I didn't sleep. I spent the rest of the night sitting on the edge of the bed, my fingers raw from trying to find a weakness in the diamond collar. It was seamless. A masterpiece of engineering designed to remind me I was a prisoner.
When the sun finally began to bleed over the Milanese skyline, the bedroom door unlocked with a heavy, mechanical thud.
"Dress," a voice commanded from the hallway. It wasn't Kyle; it was a woman's voice—cold and sharp as a razor.
A maid entered, laying out a simple, white silk slip dress on the chair. No shoes. No jewelry other than the weight already around my neck.
"I'm not a doll," I snapped, sitting cross-legged on the bed and glaring at her. "Tell your boss if he wants to see me, he can come in here and face me like a man."
The woman didn't even blink. "Mr. Vanguard is waiting for you in the dining room. He doesn't like to wait. And he definitely doesn't like to repeat himself."
She left before I could throw a pillow at her head.
Ten minutes later, I walked into the dining room. It was a long, cold hall of white marble. At the far end, Kyle sat behind a newspaper, a cup of black coffee steaming beside him. He was dressed now—a charcoal suit that looked like it cost more than the apartment I'd grown up in.
He didn't look up when I sat down. He didn't even acknowledge I was there.
"The eggs are cold," I said, pushing the plate away with a loud, metallic screech of the fork against the china. "Just like the hospitality in this morgue."
Kyle lowered the paper slowly. His eyes were calm, but there was a flicker of something dark behind them. "You're late. In my world, time is the only thing we can't buy back. You've wasted five minutes of mine. Don't let it happen again."
"Or what?" I leaned forward, my chin resting on my hand, the diamonds of the collar digging into my skin. "You'll put a leash on me next? Maybe a muzzle?"
Kyle set the paper down and leaned in, mirroring my posture. The space between us charged with a sudden, suffocating heat. "Don't tempt me, Val. A muzzle would certainly make my breakfast more peaceful."
"You're so full of yourself," I hissed, my "loud mouth" acting faster than my brain. "You think because you have a fancy name and a big building that you own the people inside it. But you don't own me. You just have me on a temporary lease."
Kyle's gaze dropped to the collar, then back to my eyes. A slow, arrogant smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. "A lease implies I plan on giving you back. I don't."
He reached across the table. I tried to flinch away, but he was faster. His fingers caught the back of my neck, his thumb resting right on my pulse point. He pulled me toward him until I was hovering over the table, my face inches from his.
"You think you're still playing a game," he whispered, his voice a low, terrifying rumble. "You think if you're annoying enough, if you're loud enough, I'll get bored and throw you back into the gutter. But you're wrong. I like the noise you make. It reminds me that I caught something with teeth."
"I'll bite your hand off the first chance I get," I breathed, my heart racing so hard I was sure he could feel it through my neck.
"I'm counting on it," he rasped. He let go of me abruptly, picking up his coffee as if he hadn't just threatened my entire existence. "Eat your breakfast. We have a long day ahead of us. I'm moving my office into the penthouse today. Since you can't be trusted out of my sight, you'll be 'working' from the sofa in my study."
My jaw dropped. "You're kidding. You're going to keep me in your office all day? Like a pet?"
"Like a debt that needs supervising," he corrected, not looking up from his coffee. "And Val? If you speak one word while I'm on a conference call, I'll find a much more permanent way to keep that mouth of yours occupied."
I opened my mouth to give him a piece of my mind, but the look he gave me—sharp, possessive, and utterly serious—made the words die in my throat.
I sat back, stabbing a piece of fruit with a vengeance. I was trapped in a 100th-floor palace with a man who treated me like a conquered territory. But as I watched him go back to his paper, I realized one thing.
He was watching me too. Every time I moved, every time I breathed, his eyes followed.
He wasn't just my jailer. He was obsessed. And in my world, an obsessed man is a man who can be broken.