"When can I speak to my father?"
"When he contacts us." Dominic's expression softened marginally. "Try to rest, Miss Altieri. You've experienced a trauma."
Had I? I didn't feel traumatized. I felt... empty. Hollow. Like someone had scooped out my insides and left nothing but a pretty shell.
The door closed behind him with a soft click. I stood in the center of the room, blood drying on my skin, wondering why I couldn't cry. Why I couldn't scream. All I felt was a strange, unsettling relief.
I peeled off my ruined dress, leaving it in a heap on the marble bathroom floor. The shower ran scalding hot, steam billowing around me as I scrubbed Miguel's blood from my skin until I was raw and pink. It had gotten everywhere—under my fingernails, in my hair, between my breasts.
Clean but still hollow, I wrapped myself in a hotel robe and wandered to the window, parting the blinds just enough to peer out at the glittering city below. Somewhere out there, someone had put a bullet through Miguel's head. Someone had been watching me.
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass, closing my eyes. My mind drifted back five years, to my eighteenth birthday. The day my life as I knew it ended and this strange half-existence began.
Lorenzo Altieri—my biological father—sitting behind that massive obsidian desk, studying me like a specimen under glass. "You were born to serve this family, Julietta. Everything you are, everything you will become, belongs to us. To me."
I'd been raised by the Bennetts—wealthy, distant, but safe. Normal. Then with a single sentence, I learned it had all been a lie. I wasn't Julietta Bennett, beloved daughter. I was Julietta Altieri, asset. Property.
"Your marriage to Miguel Suarez will unite our organizations," Lorenzo had explained eventually, not bothering to soften the blow. "You have seven years to prepare for your role as his wife."
Seven years that had just been cut short by a sniper's bullet.
I turned from the window, my reflection catching in the mirror above the writing desk. I barely recognized myself—pale face, haunted eyes, wet hair plastered to my skull. Was this freedom? This numb emptiness where fear should be?
A knock at the door startled me. "Miss Altieri? Your luggage."
I opened the door just enough to see Dominic and another guard wheeling in two suitcases. They must have been packed while I was in the shower—clothes I hadn't chosen, necessities I hadn't requested.
"Thank you," I murmured, the polite response automatic.
"There's a guard stationed outside your door at all times," Dominic reminded me. "If you need anything, just ask."
After they left, I examined the suitcases. Designer clothes in my size. Toiletries. Jewelry—including the obscene diamond engagement ring Miguel had placed on my finger three months ago. Tonight, at the gala, I’d been wearing my public ring; smaller but no less impressive. I slipped the real one on, the weight of it suddenly oppressive.
Night deepened outside the windows. I couldn't sleep, couldn't even close my eyes without seeing Miguel's head explode in a spray of red mist. Not from horror, but from the strange fascination that accompanied the memory.
Who had been watching me? Why had I felt their gaze like a physical touch?
Just before midnight, I heard it—the squeal of tires on the street below, followed by the slam of car doors. My heart leapt into my throat. I pressed my ear against the suite door, listening for the guard's movements.
Nothing.
Then—soft footsteps in the hallway. Not the heavy tread of Dominic or the other guards. Lighter. Deliberate. My pulse hammered in my throat.
I backed away from the door, eyes darting around the room for a weapon. The footsteps paused outside my suite. I held my breath, waiting for the knock, the call, the splintering of wood.
Silence stretched, taut as a wire.
Then the footsteps retreated, fading down the hallway. I exhaled, my entire body trembling. Had I imagined it? Was the trauma finally catching up to me?
I crawled into the king-sized bed, pulling the duvet up to my chin like a child hiding from monsters. The engagement ring gleamed in the darkness, a cold reminder of obligations that might—or might not—still exist.
My fingernails dug into my palms, finding dried blood I'd missed in my frantic scrubbing. Miguel's blood. The man I was supposed to marry. The man whose death should devastate me.
"Am I mourning the man," I whispered to the empty room, "or the life I thought I had?"
Neither answer felt right. What I felt wasn't grief at all—it was anticipation. As if Miguel's death wasn't an ending, but a beginning. As if those eyes I'd felt watching me from the darkness had seen something in me that no one else ever had.
Seenme.
