For the first time in years, I wasn’t looking over my shoulder every second, wasn’t calculating exits in every room, wasn’t listening for footsteps that didn’t belong.
Under Vincenzo Orsini’s roof, no one would dare touch me.
Not Ruslan.
Not his men.
Not anyone foolish enough to challenge the reach of a man like him.
But at what cost?
Luxury wrapped itself around me like silk—soft, beautiful, suffocating.
Every polished surface, every carefully placed detail, every quiet display of wealth whispered the same truth: this was not freedom.
It was a cage.
A gilded one.
And the rules he had laid down... they weren’t just rules.
They were chains.
Carefully worded. Strategically placed.
Disguised as protection, but binding all the same.
I exhaled slowly, gripping the cool stone of the balcony railing as my thoughts spiraled.
Yet no matter how hard I tried to focus on the danger—on the reality of what I had just been thrown into—my mind kept drifting.
Back to him.
Not the man who had just stepped out.
The boy.
The one from the cave.
Those fourteen hours replayed in fragments.
A strange, fragile connection had formed between us in that cave.
Something raw and unguarded, born out of pain, fear, and survival.
It hadn’t been love—not then—but it had been something just as powerful in its own way.
Those fourteen hours had been some of the brightest moments of my life.
Which was insane.
Because they had happened in the middle of hell.
And yet...
They had mattered.
They still did.
