Three days later,I’m still reeling from what I did.
I’ve replayed the moment with Cristiano in the treatment room a hundred times. The way he looked at me when he asked,Would you stroke my hair?Like I was the only person in the world who could give him what he needed.
I’ve imagined doing it. Reaching out and running my fingers through those golden curls, just to see if they still feel the same. On another day, in a more vulnerable moment, I might have done it.
That’s what terrifies me most. How easily he can make me forget why I should be afraid. Cristiano has learned to weaponizehis vulnerability. He knows exactly how to look at me, exactly what to say, exactly when to seem soft and broken and in need of comfort.
I’ve been away for so long. It would make me feel like I’ve come home, Mina.
The words had sounded so sincere.
I think about the way he circled me when I was eighteen. The motorcycle that always seemed to appear on my route home. The so-called coincidences at the pizza parlor. The slow, patient accumulation of his presence in my life until I couldn’t remember what it felt like to exist without him watching me.
He’s doing it again. The hotel. The massage. The request to stroke his hair that seemed so innocent, and I know, Iknow, that if I’d done it, there would have been another request tomorrow. And another the day after. Each one slightly more intimate than the last. Each one feeling impossible to refuse because I’d already said yes to everything before.
That’s how he builds the cage. Not with bars and locks, but with a thousand tiny yeses that I don’t even notice until I’m trapped inside.
Now I’m waiting for the consequences, because there must be consequences for refusing a man as powerful as Cristiano. I expect Gloria to pull me aside with a tight-lipped expression and tell me I’m fired for walking out on the owner of the hotel.
But when Gloria found me in the break room afterward, she was smiling. “Mina. Mr. Montoni expressed nothing but gratitude for your massage. He specifically mentioned your professionalism and skill and praised the spa as an asset to his hotel. I think you’ve secured our position here. Well done.”
“I—” My voice came out strained. “Really?”
Gloria’s smile faltered slightly. “Are you all right? You look upset.”
“Yes, of course.” I forced my mouth into something resembling a smile. “I was just worried.”
“I had complete faith in you.” She patted my shoulder before bustling off somewhere else. I stayed in the break room for a long time, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Cristiano praised me. After I spoke sharply to him and stormed out, he told my boss I was professional and skilled. He protected my job.
I don’t know what to do with that.
I don’t know what to do with any of it.
Today, it’s a slow day, so I’m out in the main salon giving shoulder massages to women getting manicures. It’s not my usual work, but it keeps me busy and keeps my mind from circling back to amber eyes and scratch-mark tattoos and a deep, low voice murmuring,I don’t have you, Mina.
Every quiet moment, he’s there. The weight of him on the massage table. The heat of his skin under my palms.
I dig my thumbs into a client’s trapezius, and she sighs with pleasure.
“Oh, that’s the spot. You’re wonderful.”
I murmur something polite and keep working, but my thoughts are elsewhere.
What does he want from me? He has women throwing themselves at him, surely. So why is he so fixated on the housekeeper’s daughter he used to follow around as a boy?
The door to the spa opens, and I glance up automatically, fearing that it’s him. But it’s a woman who enters, and she’s stunning. Petite and polished, with dark hair swept back from a face that belongs on a magazine cover. Her clothes are simple but clearly expensive, the kind of understated elegance that whispers old money. She moves with the easy confidence of someone who has never doubted her place in the world.
Gloria materializes beside me. “Mina. See the woman who just sat down with Sara? That’s Miss Ariana Barone. Go and offer her a shoulder massage while she gets her nails done.”
Barone.The name tugs at something in my memory, but I can’t place it. One of Malus’s prominent families, maybe? There are so many of them, intermarried and interconnected, their names scattered across buildings and foundations and hospital wings.
“Of course.” I finish with my current client and cross the salon, my professional smile firmly in place.
Miss Barone is already settled in the manicure chair, her slender hands resting on the table in front of Sara. Up close, she’s even more beautiful.
“Good afternoon, Miss Barone. I’m Mina. Can I offer you a shoulder massage while you have your manicure?”
