Page 52 of Reign

The anger comes quickly. Easier than admitting that.

If she had been experienced, I would already be finished with this. A private lapse. Mutually chosen. Already over.

Instead, I keep reconstructing the scene as if there will be another one—what I would ask, what I would learn, how I would touch her if I knew exactly what she wanted.

Men don’t revise mistakes they want to forget.

I set the untouched glass down.

I’m leaving early.

Before the cake. Before the dances. Before I cross the room and ask questions that would turn a mistake into an intention.

I turn toward the exit, already calculating the shortest path through the crowd, when I feel her eyes again.

Hotter this time.

Closer.

I don’t look back.

I keep walking.

Chapter 11

Elena

Three Months Later

The night-light glows soft gold from the outlet beside my bed.

It’s ridiculous, probably. I’m twenty-one years old, almost finished with school, old enough to have survived more family disasters than most people do in a lifetime, and I still sleep with a tiny star-shaped light plugged into the wall, like the dark might reach for me if I give it the chance.

Whatever.

The dark has reached for me before.

I lie on my side beneath the comforter, phone balanced against my pillow, thumb hovering over the search bar for the third time in ten minutes.

Luciano Castillo.

His name appears before I finish typing it, because apparently my phone has decided to humiliate me too.

I tap anyway.

Images load.

And there he is.

Again.

Black suit. Beautiful hands. That mouth. The kind of mouth a man like him has no business having, not when the rest of him looks like he could ruin lives before breakfast and make it to a board meeting by nine.

I stare at the photo longer than any woman with self-respect should stare at a man who walked away from her in a wedding reception hallway.

God, he’s beautiful.

That’s the irritating part. Luciano Castillo is pretty in a polished, expensive, impossible way. Like someone built a businessman out of sin and skincare and handed him an empire.