Cold. Calculated. Built for conquest and control.
That man had a weakness now. A liability that lived in his penthouse and looked at him like she was trying to solve a puzzle she didn't have all the pieces for.
That man couldn't let her go.
I stepped into my office and locked the door. The monitors still showed her—Julietta standing at the window, the city lights reflected in her eyes. She'd changed again. Wore one of the simpler dresses now, the kind that made her look young and dangerous and like every soft thing that could destroy an empire if I let it.
I moved to the desk and gripped the edge. The wood held solid under my weight. Didn't crack. Didn't buckle.
Unlike everything else.
Because the truth was worse than Vince had predicted. Worse than mere obsession. It wasn't just that I couldn't stand the thought of her in another man's bed.
It was that I couldn't stand the thought of her dead at all.
I couldn't stand the thought of her anywhere without me knowing exactly where. Without me controlling the variables. Without me standing between her and every threat that moved in the darkness.
And that meant I was already lost.
Already so far gone that I couldn't distinguish between protecting her and possessing her. Between saving her and caging her.
Already so far gone that the only thing I knew with absolute certainty was this: I would burn the entire world down before I let Lorenzo Altieri or anyone else touch her.
My jaw tightened. The realization settled into my bones like something that had always belonged there.
I wasn't questioning why I'd taken her anymore.
I was questioning whether I could ever let her go.
CHAPTER 8
Julietta
Sleep abandoned me somewhere around three in the morning. Again. It had become a pattern—lying awake in this gilded cage, staring at shadows while the city breathed beyond my windows.
I'd been drifting in that suspended state between consciousness and dreams when voices penetrated the walls. Male voices. Low. Urgent. The kind that made my skin prickle with the instinct that something was being decided about me.
I lay still for a moment, listening to the hum of the penthouse's ventilation system, the distant sound of the city breathing below us. Then I rose, barefoot and silent, moving toward the door.
The lock was solid. Unforgiving. But the gap between the door frame and the hallway was thin enough. Thin enough to press my ear against the cold metal and listen.
"—accelerated his timeline. He watched Miguel die. Watched his daughter get taken.."
That was a voice I didn't recognize. Older. Clinical.
"Two million for intel on her location. Five million if she's returned alive and unharmed. He wants her back."
The words hit like a physical thing. A weight in my stomach.
"The entire underworld is hunting her."
I pressed my ear harder against the gap, my breath shallow.
"—the Elena Marchetti file," the older voice was saying. "You've been sitting on this since before the extraction. Two months, Dante. She deserves to know her father murdered her mother."
My breath stopped. Elena Marchetti. My mother. Lorenzo had always been tight-lipped about what happened to her, claiming only that she didn't want me or the life he'd created for her.
"I'm aware." Dante's voice was cold, clipped.
