Refusing to reveal how aware I suddenly was of him.
Then, at last, the couch creaked faintly, I could hear him straightening up,
“I expect you in my office by nine tomorrow,” Rafael murmured, the command delivered with effortless authority.
“What?”
In all the months I’d worked for his company, I had never once been summoned to Rafael’s office. Not once. And for what exactly?
I had assumed this conversation would end the moment he stepped out of my apartment.
But men like Rafael did not explain themselves, and people like me did not question them.
Knowing I had no ground to argue on, I straightened slightly and answered in the calmest voice I could manage.
“Yes, sir,” I replied carefully, composed despite the unease twisting in my chest.
My pulse hadn’t settled since Bruno’s hands had been on me. My wrists still throbbed where the cuffs had bitten too tight.
I listened as Rafael moved.
Rafael’s footsteps were precise.
The sound of leather soles against cracked tile echoed through the apartment, sharp against the lingering silence.
He reached the doorway.
And then he stopped.
The quiet stretched.
One second.
Two.
Enough for my head to tilt slightly, my senses sharpening as instinct curled tight in my chest.
Something had shifted again. I could feel it—the subtle redirection of his body, the faint scrape as his shoe pivoted against the floor.
He had turned back.
“Full name, Loretta Orsini. Country of origin, Italy.”
The words rolled off his tongue with cold precision, like he was reciting details from a document already open in front of him. My CV, perhaps.
He had probably pulled it up on his phone while standing there in the middle of my wrecked living room, as though intruding into my life was not limited to the physical.
My fingers curled slightly against the armrest.
Those were safe details. Surface-level ones.
The kind anyone with access to my employment records could find within seconds.
Yet hearing them in Rafael’s voice—low, polished, disturbingly certain—made them feel far more intimate and dangerous than they should have.
My pulse kicked harder.
“We possess a rather unfortunate history together, Miss Loretta,” Rafael said smoothly.
