I dance to remember that I was once mine.
I spin, a little unsteady on my feet, the champagne making the room tilt deliciously, and I see him.
He is standing in the arched doorway, one shoulder leaned against the frame, watching me. He has shed his suit jacket and loosened his tie. He looks utterly at home in the grandeur of this place, a true king in his castle. And his eyes, his eyes are not filled with the cold calculation I am used to. There is no mockery, no lustful appraisal.
There is something else. Something deep, still, and unbearably soft. It looks like fascination.
It looks, for one heart-stopping moment, like affection.
The music washes over us. I stand frozen, caught in his gaze, my chest heaving from the exertion and the shock of being discovered in this raw, private moment of rebellion and release.
He doesn’t move. A slow, genuine smile touches his lips, a sight so rare and beautiful it feels like seeing a shooting star. It transforms his face, carving away the harshness, the scars, and revealing the ghost of the man he might have been if he hadn’t sold his soul.
“Don’t stop,” he says, his voice a low murmur that blends with the music. It’s not a command. It’s an invitation. A request. “I like seeing you like this.”
He pushes off the doorframe and takes a few steps into the room, giving me space but closing the distance between us. His eyes never leave me.
“You are carefree. Happy,” he continues, and there is a note of wonder in his own voice, as if he is observing a rare and precious phenomenon. “It becomes you, Grace. It is a side of you I have not seen in a long time.”
The words are a balm and a poison. They soothe the ragged edges of my soul even as they enrage my sense of justice. The confession bubbles up in my throat, bitter and acidic.I would be carefree and happy if you hadn’t ruined my life. If you hadn’t shattered my family and caged me here. This isn’t happiness; it’s a drunken, desperate pantomime of it. You are the reason I have to forget. You are the noise I’m trying to silence.
I want to scream it.
I want to shatter the strange, tender look in his eyes with the shards of the truth.
But I don’t.
The guilt is there, a lead weight in my stomach. Guilt for the moments of pleasure I stole today, guilt for the way my body still hums from the memory of his protective hand on my back. Guilt for the treacherous, unwanted thrill that shot through me at his smile. To speak the truth would be to acknowledge the complexity of this hell he’s created in me, to admit that it isn’t all darkness, and that admission feels like the deepest betrayal of myself and my parents.
So I swallow the words. I swallow the guilt, the anger, the truth. I let the champagne, the music and the haunting softness in his eyes pull me back under.
I nod, a slow, drunken dip of my chin. I close my own eyes, breaking the intense connection between us.
And I start to dance again.
This time, it’s different. I am achingly aware of his gaze on me, the way his eyes trace the lines of my body as I move. The dance is no longer just an escape. It’s a performance. It’s a lie, it’s a surrender. I pour everything into the movement.
And I dance for him.
I dance for the man who destroyed me, who now watches me as if I am something precious to be preserved. I dance until the world shrinks to the beat of the music, and the heat of his gaze. I dance, trying to outrun the terrifying thought that in this gilded cage, under the watchful eye of my captor, I have never felt more seen.
The morning sun is a fucking liar.
It slants through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the villa’s main living area, painting the polished marble in strokes of gold, promising a day of warmth and clarity it has no intention of delivering.
My head throbs with a dull, insistent ache behind my eyes that pulses in time with my heartbeat. Each thrum is a tiny hammer against my skull. A leftover percussion from last night’s symphony of fear, champagne and devasting, disgusting shame.
I stand at the window, a tall glass of iced water sweating in my hand, and stare down at the city below. Rome stretches out, a sprawling tapestry of white and terracotta blurred by the morning haze and the fuzziness in my own vision.
It looks peaceful from up here, a postcard scene. Distance, I’m learning, is the ultimate beautifier. It hides the grit, the noise, the struggle.
From this point on the hill, you can’t see the chains.
My thoughts are an absolute mess, and at its centre is Antonio. He was gone when I woke, the space on his side of the bed cool and smooth. No note, no message. Just an absence that felt louder than any presence.
Last night, last night was a different kind of fracture. After all my pathetic attempts to ease my guilt, Antonio had led me to the bedroom. I had braced myself, my body tensing for the familiar, transactional consummation of our twisted arrangement.
But it never came.
