I make my way back to my room through corridors that feel different now, charged with possibility and danger. The few staff I pass keep their eyes down, but I wonder if they know. If Eva’s possession is written across my skin for everyone to see.
Back in my room, I pull on my pajamas again and crawl under the heavy covers, but sleep doesn’t come. Instead, I lie awake staring at the ceiling, replaying every touch, every kiss, every whispered command.
My body still throbs where she touched me. Still craves more.
I came here to protect my family. To honor a contract that will secure their future. But as moonlight spills across the marble floor through locked windows, I’m forced to confront a truth I’ve been avoiding.
Eva Novak is going to destroy me all over again.
Chapter 8
Eva
The CCTV is a distraction.
I’m supposed to be looking over reports from Paris on the camera footage my people have been able to retrieve of the attack on me there. But I’m not looking at the reports. I’m looking at my obsession. Fingers steepled, I watch Robin Rivers move through my castle like a bright little butterfly fluttering against glass.
She’s in the Great Hall now, looking out the massive window to the lake. Her strawberry-blonde seems like gold filaments in the light streaming through the glass, and I find myself adjusting the camera angle for a better view.
I’m not checking on her, I tell myself. This is routine oversight. I like to know what happens in my home. Every door that opens, every footstep in my corridors, every breath drawn under my roof—it all belongs to me.
She stays there for a few minutes, and then moves to the library next, running her fingers along book spines idly. But the gesture is so unconsciously intimate that I find myself leaning closer tothe screen. She pauses at a section of Russian literature, tilting her head to read the Cyrillic script she can’t possibly understand.
A part of me likes this control. Robin is here because I brought her back—dragged her from her provincial little life in Vegas, against her better judgment. She fought me, tried to refuse my offer, but here she is anyway. In my castle. Under my protection.
Mine.
But another part finds her presence maddening, disruptive, dangerous. She’s too bright for this place, too soft for the world I inhabit.
Too soft forme, despite those barbed words she threw at me in the hospital.
Still…I haven’t forgotten them. Every word she said.
She selects a book. I force myself to look away from the screen, focusing instead on the stack of reports covering my desk. It’s not just the shooting that I need to deal with. There are still the usual problems with supply chains. Politics. Whispers of rebellion from associates who think I won’t crush them as hard as my father would have.
My obliteration of the Gattos will be a lesson for them all.
The words of the reports blur on the screen, and on the page when I turn to printouts. Market projections become meaningless numbers. Strategic assessments are gibberish. My attention keeps drifting back to the monitors, to Robin as she settles into a leather armchair by the library fireplace with what looks like one of the Brontë novels.
Damn her.
She’s too distracting, too content in her little bubble of literature and morning light. It’s time to remind her where she really is.
Remind her why she’s here.
I make my way to the library. Staff members scurry out of the way as I pass, but I barely see them. My focus has narrowed to a single point: the strawberry-blonde woman reading in my library.
The room is still warm and golden when I enter, almost cheerful. Robin sits curled in the leather armchair like she belongs there. Like she’s not a temporary acquisition.
She doesn’t notice me at first. Too absorbed in her book. I watch for a moment from the doorway, look at the way her hair falls like silk across her shoulder, the slope of her breasts under her cream sweater.
The sight of her sparks a hunger in me. Not just physical desire—though there’s plenty of that—but something far darker. A need that goes beyond the flesh, beyond the temporary satisfaction of bodies moving together to completion.
I want to possess her completely. Mind, body, soul.
Heart.
Just because I’m going with you, it doesn’t mean I feel anything for you.
