"I'm not sitting on that sofa like a decorative pillow, Kyle. Forget it."
I stood in the center of his massive, oak-paneled study, glaring at the man behind the desk. He hadn't even looked up from his tablet.
"The sofa isn't a suggestion, Val. It's an order," he said, his voice cold and flat. "My board of directors is coming up that elevator in three minutes. They've heard rumors about a 'woman' at the estate. Today, we turn those rumors into a fact."
"What? You're showing me off to your business partners? Like a trophy you found in the trash?" My voice rose, my "loud mouth" already starting to heat up. "I look like I just rolled out of bed, and I'm wearing a white silk slip that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. You're insane."
Kyle finally looked up. His gaze traveled slowly from my bare feet up to the diamond collar, and then to my eyes. A dark, arrogant spark flickered in his expression. "Exactly. I want them to see exactly what has been distracting me. I want them to see that I've found something far more interesting than their quarterly reports."
"You're a pig," I spat.
"And you're late for your seat," he countered.
The elevator doors at the end of the hall chimed. Panic flared in my chest. I couldn't be seen like this—not Valentina the grifter. But Kyle was across the room in two strides. He didn't ask; he grabbed my waist and shoved me onto the deep leather sofa.
"Don't move. Don't speak. Just look like you belong to me," he whispered, his hand lingering on my thigh with a possessive weight that made my skin burn.
The doors opened, and four men in sharp, charcoal suits walked in. They were older, stone-faced, and radiated the kind of power that usually made me want to run for the hills. They stopped dead when they saw me.
"Kyle," the oldest one said, his eyes narrowing as he looked at my bare shoulders and the collar. "We were told the meeting was private. Who is this?"
Kyle walked back to his desk and sat down, leaning back with an air of absolute, unshakeable arrogance. "This is Valentina. My fiancée."
A heavy silence dropped over the room. I could feel the judgment pouring off them. I wanted to scream that I was being held hostage, but I felt Kyle's eyes on me—a silent warning.
"A bit... informal for a Vanguard fiancée, isn't she?" a younger director sneered, his eyes roaming over the silk of my dress. "She looks more like something you'd find in a club in Brera than at the head of a table."
I felt my temper snap. "And you look like someone who spent his daddy's money on a suit that still doesn't fit," I bit out.
The room went ice-cold. Kyle's hand tightened around his pen until it snapped.
"Valentina," he said, his voice a low, terrifying warning.
"What? He started it," I snapped, turning my glare on Kyle. "If you're going to show me off to your boring friends, tell them to keep their eyes on the spreadsheets and off my legs."
The directors looked like they were about to have a heart attack. No one talked to Kyle Vanguard like that. No one.
Kyle stood up, his presence suddenly filling the entire room. He didn't look at the directors. He walked over to the sofa, grabbed my chin, and forced me to look up at him. The intimacy was brutal and public.
"She's a bit unrefined," Kyle said to the room, his eyes locked onto mine with a dark, hungry intensity. "But I find her... spirited. She's stay-in-the-shadows beautiful, isn't she? But she belongs to me. And if any of you look at her like that again, you'll be looking for a new job by lunch."
He leaned down, his lips brushing against mine in a kiss that wasn't sweet—it was a claim. It was hard, possessive, and meant to silence me. I tasted the coffee and the cold ambition on his tongue.
"Now," Kyle said, pulling back just enough to look at my flushed face. "Be a good girl and wait for me to finish. We have a lot to discuss about your future."
He turned back to the directors like I was a toy he'd just put back on the shelf. But as I sat there, my heart hammering against the diamond collar, I realized the drama was just beginning.
Because one of the directors—the younger one who had insulted me—wasn't looking at my legs anymore. He was looking at the diamond collar. And he looked like he recognized the man who had made it.