“I met someone.”The words came out before I could stop them.“Or, I guess you already know him.Raphael Volkov.He’s the one who…” I trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.The one who bought our debt.The one who owns me now.The one who does things to me in the dark that would make you disown me if you knew.
“He’s not what I expected.”I stared at our joined hands, at the IV line snaking into his papery skin.“He’s dangerous.I know that.Everyone knows that.But there’s something underneath all that control, Dad.Something broken that recognizes the broken parts of me.”
The monitor beeped.Steady.Unchanging.
“I think I’m falling for him.”My voice cracked on the admission.“Which is insane, right?He owns our debt.He has all the power.I signed a contract to…” I couldn’t say it.Not here.Not to my father, even if he couldn’t hear me.“But when he looks at me, I feel seen.Really seen.Not as Richard Hughes’s daughter or the hotel’s emergency manager or the girl who failed her way through college.Just me.”
I squeezed his hand, wishing he would squeeze back.Wishing he would wake up and tell me I was being foolish, that I needed to protect myself, that men like Raphael Volkov consumed women like me and left nothing but ashes behind.
Or maybe I wished he would tell me it was okay.That sometimes love found you in the darkest places.That surrendering didn’t have to mean losing yourself.
“The doctors say you might still wake up.”My thumb traced circles on the back of his hand.“I need you to wake up, Dad.I need you to meet him.I need you to tell me if I’m making the biggest mistake of my life or if…”
Or if this was real.If what I felt when Raphael held me was the beginning of something rather than the end.
The machines beeped on, offering no answers.
I stayed for another hour, telling him about the hotel renovations, about Sophie’s latest romantic disaster, about anything that didn’t involve contracts and collars and the dark hunger in Raphael’s eyes.When I finally left, kissing his forehead the way I used to when I was young, he still hadn’t moved.
The drive back to the hotel felt longer than the drive there.
The afternoon crawled by slowly.
I tried to focus on the operations reports Michael had left on my desk.Revenue projections.Occupancy rates.The dry mathematics of running a hotel that had been in my family for five generations.Numbers should have been safe.Numbers didn’t make my stomach flutter or my mind wander to the way Raphael’s hands felt on my waist, the way his body heat soaked through my clothes when he held me close.
My fingers found the collar again.I’d been doing that constantly, touching the delicate chain like a talisman, tracing the small diamond where it rested in the hollow of my throat.Sophie had called it an “expensive necklace” when she’d first seen it, but something in her eyes had suggested she knew better.Knew what it meant when a man put jewelry around a woman’s neck and looked at her like she belonged to him.
A knock at my door pulled me from the spreadsheet I hadn’t actually been reading.The numbers blurred together, meaningless, because all I could think about was that rich, masculine scent and the rough scrape of his jaw against my cheek.
“Come in.”
Sophie slipped through the door, carrying two cups of coffee from the lobby café.The rich, dark scent filled my office, steadying me slightly.She set one on my desk and settled into the chair across from me with the easy familiarity of someone who’d known me since I was a child sneaking cookies from the kitchen, hiding under the prep tables while the line cooks pretended not to see me.
“You’re glowing.”
I choked on my first sip, coffee burning my tongue.“What?”
“You.”She gestured at me with her cup, manicured nails catching the light.“Glowing.Like someone who’s getting very thoroughly f?—”
“Sophie.”
“Loved,” she finished, innocent as anything.“Very thoroughly loved.That’s what I was going to say.”
I could feel the blush spreading up my neck, heating my cheeks.“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mm-hmm.”She sipped her coffee, watching me over the rim with those knowing eyes that had seen too much of my life to be fooled.“That’s why you’ve touched that necklace fourteen times since I sat down.”
I dropped my hand from my throat like I’d been burned.
“It’s complicated,” I said, which was the understatement of the century.Complicated didn’t begin to cover what Raphael and I were.Complicated didn’t explain the contract or the collar or the way I’d learned to find freedom in surrender.
“Honey, a man like that is always complicated.”Sophie leaned forward, her expression shifting from teasing to serious.“But the way he looks at you?Like everyone else could disappear and he wouldn’t even notice?That’s not complicated.That’s a man who’s in deep.”
I wanted to believe her.God, I wanted to believe her so badly it hurt.Wanted to believe that what I saw in his eyes was real, not just another game, another manipulation.That the tenderness I glimpsed when his guard was down wasn’t something I’d imagined.
“I should get back to work.”
Sophie stood, but she paused at the door, one hand on the frame.“Your mother used to glow like that.When your father first courted her.”A soft smile crossed her face, decades of memories passing behind her eyes.“She’d walk around this hotel like she was floating.Love does that to a person.Makes everything else seem less real.”
