The drive is woefully short but it feels like crossing into another world.
Emerald House rises from the hillside like something torn from a magazine spread, all white stone and glass, wide terraces overlooking the ocean, palms arranged with architectural precision rather than nature’s whim.
It’s eye-watering luxury without softness or apology.
Power made beautiful.
I swallow when we come to a stop precisely before a soaring pivot door strong enough to stop a missile. Gilded or not, this is prison.
And this is where he brought my life.
Not as a guest.
As property.
He steps out, still cradling me captive in his arms, walks past a line of black-and-white-uniformed staff without acknowledging them, and heat creeps up my face when I recognise more than one face from my time on the island.
See the hint of surprise that cracks through their professional facades before they school their features.
Inside, the house is cool and quiet, the kind of silence that only exists when everything has already been accounted for and knows its true place.
Polished hallways and sleek décor whizz past me but I don’t bother questioning where we’re going. I’ll find out soon enough.
Giovanni doesn’t slow until we reach the master suite.
And then?—
He sets me down on hideously plush carpet.
Gently.
The room is massive. Sunlight spills through sheer curtains. And as I turn in a full one-eighty, I see my things… everywhere, not piled or dumped, but arranged like I already live here. Have lived here for weeks.
Dresses I recognise in the adjoining dressing room. Shoes I picked in a dazzling white spate of bride-to-be giddiness and never wore. Jewellery boxes I haven’t opened since the night I ran.
For a moment, something fragile stirs in me.
I don’t even know my feet have carried me towards them until I reach out and touch the sleeve of a silk blouse I loved because the colour matches Giovanni’s eyes in those moments just before he?—
I yank my hand back like I’ve been burned.
No.
I won’t let nostalgia, hot or cold, soften me, let the pampered life I once led, and all the signs that I’m about to be dropped nose-deep into it again whether I like it or not, sway me.
I turn sharply towards the bathroom. “I’m going to take a bath,” I inform him. “Alone.”
His lips twitch. “Of course. As you wish,cara,” he drawls, and I don’t miss thefor nowheavily trailed in there.
The pedestal bath is deep, marble-lined, steaming with a simple turn of the fancy tap, and I absolutely deny my eagerness when I flip the lock on the door, then unbutton my shorts, strip out of my bikini and climb into my first bubble bath in eighteen months.
The heat sinks into my bones, loosening muscles I didn’t realise were clenched so tightly.
For a good twenty minutes, I let myself float, pushing away thoughts too disturbing to entertain right now.
Then, with the inevitability of Giovanni’s silent presence pressing in and ruining my enjoyment of the water, I shampoo my hair, and I get out.
Wrap myself in one of the white hotel-thick towels.
