That one hits. I see it. A flicker in his eyes. Dark. Violent. Maybe even wounded.
I lift my chin. “So what’s it going to be? Are you buying me the phone, or are you going to stand there like a jealous tyrant and prove me right in front of everyone?”
Something cold settles over Lorenzo’s face.
He turns to the saleswoman. “Please have the items bagged and sent to my home.”
“Of course, Mr. Conti,” she says quickly.
Her cheeks are still crimson, but now she can’t even look at me. A minute ago she was eager and curious; now she’s staring determinedly at the counter like it might save her from being caught in the blast radius of our fight.
“Is there anything else I can do for you today?”
I say, “Yes?—”
The word barely leaves my mouth before Lorenzo moves.
One second I’m standing there, furious and breathing fire. The next, he has me up and over his shoulder as if I weigh nothing at all.
The air punches out of me.
“Lorenzo—”
My stomach presses against the hard plane of his shoulder, and I go rigid so fast it hurts. My body knows before my mind does. Every muscle locks and every thought splinters. But if he notices, he doesn’t show it. He just strides through the boutique carrying me like a man hauling away a problem he’s done pretending to tolerate.
Humiliation burns through my panic.
“Put me down!”
Heads turn. Someone gasps but nobody stops him. Of course nobody stops him. Men like Lorenzo move through the world as though resistance is a thing that happens to other people.
He doesn’t answer me. Doesn’t slow down. Doesn’t even tighten his grip.
Outside, the sunlight is blinding after the soft gold of the boutique. He heads straight for a black SUV with tinted windows, parked at the curb like it has been waiting for him all along.
The sight of it hits me like a blow. I go still. Not because I’m calm. Because something deep in me tears open.
Black glass. Leather. The yawning dark of the back seat.
Fragments flash through my head, jagged and wrong. The blurred impression of motion. A seat beneath me. The chemical sting of something sharp. A prick at my neck. Heavy limbs. Darkness folding over me like water.
My hand flies to my throat. Oh God. Is that how it happened? Is that how I got to Italy?
The edges of the world begin to blur. My pulse turns savage. I can’t seem to drag enough air into my lungs. Lorenzo is still moving, still all hard fury and male certainty, and he either doesn’t realize what’s happening to me or he’s too consumed by his own rage to care.
He opens the back door and drops me onto the seat.
I barely catch myself with my hands before I crumple. My breath is coming in short, ugly bursts now, too fast, too shallow, each one scraping on the way in. The interior is dim and close and expensive, but all I can see is that black privacy screen already raised between the front and back.
No.
No, no, no.
My fingers claw at the leather seat. My vision tunnels. The air feels poisoned. I can hear blood rushing in my ears, loud as surf.
Lorenzo rounds the other side and gets in beside me, shutting the door with a solid, final thud that sounds too much like a lock.
I flinch so hard I slam into the opposite door.
