My face is red. Actually red. Not "oh she's a little flushed" red but full-on tomato, someone-painted-FEELINGS-across-her-cheeks red.
Oh no.
He definitely saw that.
Okay. Okay, Bailey. Think.
Fact one: I am in a car.
Fact two: I was just carried here by a fictional mafia king because I wasn't walking fast enough.
Fact three: He looked at my mouth.
Fact four: My body is still tingling everywhere he touched me.
Fact five: Facts three and four are deeply concerning and I'm choosing to ignore them.
Fact six: I am failing to ignore them.
The engine starts. We begin to move.
There's a driver up front, separated from me by a privacy partition. Another man in the passenger seat. Neither of them turns around or acknowledges my existence, which is somehow worse than if they'd pointed a gun at me. At least with a gun, I'd know where I stood.
I press my forehead against the cool glass of the window and watch the world slide by. We're on a private road, trees lining both sides, and the afternoon light slants through the leaves in patterns that make me think of impressionist paintings. Monet. Renoir. Artists who understood that light could be broken into a thousand pieces and still be beautiful.
And then the trees end, and I see it.
The estate.
Stone walls the color of old honey rise three stories high, with dormer windows and copper gutters gone green with age. The architecture is French-influenced, old-money elegant, the kind of building that whispers about generations of wealth so vast it stopped being about money a long time ago.
Gardens. Geometric hedges. A fountain in the center of the circular drive, water catching the late sun like liquid gold.
Everything is perfect. Everything is precise. Not a single blade of grass out of place.
This place is him. Every inch of it designed, curated, controlled.
And now I'm in it.
THE INTERIOR MATCHESthe exterior. Grand. Impeccable. Intimidating.
High ceilings. A chandelier that costs more than my annual salary. Marble floors so polished I can see my own reflection, small and rumpled and completely out of place.
Staff members move through the space with quiet efficiency. They glance at me as I pass, their expressions carefully blank, and I realize with a jolt that they don't know who I am.
Of course they don't.
To them, I'm just the woman from the chapel. The stranger who appeared at the exact wrong moment. An anomaly in this perfect house.
A silver-haired man leads me up a sweeping staircase, down a hallway lined with paintings, and stops in front of a door.
"Your room, miss. Someone will bring you dinner shortly."
My room. Like I'm a guest at a hotel.
I step inside.
The room is beautiful. A four-poster bed with silk hangings. Antique furniture. Windows overlooking the gardens. A fireplace. A door that probably leads to a bathroom with marble floors and gold fixtures.
