“Dolcezza.” The word rolled off his tongue like smoke, sweet and suffocating, curling around my ribs and squeezing until I couldn’t breathe.Sweetheart. He said it like I was something fragile, but nothing was fragile or pure about the storm bubbling inside me.
The audacity. The arrogance. The absolute nerve.
As if… it was the most natural thing in the world. As though my life was his to rewrite, my choices his to command. He didn’t ask. He declared.
“This can’t be…” I swayed in the seat, my hands shook, and my eyes tried to adjust. This had to be some kind of twisted joke because no way… he was asking me to marry him.
“You’re wasting my time, Dolcezza,” he murmured, and I felt his voice striking me across the face.
My throat burned with words I couldn’t force out. Marry the bastard of a man who killed a man, kidnapped me, ruined my life, and now wants me bound to him for some unknown reason?
I hated him. For making me feel this way. Furious and lost all at once. And yet, something about him made my knees weak. No amount of protest could change my fate.Myfate.My goddamn fate. My freedom had been stripped from me before I even realized it, and now this man was here to seal my fate with his name on a contract I didn’t understand.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered, ready to bolt. But where could I go?
The man sitting in front of me again adjusted his glasses, understanding the tension and feeling uncomfortable. I was also aware of the woman standing in the corner of the room. But none of them terrified me more than the man standing behind me.
He didn’t do anything, but I felt it, the way his hand curled around my shoulder. “This isn’t a negotiation. You’ll do as I say.”
Tears pricked my eyes, blurring the ink on the page in front of me. I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. “You’re… you’re taking everything from me.”
He chuckled. “Everything? No, Dolcezza. I’m giving you something. A purpose. A place. Protection.”
“Protection?” I spat and whipped around to face him, ignoring the ugly anger on his face. “You’re not protecting me. You’re imprisoning me, you bastard!”
A part of me wanted to take a step back, to put distance between us, but I stood my ground. I refused to let him see me falter. I was panting now, too angry to care if he’d kill me. That was better than marrying him.
I glared at him. The stormy-greys narrowed, and a tint of anger flashed in his eyes. “Prisoners don’t get silk sheets and diamonds.”
The audacity made me sick, but the way he said it—so casually, like my life was just another transaction to him—froze me in place.
I turned back to the paper, my hands shaking violently. My vision tunnelled. “You can’t… You can’t make me do this…”
What was happening anymore, I couldn’t decipher.
“You have ten seconds,” he said softly, and it was worse than if he’d yelled.
I bit my lip, hard enough to taste blood. My mind raced, desperate to find a way out of this nightmare. What could I do? Run? Stab him with the pen? How far could I go? Whatwould happen to me after that? Would I ever be able to leave? Everything agitated me.
Every second I wasted thinking was another second closer to the point of no return.
He trapped me in every sense of the word. And if I asked why, I knew he wouldn’t tell me. Tears burned my eyes. I felt so frustrated. Oh dear lord… show me some way. I couldn’t stay here and let him ruin me.
I was so engrossed in my thoughts that I didn’t feel him move. One moment I was standing, and the other, he placed his hand on my back and leaned. “Five.”
My lips trembled as I tried to make sense of it all.
“Please,” I choked out.
“Four.”
I turned to him, tears streaming down my face, hoping—praying—that he might show some shred of humanity.
“Three.”
His gaze bore into mine.
“Two.”
