il mio professore

Chapter 2 ~~✨

The first night passed without touch.

Livia lay on one side of the grand four-poster bed, its antique wood frame groaning under the weight of a silence too sharp to ignore. Augustus had taken the chair by the fireplace, still in his suit, his posture as rigid as marble. He hadn't undressed. He hadn't looked at her again after extinguishing the light.

It wasn't kindness. It was restraint.

And restraint, she was beginning to understand, was more terrifying than desire.

The next morning, Livia woke alone. She had hoped for an empty bed; she hadn't expected an empty house. The suite was silent, except for the muffled city sounds of Bologna outside the tall windows. She pulled a cardigan over the slip she'd fallen asleep in and wandered to the kitchen, where a handwritten note waited for her on the counter.

Livia—
There's coffee.
I'll be at the university until 6 p.m. Your orientation begins next week.
Don't be late.
—A.M.

No greeting. No goodbye.

Just orders and expectations, pressed between neat lines of ink.

She stared at the note for a long time. Then she crumpled it into her palm and threw it in the bin.

The Acacius name had opened every door for her, and none of them had ever led to freedom.

When she was ten, her mother taught her to suture oranges with surgical thread, each stitch neat and small, "like a lady's voice." At twelve, her father made her memorize every artery of the human body, whispering, "You will make the Acacius name immortal."

And now? They had given her a new name, wrapped in vows and expectations.

Mrs. Moreno.

Livia made herself coffee, bitter and black, and sipped it by the window. Her gaze drifted over the garden—perfectly trimmed hedges, a white stone fountain shaped like a swan.

It was a beautiful cage.

Augustus returned home that evening at precisely 6:04.

Livia, seated cross-legged on the floor with her laptop, didn't look up as the door opened. She heard the soft click of his shoes on the wood, the sound of his coat being hung, the brief exhale of a man who had spent the day building and unbuilding young minds.

"You're late," she said flatly.

There was a pause. "Four minutes."

She tapped her fingers against the laptop. "I thought you didn't tolerate lateness."

"I don't," he said. "Except in marriage, it seems."

The way he said marriage—a scalpel instead of a word.

He stepped closer, stopping a few feet from her. "Have you reviewed the orientation material for the department?"

"I glanced at it."

"That's not good enough."

She stood, laptop in hand. "You forget," she said coolly, "that I was your student once. I know how this works. You push. You judge. You wait for someone to break so you can say, I told you so."

"Wrong," Augustus said. "I wait for someone to fight back."

His eyes were stormcloud-dark, and the space between them seemed to buzz with something unspoken.

Livia stepped closer. "So that's what this is? Some twisted mentorship experiment in domination and obedience?"

He didn't flinch. "I don't care if you obey me. I care if you survive. And this world, Livia—the one you're desperate to prove yourself in—it has no mercy. Especially not for women."

"And you think marrying me is going to protect me?" she asked. "You think your name is a shield?"

"No," he said, voice suddenly quiet. "But I think you're stronger than you believe. And that terrifies your family."

That stopped her.

She swallowed hard, something flickering in her chest. "What do you want from me, Augustus?"

He looked at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then he said, "Excellence. Nothing less."

"And what do you offer me in return?"

He took a step forward. Her back hit the wall. He wasn't touching her—but she could feel him, like static in the air, like the eye of a storm about to break.

"Everything I know," he said. "Every brutal lesson I've learned. Every barrier you'll face—I'll prepare you for it. Every mistake that could cost you your future—I'll teach you how to avoid it. But only if you want it."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I'll be your husband by name only," he said, coldly. "And you'll spend the rest of your life wondering who you might've become if you had dared to meet me at my level."

Livia didn't sleep that night either.

But this time, it wasn't fear keeping her awake. It was the burn of something darker.

Not hatred. Not desire.

Ambition.