Same view. Same bed. Same hollow feeling, like the room is too big and I'm too small to fill it.
But there's a new door in the wall. I try the handle—locked. From the other side.
He's in there. Right now. Three feet away, separated by a door I can't open but he can.
I pace the room while my bags are delivered, then pace some more after the staff disappears. My phone connects to wifi and I'm immediately flooded with notifications. Comments. DMs. The usual mix of worship and vitriol that comes with two million followers and no filter.
I check my DMs on autopilot and immediately wish I hadn't.
you think you can hide bitch
I know where you are
daddy's money won't save you
you're going to die screaming
My thumb hovers over the screen. I should screenshot these. Show them to Cesar. This is probably exactly the kind of thing he's supposed to know about.
But then he'd know I looked. He'd know I couldn't stay away from my phone for even one night. He'd give me that flat, unimpressed stare that makes me feel like a child caught misbehaving.
I delete the app instead. Let the messages disappear into the void where they belong.
The sun sets blood-red over the Pacific and I shower off the travel, then crawl into bed in my silk pajamas, staring at the ceiling while the ocean roars outside.
Everyone wants something from me. My whole life, people have wanted pieces—my money, my connections, my followers, my face in their photos. I've learned to read the hunger in people's eyes, to calculate what they're after before they even open their mouths.
But Cesar Vega looked at me like he didn't want anything.
Not my money. Not my name. Not my body, even though I caught the quick flicker of his gaze down my frame, like he was assessing a perimeter rather than a woman.
He doesn't want to impress me. Doesn't want to fuck me. Doesn't want my approval or my attention or anything I have to offer.
He just...doesn't care.
Everyonewants something.
So why doesn't he?
I lie awake for hours, the question turning over in my mind like a stone I can't stop touching. On the other side of the wall, I hear nothing. No footsteps. No TV. No signs of life at all.
Maybe he's asleep.
Or maybe he's just better at silence than anyone I've ever met.
Either way, I'm the one lying awake at 2 AM, thinking about a man who looks at me like I'm nothing.
And wondering why that bothers me more than all the death threats combined.
2
Cesar
Iknow she's going to be trouble the second she steps off the helicopter.
Wind whipping that blonde hair across her face. Designer clothes and perfect make up. The way she moves—chin up, shoulders back, like the world owes her something and she's here to collect.
Diamond Sterling. A girl who’s as rich as her name sounds. Twenty-three years old. Two million followers. A mouth that's made her famous and an attitude that's made her enemies.
