Silence.
Chapter 2
LORETTA
Being alone in the same room with the richest man in the country was not something I had ever imagined would happen to me on a Tuesday evening.
I was acutely aware of his presence—he hadn’t moved. I could feel him there, standing close, likely watching me.
My nerves tightened under that silence.
My hands trembled despite themselves, still cuffed behind my back with the handcuffs Bruno had used on me.
My breathing slowed deliberately.
I tilted my head slightly toward where I sensed him standing, aligning myself as precisely as I could.
It wasn’t perfect. It never was.
But I had learned how to aim my attention—how tofeelwhere someone stood by the way their presence pressed into the space around me.
“Thank you, Mr. Pérez,” I managed to say, despite the lingering burn in my mouth from Bruno’s earlier pressure of the scissors against my tongue.
“Bruno was going to cut off my tongue and silence me completely, all because I resisted his harassment at the company. He wanted me to beg him here, and then again in public tomorrow, but I refused.”
My voice wavered slightly. “If you had arrived even two seconds later, I think my tongue would have been on the floor... and I would have been bleeding out. I’m truly grateful.”
I poured it out, my voice unsteady.
A heavy, suffocating silence followed, and I couldn’t tell if I had spoken too much or if my words had angered him.
“Bruno will not trouble you again,” he said at last.
“I’ll also have your door repaired by morning,” he continued, his tone as composed as before. “You shouldn’t have to sleep with it hanging off its hinges.”
His words were unexpectedly considerate, standing in stark contrast to the rumors I had heard about him.
Coming from him, they carried a weight that made my chest tighten slightly.
“Thank you,” I said again, my voice softer now, my head dipping slightly.
I could hear the faint creak of the floorboards as he shifted his weight.
Unlike Bruno, who filled space loudly and carelessly...
