Gianna
I couldn't stop touching my lips.
I made it to the elevator before I noticed – my fingers pressed against my mouth, tracing the shape of something that wasn't there anymore. Just skin. Just me. But I could still feel him. The pressure. The heat. The way his mouth had moved against mine like he was trying to memorize the architecture of something he planned to demolish.
I dropped my hand. Shoved it in my pocket. Pressed my back against the elevator wall and stared at the floor numbers counting down and tried to remember how breathing worked.
Fourteen floors. Fourteen floors to pull myself together. To become Gianna Moretti again – the quiet one, the invisible one, the girl who baked and blushed and didn't get pinned to walls by men who made bodies disappear.
Fourteen floors to forget the way his hand had slid down my hip like he was claiming territory.
The elevator dinged. The doors opened. The lobby was empty except for the receptionist, who glanced up, saw my face, and immediately looked back at her computer screen with the practiced blindness of someone who knew better than to ask questions.
I walked out. Fast. Head down. The evening air hit me like a slap – cold, sharp, necessary. I sucked it in and felt my lungs clear and my thoughts unscramble just enough to form a single, devastating sentence:
I went there to stop the marriage and I got kissed instead.
Not just kissed. Consumed. There was no other word for what had happened in that office. He hadn't kissed me like a man who wanted me. He'd kissed me like a man who wanted to win – every sound I made, every gasp I tried to hide, every shameful, traitorous inch my body had leaned into his. He'd taken it all and held it in his mouth like he was savoring something he'd stolen.
And I'd let him.
Not just let him. Helped. My hands in his hair. My hips pressing forward. My mouth opening under his like I'd been waiting for it instead of fighting it.
The memory made my thighs press together. I walked faster.
By the time I reached the manor gates, my face was on fire and my body was humming with something that felt less like aftershock and more like a low, persistent fever. I couldn't unfeel it. I couldn't un-taste him. Every time I blinked, I saw the wall behind his desk, the way his eyes had gone black when I'd moaned, the way he'd whispered this isn't affection against my throat like he was educating me.
This is what happens when you dangle softness in front of a man who's only ever known war.
I was the softness. I was the one who'd dangled. And now I was walking home with his fingerprints on my skin and no idea what came next.
I locked myself in the east wing and didn't come out.
Not for dinner. Not for the restless pacing I usually did when my mind wouldn't stop. I just sat on my bed with my back against the headboard and my knees pulled up and stared at the wall and tried to make the buzzing under my skin go away.
It didn't go away.
Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in that office. The wall. His hands. The specific, devastating weight of his body against mine – not crushing, not bruising, just there, solid and immovable, like he'd been built to fit against me. My curves, my softness, the fullness of my stomach pressed against the hard plane of his abdomen. He hadn't flinched from any of it. Hadn't pulled back. Hadn't treated my body like an obstacle to navigate around.
He'd treated it like something he was mapping.
And that was worse. Because mapping meant planning. And planning meant this wasn't over.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I ignored it. It buzzed again. I ignored it again. The third time, I grabbed it, ready to snap at Lena or Sara for not understanding the concept of leave me alone.
It wasn't Lena or Sara.
Uncle Sal.
I stared at the name. My thumb hovered over the green button. The buzzing stopped. The screen went dark. In the black mirror of the glass, I could see my own reflection – flushed cheeks, swollen lips, eyes too bright. I looked like someone who'd just been kissed within an inch of her life.
Because I had.
I picked up on the fourth ring.
"Gianna." Not cara tonight. Just my name. Warm, but with an edge underneath – the edge that meant this wasn't a social call.
"Uncle."
"You sound breathless."
"I was – I was resting."
A pause. The kind that had weight. "I've spoken with Dominic."
My stomach dropped. Every nerve in my body went alert, like a dog hearing a sound in the dark.
"The deal's done," he said. "He's agreed to the marriage."
The words didn't land all at once. They landed in pieces – deal, done, agreed, marriage – each one hitting a different part of me like shrapnel. I pressed my free hand flat against the mattress to steady myself, but the room was tilting and my vision was narrowing and I couldn't tell if I was breathing or not.
"He said yes?"
"Yes."
One word. Final. The way Sal said everything – like it had already been decided in a room I wasn't allowed into, and I was just being informed of the weather.
"How–" I swallowed. "When?"
"This afternoon. After your meeting."
After your meeting. The words hung in the air, heavy with implication. Sal knew I'd gone to Dominic's office. Of course he knew – Sal knew everything. But the way he said it – your meeting – made it sound like I'd gone there to negotiate. Like I'd walked in with a plan and walked out with a result.
"I didn't– he didn't– I went there to tell him no." My voice cracked. "I went there to convince him this was a mistake."
"And what happened?"
The question was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that meant Sal already knew the answer and was waiting to see if I'd lie.
I couldn't tell him about the kiss. I couldn't tell my uncle – the man who'd raised me, who'd protected me, who'd built this entire gilded cage around my life – that his enforcer had pinned me to a wall and put his mouth on mine and I'd liked it. That I'd leaned into it. That I was sitting here now with swollen lips and aching thighs and a body that wouldn't stop wanting something it had no business wanting.
"I told him my flaws," I said. "The sleep-talking. The bad directions. The ceramic frogs. I thought if he saw how... how unfit I was, he'd back out."
"And?"
"And he didn't."
"No. He didn't."
Another pause. Longer this time. I could hear ice clinking in a glass on his end. Whiskey. He always drank whiskey when he was thinking about something that required precision.
"I think your visit sealed the deal," Sal said. His voice was lighter now. Pleased, even. "Whatever you said in that office, it worked. He called me an hour after you left and said the marriage was on."
It worked.
Like I'd done something right. Like I'd accomplished a goal instead of accidentally seducing a monster into claiming me.
"I didn't mean to–"
"You don't have to explain, Gigi." The warmth was back. Full force. The uncle voice, the one that made me feel small and safe and controlled all at once. "I'm proud of you. I know this wasn't easy. I know you were scared. But you went in there and handled it, and now it's done."
Proud of me.
For what? For getting kissed? For having my body used as a bargaining chip? For being so bad at saying no that I'd somehow said yes without meaning to?
"I don't understand," I whispered. "He didn't agree because of anything I said. He– he barely listened. He just–"
"He listened, Gianna." Sal's voice shifted. Not colder – careful. The voice he used when he was choosing words like loaded chambers. "Dominic doesn't do anything without a reason. If he agreed, it's because he decided you were worth agreeing to. That's not nothing."
Worth agreeing to.
Like I was a contract. A transaction. A line item on a ledger.
"I'll let you know the details soon," Sal continued. "The wedding will be within the month. I want this settled before the DiSanto situation escalates further."
DiSanto. The name landed like a stone in water, sending ripples through whatever was left of my composure. Sal never mentioned family names casually. If he was bringing up the DiSantos now, it meant something bad was happening that he thought I needed to know about – or something bad was about to happen and he wanted me too distracted to notice.
"What DiSanto situation?"
"Nothing for you to worry about." Back to the warm voice. The dismissal voice. "Focus on the wedding. Focus on becoming what Dominic needs you to be. That's your job now, Gianna. The rest is mine to handle."
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone. The screen went dark. My reflection stared back – flushed, swollen-lipped, wide-eyed. A girl who'd walked into an office with cookies and walked out engaged to a man who kissed like a natural disaster.
Congratulations, sweetheart.
He hadn't said it. But I could hear it anyway, echoing in the silence of the room like he'd whispered it into my ear. Congratulations for playing your part. Congratulations for being the soft thing Sal needed to make his weapon stay sharp. Congratulations for being so easy to give away.
I set the phone down. Pulled my knees tighter to my chest. The east wing was quiet – no staff, no guards, just me and the dark and the lingering taste of Dominic Russo on my lips.
I'd gone to his office to stop the marriage.
I'd come back with it confirmed.
And somewhere between the cookies and the kiss and the wall, I'd lost the ability to tell the difference between fighting back and falling forward.
My hand drifted to my mouth again.
I let it stay there.
How was I going to stop this marriage now?