"I was going to say," he said carefully, "that I noticed. And that you handled it well."

Something passed across her face. Brief. Almost imperceptible. Then it was gone, and she picked up her fork again. "You were watching."

"I was aware."

"There's a difference."

"Yes," he agreed. "There is."

Another silence. Outside, the night had settled fully over the house. Inside, the kitchen light was warm and low. Amelia was asleep down the hall. His mother had retired to her room hours ago. The staff had long since finished for the evening.

It was just the two of them at this table, eating food Elena had made at nine-thirty at night because she was hungry and had made enough for two, and somehow that felt like more than it was.

Or exactly as much as it was. He hadn't decided.

"She asked me today," Elena said quietly, not looking up, "if I was planning to stay."

He was still. "Amelia?"

"Your mother." Elena's voice was even. "Politely. You know how she does it — wrapped in a compliment that isn't one." She finally looked up. "She wanted to know if the arrangement was permanent or if things might *change.*" The word came out dry. "Her word."

Leonardo's jaw tightened. He kept it controlled, but not well enough, apparently — because Elena tilted her head slightly, reading him.

"I handled it," she said again, with just a little more weight this time. *Let it go.*

He exhaled slowly. "What did you tell her?"

Elena picked up her glass. A beat. "I told her I wasn't going anywhere."

The words sat in the space between them.

He didn't know if she meant it as a statement of fact. A performance for his mother's benefit. A quiet assertion of the position she'd chosen to hold in this house and wasn't going to apologize for.

Maybe all three.

He picked up his fork again. "Good," he said.

Elena looked at him for just a second longer than usual. Then she looked back at her plate, and something at the edge of her mouth shifted — not quite a smile, but close.

They finished the rest of the meal in comfortable silence.

When she stood to clear the plates, he stood too, and took his own to the sink without being asked. She glanced at him sideways.

"You can leave it," she said.

"I know."

He rinsed it anyway. She didn't comment. He heard the quiet sound of her exhale — the kind that meant she was filing something away, deciding what to do with it later.

He understood that particular habit. He had it too.

"Goodnight, Leonardo," she said, drying her hands on the kitchen towel and moving toward the doorway.

"Goodnight."

He stood at the sink a moment after she left, the kitchen settling back into quiet around him.

Different quiet than before, though.

He was beginning to understand the difference.

To be continued ❤️✨

Favny's library 2

18/04/2026

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09/03/2026

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