Everything I'd sworn I'd never do.
And the terrifying part was I meant it. Every word.
I cleaned up the office mechanically. Filed the scattered papers. Straightened the furniture. Tried to make it look like nothing had happened.
But everything had happened.
In the span of an hour, my carefully controlled arrangement with Valentino Russo had become something else entirely.
CHAPTER 3: VALENTINO
I WOKE UPin my own bed and for a disorienting moment couldn't remember how I'd gotten there.
Sunlight streamed through the cheap blinds, creating stripes across the sheets. My apartment looked exactly how I'd left it—cluttered with research, coffee cups scattered across surfaces, my laptop still open on the kitchen table. Normal. Familiar. Safe.
Except nothing felt safe anymore.
I sat up and immediately regretted it. My body ached in ways that were simultaneously pleasant and mortifying. Muscles I'd forgotten existed protested the movement. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and caught sight of myself in the mirror across the room.
Fuck.
I stood and moved closer, examining the damage in the morning light.
Bruises bloomed across my hips in the distinct pattern of fingerprints. Dark purple-blue marks where Luca had gripped me while he fucked me against his office wall. Against his desk. While I'd begged for it like I'd lost my mind.
But it was my throat that made me stop breathing.
Bite marks. Multiple bite marks scattered across my neck and shoulders like a constellation of possession. Some were faint, barely visible. Others were dark and obvious, impossible to hide. Evidence that Luca Romano had put his mouth on me and marked me as his.
I traced one with my fingertips, remembering the exact moment he'd made it. The sharp pain that had transformed into pleasure. The way I'd arched into it instead of pulling away. The sound I'd made—half gasp, half moan—that had made him bite down harder.
My reflection stared back at me with accusations in its eyes.
You let him do this. You wanted him to do this.
I turned away from the mirror and grabbed my phone from the nightstand. 3:47 PM. I'd slept most of the day away, exhausted from last night and the emotional overload that had come with it.
No messages. No calls. Nothing from Luca.
I sat back on the bed and tried to piece together what had actually happened after the sex. After my body had stopped trembling and my breathing had returned to something approaching normal. After we'd both put our clothes back on and stood in his wrecked office trying to figure out what the fuck we'd just done.
Luca had said things. Important things that my lust-addled brain had struggled to process at the time.
"I don't want you just for the stories, Valentino. I want you. This. Us. Whatever the fuck this is."
"You can leave. Right now. I'll release you from our arrangement. Or you can stay. Come back next week. Let this become something other than coercion."
He'd offered me freedom. An actual choice. After nearly two months of controlling me, threatening me, making me dance to his tune—he'd offered to let me walk away.
I pulled my knees to my chest and tried to figure out if I believed it.
Was it real? Or was it another manipulation? Another way to make me feel like I had power when really he was just playing a longer game?
"I'm done lying. I've spent my entire adult life being this. Performing for everyone. But you—you see through it. You've always seen through it. And that terrifies me and attracts me in equal measure."
The honesty in his voice when he'd said that. The vulnerability. The way his carefully constructed facade had cracked and I'd seen the real person underneath for just a moment.
That had felt real.
