“Liars,” I bite out. “Manipulators. The kind who pretend to be harmless so no one questions why they’re really here.”
Her chin lifts—not defensively, but acknowledging the hit. “I’m not pretending.”
I laugh once, humorless and sharp. “Bullshit.”
She takes a step toward me—one deliberate step—and my breath stutters before I can stop it. She sees. She always sees. And she uses it like a blade.
“There it is,” she whispers. “The part of you that you keep trying to hide.”
I step back. Not because I fear her—but because she’s peeling apart layers no one has touched in years… and I don’t know how to stop her.
“You don’t know a fucking thing about me,” I say again—too fast, too defensive.
“Maybe I know exactly enough.”
My heart hits hard against my ribs. Her gaze drags across my face—slow, deliberate, intimate in a way that feels like a touch. Then her eyes lock onto mine, reading every thought I didn’t speak.
And suddenly everything inside me splits open.
The priest in me wants her gone.The heir in me wants her closer.The man in me wants her against the wall again.
The collision of those truths hits like a fist to the chest.
The conflict rips out of me in a single, unfiltered question.
“Who sent you?”
Her brows lift—amused, not startled. “Is that what you think this is? A mission?”
She’s wrong.
What I really meant was:
Why can’t I stop wanting you?Why do you look at me like you know every fear I’ve ever buried?Why does this feel like destiny instead of sin?
But I don’t say any of that.
I don’t have to.
The shift in her expression tells me she read every unspoken thought anyway.
And that — that terrifies me more than any Rivas enemy ever did.
Outside, the storm lashes against the stained-glass windows.
Inside, another storm cracks open in my chest.
And Pia stands at the center of it, unflinching.Watching me come apart.
Knowing she caused it.
Pia Pushes Too Far
She moves before I can stop her—one slow, deliberate step that erases the last of the distance between us.
Heat radiates off her skin, seeping through the thin, damp fabric of my shirt, sinking into me like a brand.
My pulse spikes so violently I have to brace a hand on the wooden cabinet behind me just to stay standing.
