My gaze darts to Lorenzo and then to the man who raised me. "How long, Dad?"
Dad picks up his glass. Drains it. Sets it down with a crack against the wood. "Six months. You happy now? Can we get on with this?"
A darkness I can't control smothers out the light I’ve worked so hard to fill my life with.
Six months. He's been arranging my marriage for six months and never said a word. I had dinner with him three weeks ago and he asked about the boutique and laughed at my story about a customer who tried on fifteen dresses and bought a scarf. He sat across from me eating steak and making small talk while my future was already signed away.
"You should have told me." My voice doesn't waver. I'm proud of that.
"I'm telling you now." Dad corrects me roughly, cocking his dark brow.
Raw fury threatens to explode inside me. "No,” I seethe between gritted teeth. “You're presenting me with a done deal and calling it a conversation."
Lorenzo reaches over and grips my elbow. His fingers dig into the bend of my arm hard enough that I feel each one press against the bone, controlling my movement.
My body goes cold.
Every muscle locks from my shoulders to my feet and I’m suddenly thrown back to the last time a man tried to physically control me.
My skin tightens under his fingers and a wave of nausea rolls through my stomach so fast I have to press my tongue against the roof of my mouth to keep from gagging. I don't breathe. I can't. My lungs refuse to expand and my vision narrows and I am frozen in this chair with this man's hand on my arm and every cell in my body screaming at me to get his fingers off my skin.
I pull my arm away. Slow and deliberate so it doesn't look like a flinch even though every nerve ending in my body is on fire.
My eyes narrow into murderous slits. "Don't you dare touch me," I rage. I speak to Lorenzo but I'm looking at my father. My voice comes out low and even and made entirely of steel. "We've known each other for five minutes. You don't get to touch me."
Lorenzo's fingers release my arm but he doesn't pull back. He stays in my space, close enough that his cologne fills my lungs, and the smile that crosses his face tells me everything I need to know about how seriously he takes a woman's refusal. “You'll warm up to me, Sloane. They always do.”
Puke. "You think?" I sling back with a healthy dose of ire.
I push to my feet. My heels sink into the rug and I grip the back of the chair because my knees are not as steady as my voice. Dad mirrors my movements, and the guilt on his face makes me angrier than the deal itself.
My father plants a heavy fist on the desk. "Sloane, sit down. Let's discuss this."
Acid pours over the rage bubbling up inside me. "There's nothing to discuss. You made a deal without asking me. You sat across from me at dinner for months and said nothing. And now you're introducing me to the man you sold me to and asking me to sit down and discuss it, like a good girl. Fuck that and fuck you. You don’t respect me, why should I respect you?" I press my lips together hard enough to feel the waxy bite of my lipstick against my teeth. "I need air. I'll call you when I'm ready to talk, and I am not ready to talk." The fury my father poured into my bloodstream is going to eat me alive if I don't get out of this room. I swallow all the emotions running rampant through me and turn toward the door.
I gasp. Coming to a full stop.
Massimo Santoro stands in the doorway.
My lungs empty. The floor tilts beneath my heels and I lock my knees to keep from swaying.
He's in a dark navy suit, no tie, the top button of his shirt undone. His jaw is tight, the close-trimmed beard sharper than it was last night, like he cleaned it up before coming here. His broad shoulders block the doorframe. And his whiskey eyes are locked on mine with an intensity that pins me where I stand.
The way he's looking at me is not how Dad's lawyer looks at a friend's daughter.
He's looking at me like heknows.
How long did it take him? The wish? The shoe? The scent on his sheets matching my perfume right this minute?
My stomach drops. No. I'm overreacting. The fury my father just poured into me is warping everything. Massimo didn't see my face clearly. It was dark. I was careful. He can't possibly know.
I stop struggling to hold his gaze and that is when I feel the web of my emotions gently seek his.
His eyes don't move off mine and my body responds before my brain can shut it down. Heat floods my body, my pulse hammers at every point, and every inch of skin that he touched last night burns with the memory of every rough callus on his hands.
My fingers grip the back of the chair hard enough to have my nails bend against the leather.
How long has he been standing there? What did he hear?