Iamterrified.
So why is my stupid heart doing something that feels less like fear and more like—
No. Absolutely not. Do not finish that thought.
“But—”
He reaches out.
His fingers catch my chin, tilting my face up toward the light from the windows. It's the same gesture from yesterday—assessing, clinical—but this time his thumb brushes along my jaw, and the touch sends something warm and startling down my spine.
I stop breathing.
He turns my face slightly, like he's examining me. Looking for the lie. The light catches my cheekbone, my temple, and I realize with a jolt that this is exactly how I'd position a subject for a portrait. He's composing a shot. Reading me the way I read photographs.
His gaze drops to my mouth.
Third time.
I'm still counting.
Every time he does it, my pulse goes reckless and my brain forgets how to function. Every time his eyes come back up to mine, I have to remember how to breathe.
This time, when his gaze meets mine, there's something in it I can't name. Something that makes the air feel thick. Something that makes me very, very aware of how little space exists between us.
"You talked back to me," he says softly. "In my own chapel. Surrounded by my men. Either you're very brave or very stupid."
The defiance rises up before I can stop it. The same defiance that got me into this mess. The same defiance that keeps surprising me, like there's a version of myself I'm only now meeting.
"Maybe both."
Something happens to his face.
His mouth doesn't curve. Not quite. But something around his eyes changes—a slight crinkling at the corners, a barely-there shift that suggests the possibility of a smile without actually committing to one.
The almost-smile.
It's devastating.
The almost-smile is somehow worse than an actual smile would be. Because an actual smile I could dismiss. I could tell myself it's just a smile, people smile all the time, it doesn't mean anything.
But this—thisalmost—feels like something I earned. Something rare. Something he doesn't give to just anyone.
Oh no.
Oh no, Bailey. No.
He releases my chin. Steps back. And just like that, the almost-smile is gone, replaced by cool authority.
My jaw tingles where he touched it. I resist the urge to press my fingers there, to see if his touch left a mark. It didn't. Of course it didn't.
But it feels like it should have.
"Three days," he says. "Prove you're not my enemy, or I'll treat you as one."
Three days to prove I'm not a conspiracy. Three days to convince a mafia king that I'm just a photography assistant who got lost between worlds.
Three days until a wedding I never agreed to.
