She barely turns her head to acknowledge me, but her smile is polite. “Please. I was working with a bad-tempered horse this morning and my shoulders have been tight ever since.”
Horses. I know nothing about them except they’re expensive creatures rich people own.
“I can help with that.”
I position myself behind her chair and begin working on her shoulders through her silk blouse, finding the knots and easing them.
Sara chats away while we work. Miss Barone murmurs responses but seems uninterested in being drawn into a deeper conversation. At this point, I would take the hint from my client and fall silent, but Sara loves to talk.
She notices the engagement ring on Miss Barone’s finger, and her exclamation draws my attention to it.
“Oh my goodness.” Sara’s voice goes high with excitement. “That diamond isenormous.”
The ring is a square-cut diamond that catches the light and throws rainbows across the manicure station. I couldn’t begin to guess the cost of a ring like that. A ring that size has never nor will ever concern someone like me.
Miss Barone glances at the ring, and then away again.
“You must be marrying someone very special.” Sara is practically vibrating with curiosity. “Anyone we might have heard of?”
Miss Barone hesitates. “You may have, actually. He just bought this hotel.”
My hands freeze on her shoulders.
“My fiancé is Cristiano Montoni.”
I suddenly can’t hear anything. I can’t feel anything. I can’t think. There’s just the ring, glittering on her perfect hand, and the words echoing in the sudden vacuum of my skull.
My fiancé is Cristiano Montoni.
Engaged.
He’s engaged.
He came to my workplace. He lay on my massage table while I touched his naked body, and showed off his semi-hard cock and those obscene tattoos on his back. He asked me to stroke his hair, looked at me like I was his home, his life, and saidI don’t have you, Mina.
And he’sengaged.
To this beautiful, wealthy, appropriate woman who leisurely rides horses in the mornings while the rest of us are working, wears silk blouses, and fits perfectly into his world.
The pattern crystallizes with sickening clarity. Back when I was eighteen, he took Valerie on a coffee date. Pretty, rich, and acceptable Valerie, someone he could be seen with in public. And then he followed me home on his motorcycle and seduced me in secret, high up in a tiny room in the Montoni mansion.
Miss Barone gets a ring. She gets to stand beside him in public, to be claimed and celebrated and shown off to the world.
I get a locked wardrobe. Asked to stroke his hair in a darkened, private room.
I’m not someone he wants.
I’m someone hetakes.
My fingers dig into Miss Barone’s shoulders without conscious thought. I can feel the delicate bones beneath my hands, the muscles tensing in protest, but it’s happening somewhere far away, to someone else.
How long has he been engaged? The whole time he’s been back in Malus? The day he came to my apartment in the rain and asked to come inside?
“Ow—”
The sound doesn’t register.
I’m a dirty little secret, the housekeeper’s daughter he toys with when he’s bored.
