He wouldn't find her.
No one could.
She was mine now.
CHAPTER 4
Julietta
Iwoke to darkness.
Not the darkness of a bedroom at night—the kind you could navigate with your eyes closed, the kind that held the familiar shapes of your own furniture. This was absolute. Suffocating. The kind that pressed against your eyelids even when they were open.
My hands found silk. Cool, expensive, sliding against my skin. I pushed upright, heart hammering, and that's when the panic hit.
Where the fuck was I?
The last thing I remembered was the SUV I’d been dragged into—hands grabbing me, chloroform-soaked cloth over my mouth, the world tilting sideways. I'd fought. I knew I'd fought. There were marks on my wrists where they'd restrained me, red crescents from my own fingernails digging into my palms as I'd thrashed.
The previous night came back to me all at once–Miguel’s murder, his blood on my dress, showering at the hotel. And then the next morning, my father directing the drivers to bring me home… the three-car blockade that brought us to a stop…My hands swept across the wall, finally hitting a panel. Soft golden light bloomed from recessed fixtures, and the room materialized around me like something from a magazine spread. It came back to me in pieces, as if the chloroform was slowly releasing it’s hold on me. I remembered this, now, too–arriving, arguing with someone, being left alone.
Someone must have removed my restraints when I finally passed out from exhaustion.
The bedroom was massive. Pristine. Everything in shades of cream and gold, with dark wood accents that probably cost more than my mother's entire house. A sitting area with a velvet chaise. Doors leading to what I assumed was a bathroom and closet. Paintings on the walls—original art, not prints—depicting abstract landscapes in blues and blacks.
No windows.
That detail caught and held. I moved to the far wall where curtains hung floor to ceiling in heavy damask fabric. I pulled them back expecting glass, finding only solid wall beneath.
My chest tightened.
I crossed to the main door, twisting the handle. Locked. Not just locked—locked from the outside. I could feel the deadbolt mechanism, the kind that required a keycard or manual unlock from the hall. Vaguely, I recalled trying this same thing last night… looking for a way out…
I was trapped.
The drawers in the nightstands held nothing useful—a phone that had no signal, decorative trays with nothing in them. The closet wasstocked with clothes in my size. All expensive. All new. All waiting for someone who'd been planned for.
That meant that not only had Miguel’s murder been planned–so had my kidnapping.
I was running my fingers along the rack of hanging dresses when the door clicked open behind me.
I spun, my body bracing for impact.
The man who walked in was tall, broad-shouldered, moving with the kind of controlled grace that suggested he'd trained to kill. Deep icy blue eyes swept across me with the detached precision of someone assessing inventory. Flashes of memory came back; his shadowed face in the tinted SUV. His tall figure in this place last night.
"Where am I?" My voice came out sharper than I felt, all edges and no tremor. Good.
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he moved deeper into the room, closing the door behind him with a soft click that felt like a lock turning inside a coffin.
"The penthouse," he said finally. "My penthouse."
"I don't know you. You can't just—"
"I can do whatever I want." His voice was quiet. Conversational. That somehow made it more terrifying than if he'd shouted. "You're safe here. That's what matters."
"Safe?" I laughed, the sound brittle in the enclosed space. "You kidnapped me. That's not safe—that's a crime. That's—"
"You're leverage."
