I’m pretty sure the delivery man will never want to bring me packages again.
I slice open the first box with a box cutter, the blade parting the packing tape with a satisfying rip, and pull back the tissue paper.
The dresses are perfect. Emerald green swing dresses with sweetheart necklines, the fabric soft and heavy between my fingers, the stitching clean and tight, the zippers smooth when I test them.
I hold one up to the light filtering through the front window and the color catches, rich and deep and alive, and I feel a smile pull at my mouth that has nothing to do with Massimo Santoro and everything to do with the fact that I am good at what I do.
This is mine. This boutique, these dresses, this business I built with my own hands and my own taste and my own stubborn refusal to let anyone tell me what a woman should look like. Lorenzo can send silk slippers and my dad can call it silly and the whole world can close in around me, but this shop is mine and nobody gets to take it.
I work for an hour. Tag the new arrivals, the gun clicking softly as each tag pierces fabric. Steam the wrinkles, the iron hissing as I press creases from emerald cotton. Arrange the new dresses on the front rack where the morning light catches the color through the rain-streaked window. Bree arrives at ten, shaking water from her umbrella in the doorway, and we fall into our rhythm, her handling the register while I rearrange the window display with the new stock.
The brass bell chimes at ten forty-five.
I look up from the display expecting the delivery driver with the second shipment.
Lorenzo Ferraro walks into my boutique.
My stomach drops through the floor and my fingers tighten on the dress hanger so hard the metal bites into my palm. He's in a navy suit, no overcoat, his dark hair slicked back, his jaw freshly shaved with a precision that makes his face look like it was assembled in a lab. His cologne reaches me before he does, heavy and expensive and wrong in this space, a scent that clashes with my lavender and cotton.
He doesn't look at me first. He goes to the nearest rack and runs his fingers along the fabric of a red dress, rubbing the material between his thumb and forefinger with an unhurried ease. He studies it. Touching it the way he undoubtedly touched all the things in my closet.
My skin tightens from my wrists to the back of my neck. Every inch of me recoils watching his fingers on fabric I chose, fabric I steamed, fabric that belongs in my world and not under his hands. My molars press together so hard my jaw aches.
"Beautiful craftsmanship." His voice carries across the quiet shop, smooth and conversational. "You have excellent taste, Sloane. The emerald is new? Arrived this morning, if I'm not mistaken, right?"
The only way he knows that is if he’s been watching me.
"Can I help you with something, Lorenzo?" I set the hanger down on the display case, keeping the glass counter between us.
"I was in the neighborhood." He moves down the rack, his fingers trailing along fabrics, leaving his prints on silk and cotton and lace. He pulls a seamed stocking from the glass display case and holds it up to the light, the sheer fabric stretching between his fingers. "Egyptian cotton. Nice." He setsit down and turns to face me. "How was lunch at Scarlet Thorn the day before yesterday? The wives seem lovely. Persia's charity work is quite impressive."
The blood drains from my face. So, it was his men he sent. The fucker likes to play games.
"My social calendar isn't your business."
"Mmm." He buttons his jacket and moves closer, each step measured and deliberate, closing the distance between us with a patience that makes my pulse pound. "I also hear you've been settling in nicely at Redthorne Holdings. Penthouse 106, right? Beautiful view of the city. Very romantic." He stops four feet from me, close enough that his cologne fills my lungs and my stomach churns. "How was the pad thai, by the way? I hope the delivery was prompt."
The pad thai. He knows about the pad thai, too. What a creepy son of a bitch. He knows what we ordered for dinner, which means someone is either watching the building's deliveries or watching us directly and the difference doesn't matter because both mean Lorenzo Ferraro has eyes inside my life.
"My living arrangements aren't your concern." My voice is level but my heart is slamming against my ribs so hard dots dance in my vision.
"Everything about you is my concern, Sloane." His voice drops. The civil surface thins and underneath it is something cold and patient and absolutely certain of its own authority. "Your father and I have an agreement. Some stranger’s ring on your finger doesn't change the terms."
"The terms changed when I signed a different contract."
His smile returns and it makes my skin crawl from my scalp to my heels, a slow creeping revulsion that tightens every muscle in my body. "Contracts can be broken. People can be broken. You'd be surprised how fragile the things we build really are." His eyes sweep the boutique, the racks, the display cases, the brass bell on the door, the emerald dresses I steamed and tagged and arranged with my own hands an hour ago. "Beautiful things especially."
The threat sits between us, clear and polished and impossible to misread. He's not talking about dresses.
"Get out of my shop." My voice doesn't shake. I'm proud of that, proud of every molecule of lipstick and liner and armor holding me upright right now. "You're not welcome here and you never will be."
He holds my gaze for three seconds. Four. Five. His dark eyes are flat, patient. He's never been told no by anyone who lived to enforce it. Then he buttons his suit jacket, smooths his lapel with a slow hand, and walks toward the door, unhurried.
He pauses at the door with his hand on the brass handle. "Give my regards to your fake husband, Sloane. Tell him Lorenzo Ferraro always collects what he's owed."
The bell chimes as the door closes behind him. The bright, clean sound that used to settle my nerves rings through the shop and this time it sounds like the last note of something ending.
"Sloane." Bree's voice is thin from behind the register, her face pale, her hands gripping the counter edge. "Who was that?"