Ruthless.
Unforgiving.
Cold enough to make the room feel smaller.
A shiver runs through me, but I refuse to let him see me break.
I straighten my shoulders, raise my chin, and meet his eyes head-on.
“Then ask me yourself,” I whisper.
But he doesn’t.
He stares—silent, deadly, and unreadable.
And that’s somehow worse than if he’d pulled the trigger.
Chapter 16
She stands there in front of my desk—
shoulders squared, chin up, eyes burning like she’s already accepted the bullet if it means she gets the last word.
Alessandro is a storm behind her, waiting for me to unleash him.
The paper still lies on my desk like a wound that won’t stop bleeding.
And she’s standing there, fragile and furious, shaking but unbroken.
I should hate her.
I should want her gone, silenced, erased.
But I can’t stop looking at her.
At the bruise still faint on her temple from the night my men took her.
At the fire in her eyes when she tells me to ask her myself.
At the way her voice doesn’t shake, even when she’s terrified.
God help me, she’s the bravest damn thing I’ve ever seen.
And that’s what’s tearing me apart—
because she’s standing here, defying me,
and all I can think about is how much I want to touch her.
How much I want her to trust me again.
Her defiance shouldn’t move me.
But it does.
It’s breaking something inside me I didn’t know was still capable of cracking.
The woman I buried five years ago—my wife—was a duty, not a choice.
