Sleep was impossible. My body refused to relax, couldn't even manage proper breathing. Each inhale felt shallow and controlled, like my lungs had forgotten their function.
His breathing had slowed—it was deep, even… possibly asleep. But I couldn't be certain. Couldn't risk moving, couldn't risk breaking whatever fragile détente we'd established in those final moments before silence.
The city lights filtered through the windows, casting geometric shadows across the ceiling. I traced them with my eyes, counting patterns, desperate for distraction.
It didn't work.
I was hyperaware of everything: the Egyptian cotton sheets against my skin, cool and impossibly smooth. The weight of the ring on my finger, foreign and inescapable. The scent of him—bergamot and something darker, leather maybe, surrounding me in this bed that was now supposedlyours.
His thumb had traced that circle on my hip bone. Such a small gesture. Such a devastating claim.
Sleep, Paola. While you still can.
The threat hung in my mind like smoke I couldn't wave away.
What was worse, that he’d had such an obvious effect on my body despite the position I was in? Or that I wanted it more than I was willing to admit?
One week. Seven days before he expected me to... before we...
My virginity had never been something I'd thought much about. I'd been waiting for the right person, the right moment. Love, maybe. Or at least genuine connection. Choice.
Not this. Not a forced marriage to a dangerous stranger who'd threatened me at the altar.
But my body didn't seem to care about circumstances. His touch, his proximity, the heat radiating from him—it was doing things to me I didn't want to acknowledge. Things I couldn't name in the darkness.
Shame and desire tangled together in my chest until I couldn't separate them.
*
I must have dozed eventually because I woke to sunlight streaming through those massive windows, turning the bedroom into something from an architectural magazine.
Day one of my forced marriage.
Less than twenty-four hours since I'd woken in that wedding dress, but it felt like a lifetime had passed.
I was alone in the bed. Cesare's side was empty, covers replaced with military precision. As if he’d never even been here.
Relief and disappointment warred in my chest. Relief won. Mostly.
I sat up, took in the bedroom properly for the first time. Massive didn't begin to cover it—the space could have swallowed my old apartment twice over. The king-sized bed was dark wood and chrome. Modern furniture that looked expensive and uncomfortable filled the space tastefully. Another wall of windows with a view that would be breathtaking if I could appreciate it.
Central Park stretched out below, a green oasis surrounded by steel and glass. Beautiful. Unreachable.
My eyes swept over to the two doors: one leading to what looked like a walk-in closet, another to the bathroom.
Everything was expensive, masculine, impersonal. Like a luxury hotel, not a home. Was this really his bedroom? If it was, there was nothing I could learn about him here.
On the nightstand beside me was a glass of water I hadn't put there—Cesare must have—and a note.
I picked it up, vaguely recognized his handwriting from the marriage certificate. Bold, perfect penmanship, decisive:
Clothes in the closet. Breakfast in the kitchen. Don't leave the penthouse.
Not a request. A command.
The third sentence made my stomach twist. This was a prison, then. A gilded cage ninety floors above the city.
I wrapped myself in a silk robe I found draped over a chair—his, enormous on me, smelling of that bergamot scent—and ventured into the walk-in closet.
