"I don't care because I already have someone else!"
Big mistake.
No, actually, biggest mistake ever, because the moment I say the words—
"Is that so?"
Three words. Pleasantly spoken.
But they're more than enough to unmask him completely, and I finally see for the first time who he really is. Who he always was, and always will be.
His hands haven't moved. He hasn't done anything a security camera would catch. But the room has gotten smaller. The temperature has dropped. The man on my couch who was, a minute ago, a man asking—please, sit down, per favore—is gone, and what's left in his place is the thing theTribunehas been writing headlines about for a decade.
Nicolo Sestini.
And he terrifies me to death.
Chapter Three
I MAKE A RUN FOR IT, of course.
I almost made it to the door, too.
Almost.
But he captures me just before I can turn the knob, and now it's too late—he's the one turning me around to face him instead.
His hand on my arm isn't bruising. It's not even tight. He has me with the kind of grip that saysI could let you go right now and we both know I'm not going to.The information lands in my body before it lands in my head. By the time my brain catches up, my back's against the door and Nicolo is half a foot in front of me, and he's not the man I thought I married, and he's also exactly the man I married.
"Did you really think you could escape me?"
His tone is lazy but the darkness of his eyes belies this.
He’s furious. With me. But I don’t care.
"Let me go—"
"Never."
"I willneverbelieve you either—”
"Then believe this,” he grates out.
Noooo!
I'm already twisting and struggling to get away. I already know what he plans to do and I can't—
Too late.
His mouth covers mine, and tears sting my eyes because his kiss...it's exactly how it feels, how it tastes, it does the same thing it did to me back then.
Eighteen years.
Eighteen years, and his mouth still knows mine like nothing's been lost.
I'm still struggling even as he lifts me up in his arms, trying desperately to break the kiss and push him away. But it's impossible. He now has me trapped between his body and the wood at my back, and I'm scared, so so scared because the longer this lasts, the weaker I'll be—
No no no no no no no no.