My stomach drops.
I’m acutely aware of the shape of him beneath the towel. If he asks for anything sexual, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’d like to think I’d slap his face, like a haughty, bristling woman in an old movie. But I think I’d probably just burst into tears and run from the room.
“What?” My voice comes out thin. Barely a whisper.
He doesn’t answer immediately. Just looks at me, his expression serious.
“Would you stroke my hair?”
I stare at him. Of all the things I expected him to say, this wasn’t even on the list. It’s not a sexual proposition. Not a demand. Not anything I could have prepared myself for.
“I’ve been away for so long.” His voice is low. “It would make me feel like I’ve come home, Mina.”
I can’t speak. Can’t move. Can’t do anything except stand there while memories crash over me like waves.
Sitting in the garden while he lay with his head in my lap, my fingers combing through his hair. The way his eyes would flutter closed, the tension draining from his body. The only time he ever let himself be soft. The only time he ever let anyone take care of him.
I’ve never told anyone about those moments. They were mine, precious and private, locked away in a part of my heart I don’t let myself visit anymore.
A crazy thought occurs to me. That he bought the Grand Palazzo Hotel just so he could become my boss and ask me to stroke his hair.
“I’ve missed you, Mina.”
He’s missed me? He thinks he has a right to miss me after terrifying me so completely when I was just eighteen years old?
My confusion crystallizes into fury.
Howdarehe.
How dare he sit there and ask me to stroke his hair like we’re still children, like he didn’t destroy everything good between us. How dare he cheapen those sweet memories, twisting my freely given affection into something he can purchase along with a massage at his fancy hotel.
How dare he make me feel like a whore he can pay to pretend she cares about him.
I wipe my hands on the towel with sharp, jerky movements.
“You bought this hotel.” My voice trembles with rage. “You bought my job. You walked in here knowing I’d have to serve you, touch you, smile at you, because that’s what people like me have to do for people like you.”
I throw the towel onto a chair. The words are pouring out of me now, days of worry and sleepless nights boiling over into rage that he’s spoiling the last good memory we had together.
“You haveeverything. You’ve always had everything, even when we were children, and now you’re using all your power to remind me that I have none.”
Cristiano’s hands are braced on either side of his body on the table. He gazes deep into my eyes, their golden brightness unsettling in the dim room.
“I have everything a man could want in this city.” He gazes at me for a long time from beneath his lashes. “But I don’t have you, Mina.”
He says it so simply, like it excuses everything. Like I’m supposed to feel sorry for the poor lonely don who can buy anything except the woman he wants.
I won’t. I refuse.
“We’re done here.”
I walk out of the room as fast as my legs can carry me. I don’t know if he calls after me. I can’t hear anything over the blood roaring in my ears.
I make it to the break room just in time before my legs give out, and I have to lean against the wall, pressing my hand to my mouth to keep from sobbing.
My whole body is shaking. I walked out. I looked Don Cristiano Montoni in the eye, and I walked out.
He can buy this hotel. He can buy my time and my hands and my professional smile. But he can’t buy me.
