And now Dante.
I stopped pacing and caught my reflection in the full-length mirror beside the closet. The nightgown I wore was modest—long-sleeved, high-necked—but the fabric clung to curves I'd been taught to hide. To minimize. To never acknowledge.
Dante had acknowledged them. Had traced the line of my spine with his eyes and touched me like I was something valuable. Something worth keeping.
Mine,his entire being had proclaimed in that bathroom doorway.
The possessiveness should have repulsed me. Instead, it had ignited something I didn't have a name for.
I moved closer to the mirror, studying the woman looking back at me. She didn't look like Julietta Bennett anymore—that girl had died in a hotel shower, washing blood from her skin. She didn't look like Julietta Altieri either—Lorenzo's carefully crafted political asset.
This woman was someone new. Someone I didn't recognize.
Someone who'd felt power thrumming beneath her skin when Dante had crowded her against the doorframe. Who'd wanted to fisther hands in his shirt and pull him closer instead of pushing him away. Who'd felt alive for the first time in twenty-three years.
"I don't want this," I whispered to my reflection.
But the woman in the mirror called me a liar.
Because the truth was more complicated, more dangerous. The truth was that some part of me—some dark, hungry part I'd kept buried for years—had been waiting for this. For someone who saw me as more than an obedient daughter. More than a political pawn.
Someone who looked at me and saw an equal. A partner. A queen instead of a captive.
What if she could belong to herself and still be powerful?
The thought bloomed in my chest like blood in water.
All my life, I'd been handed from one man to another. The Bennetts to Lorenzo. Lorenzo to Miguel. Each transaction had come with rules. Expectations. A clearly defined role I was meant to play.
But Dante had broken the pattern. Had torn me from the path that had been laid out since before I could walk. And yes, he'd locked me in this penthouse. Yes, he'd stolen my freedom.
But for the first time, no one was telling me who to be.
I returned to the window and pressed my palm against the glass. The city pulsed with life below—dangerous, beautiful, raw. Somewhere out there, deals were being made. Blood was being spilled. Empires were rising and falling.
And I was trapped in a tower, watching it all happen.
Or was I?
My hand curled into a fist against the window.
Dante said I wasn't ready. Said he wanted me to choose him. Choose this. Whatever this was.
But he'd misunderstood something fundamental.
I didn't want to choose him. I didn't want tochoose anyone.
I wanted to choose myself.
The anger I'd been suppressing for days—for years—surged through me like electricity. Hot and bright and clarifying. I was angry at my adoptive parents for raising me to be silent. Angry at Lorenzo for claiming me like property. Angry at Miguel for accepting me as payment.
And I was angry at Dante.
Not for kidnapping me. Not even for the possessive way he'd touched me.
I was angry because he'd awakened something in me I couldn't put back to sleep. He'd shown me a glimpse of what power felt like, and now I wanted more.
I wanted everything.
