"Turn around," he commands softly.
I do, feeling his gaze like hands on my body, touching without touching, claiming without contact. In the triple mirrors, I watch him watch me, see the satisfaction that spreads across his face like a man admiring a purchase he's particularly pleased with. He sits there like a king, and I'm just another territory to be claimed. My body responds to his attention against my will, warmth pooling low in my belly, my nipples hardening under the silk.
"Perfect. We'll take it. Now the white suit."
And so it continues. Outfit after outfit, each one more expensive than the last. I become a doll for him to dress, standing still while Vivian adjusts hems and straightens collars. When I mispronounce a designer and am gently corrected by Vivian, I glance up but Alessandro doesn't appear to notice.
"The red one," Vivian suggests, holding up a dress that looks like liquefied rubies, like blood transformed into silk.
"Yes," Alessandro says immediately, his voice rougher. "That one."
The dress clings to every curve, the silk so fine it feels like wearing sin itself. When I step out, his knuckles go white where they grip the settee's arm. The hunger in his eyes makes my breath catch, my body responding with shameful heat. The way he says "perfect" makes me tingle between my thighs.
"Christ," he breathes, and his voice has gone dark with want. "That dress makes me want to sin."
Heat floods my cheeks, my body responding to the hunger in his voice despite everything: despite the cage, despite the lies, despite the fact that I'm not even the woman he thinks he married. When our eyes meet in the mirror, we both freeze, caught in mutual want that terrifies me. I press my thighs together, trying to ease the ache his words create, but the movement only makes it worse.
"You're learning," he murmurs, voice dark with approval. "Good girls get rewards. Bad girls…" His pause makes my blood both chill and heat. "Bad girls get something else entirely."
The promise in his voice makes my pussy clench with need I hate myself for feeling.
"Now jewelry," he says, and Vivian produces velvet boxes like she's been waiting for this moment.
Alessandro rises from his throne for the first time, approaching me with a diamond necklace that catches the light like trapped stars. This single necklace could have changed everything for me. Could have spared me the life of a servant, given my mother hope, kept Tommy out of prison. But those chances are gone now, dissolved like my identity.
His fingers brush my throat as he fastens it, finding my pulse point with disturbing accuracy. I know he feels how my heart races at his touch. His breath ghosts across my neck, and I lean back, seeking more contact before I catch myself.
"Are you nervous, Frances?" he murmurs against my ear, and his thumb presses against my pulse point, feeling the evidence of what he does to me.
That name. Every time he says it, I remember I'm living a lie that will get me killed if discovered. Get Tommy killed. It shocks some composure into me.
"Just thrilled at the new clothes," I say smoothly, stepping away from him so I can breathe properly.
I step into the dressing room and close the doors behind me, though I have no reason to be here. I'm wearing my original blue dress again and draped in a diamond necklace, but I need to get away from that man.
But the dressing room walls feel like they're closing in. Through the cracked door (because privacy isn't a right I have anymore), I know Alessandro watches. My body heats under hisdistant gaze, beginning to crave his attention in ways that terrify me.
The woman in the mirror isn't Emma anymore. Not even pretend-Frances. She's something else entirely, something created by Alessandro's money and desire, shaped by his preferences like clay under an artist's hands.
Outside, I hear Alessandro discussing shipping arrangements with Vivian. Dozens of boxes, hundreds of thousands of dollars, all to transform me into his perfect possession. My breathing comes faster, shorter.
Who am I?
The question steals my breath. I'm not Emma the servant; she's gone, erased by marriage documents and designer clothes. I'm not Frances Hewson; she never existed in my body. I'm just… his. His creation. His possession.
I stare at this expensive stranger wearing my face, and something inside me dissolves. I press my palm against the mirror, trying to reach the servant girl trapped behind the glass, but she's already fading, already becoming a ghost.
"Mrs.Rosetti?" Vivian's voice through the door. "Your husband is asking for you."
Your husband. The words make the room feel even smaller, the air harder to breathe. I'm drowning in luxury, suffocating on silk and diamonds. I'm beginning to understand the real trap: it's not the mansion or the clothes or even the locked doors. It's how my treacherous body is starting to crave his attention, how my skin burns for his touch even as my mind screams danger.
I stare at myself one more time, this expensive stranger wearing my face, and make a decision born of pure panic.
I need to disappear. Not back to being Emma. Not to playing Frances. Just… gone. I realize with crystal clarity: I'd rather be nobody than this glittering fiction he's creating. I have to run before I disappear entirely into Mrs.Alessandro Rosetti.
My hands fumble with the clasp on the diamond necklace and then I fling it onto the floor and slide out the back curtain of the dressing room that leads to storage, and then out the first door I see.
The alley behind Celeste's smells like garbage. My heels click against the concrete as I run, no plan, no destination, just the desperate need to escape.
