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Who everyone knew were more than happy to purchase anything.
Including sixteen-year-old girls desperate for some cash.
Julienne had learned that lesson back in the village, where she had declined the butcher’s offer to toss her a few coins if she “made him happy.” It wasn’t his bad teeth or that he smelled like blood, though neither had helped. It was that she’d already known what became of girls like her who listened to the promises of older men in that town. Or any men in that town. She was the result of her own mother’s bad decisions years back, and she knew where they ended. Strung out and eventually dead, leaving behind two daughters to the same fate.
If it was her fate, Julienne had decided, she would face it. But not in that place of echoes, built vertically into a cold hillside and filled with all the people who had watched her mother spiral into horror without lifting a finger to help. She would take Fleurette and go south to glittering Monaco, where at least their own inevitable spiral would gleam a good deal brighter all the way down.
Tonight Julienne bore no resemblance to that gaunt, terrified child. Her hair was a fall of fine caramel, polished to shine, and she wore it twisted back into a deceptively effortless chignon. She was not wearing a stolen dress—the balance for which she’d left, years later, at that same boutique with a note of apology. Julienne had built herself into a sophisticated professional in these intervening years. She preferred sleek pencil skirts and the feeling of real silk against her skin, no less than what was expected for a woman with a big job at a multinational company. She favored statement heels and understated pearls at her ears, complete with a slim gold watch on her wrist.
Cristiano Cassara had done that, too. He’d given her the means not only to become the best version of herself possible, but to repay her debts. And to change her world.
Now it was time to change it again.
Julienne paused a few steps into the lush, dimly lit bar. She looked around, seeing what could have been the same old men, rich and jaded, lounging at the same tables. Then she looked toward the expanse of the bar itself, and it was as if he’d planned it.
As if he remembered, too.
Because Cristiano Cassara sat where she remembered him, there at a bar so glossy and luxurious that sixteen-year-old Julienne had gaped at it as if all those bottles lined up so prettily were precious jewels.
This time, her heart beat hard against her ribs again, but it wasn’t fear.
It was a heady mix of victory and regret, and a strong dose of anticipation, for good measure.
She headed toward him, ready to do this at last.
Cristiano Cassara had been beautiful enough ten years ago, for all he had seemed remote. Carved from the same stone as the statues that graced the wide hall that had led her here. He’d been a relatively young man then, yet already wealthier than Julienne could have possibly imagined. The heir apparent to the Cassara chocolate fortune, he had worn his wealth and consequence in the cut of the exquisite suit he’d worn and in the very breadth of his shoulders. Not to mention the way he regarded the world around him, as if it, too, belonged to him.
Not that Julienne had known any of that, then. She’d looked at him and known that he was wealthy, that was all.
Tonight, he was all of that and more, a study in sheer masculine power.
She took a moment to really gaze at him, because this was not a Cassara Corporation boardroom where she’d always had too much to prove to waste her time making eyes at a man who she was fairly certain saw only numbers, profits and losses in return. In all the meetings she’d ever attended with him, Cristiano was steely, edging toward grim. He made no attempt to disguise his ruthlessness, and dispensed praise so sparingly that Julienne rather thought an actual murmur of vague approval might send her into a swoon.
Something that had never been put to the test.
Cristiano had been wealthy ten years ago. Today he was one of the richest men alive. She knew that if she looked around, she would likely find his security detail fanned out around the bar, unobtrusively keeping tabs on the man whose annual net worth was a number so vast that most people were unable to fully grasp it. There were too many zeroes. She would no doubt also see the hungry eyes of the women who trailed after him wherever he went, singed through but never quite burned to ash by all his steel and banked flame. She might even see the sneers of men who imagined him their rival, when it was obvious he was without peer.
As far as Julienne was concerned, he was perfect.
Sixteen-year-old Julienne had made a beeline for him because he was closest. And because, after her first, terrified look around this bar for a likely first client, he had been the only one in the place without gray hair. A fat belly. Or both.
She had told herself then that if she must do the thing, far better to do it with a man like him, who songs could have been written about. And likely had been.
She’d walked up to him, desperation making her bold enough to put a hand on his arm. And she had waited for him to look away from the drink that sat before him on the bar, seemingly untouched.
When he’d raised his gaze to hers, it had burned.
He was too intense, they said. Too harsh. Needlessly grim and cold for a man who made sweets.
But Julienne thought he had a poet’s mouth, for all that it was forever in that same flat line. His dark hair was thick and had yet to surrender to the ravages of age. It wasn’t only that he kept himself in such magnificent shape, though that helped add to his mystique. It was that he seemed far larger and more threatening than he was. A vast giant lurking in the form of a man. As if the shadow he cast could engulf anyone unwary enough to venture close.
But by the time Julienne had realized that ten years ago, it had been too late.
Her hand had been on his arm.
Her heart had nearly exploded from her chest.
“Would you like to buy me a drink?” Julienne had asked the man with the eyes that burned, her voice squeaking with panic.
