I wear his name like a scar.
Alessandro Rossi stole everything from me; my freedom, my future, the lie I told my father to keep him alive. He thinks I'm a tool to be used, a bride to be displayed, a Fraga to be broken. He thinks the ring on my finge...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Dragging myself out of bed felt like punishment.
I'd hidden away for days, avoiding the eyes of everyone who carried sympathy they didn't dare voice. Even my books had failed to offer the escape I usually found in them.
I stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, staring at the storm clouds rolling in, but I wasn't seeing them. My reflection stared back at me like a stranger. A ghost wearing my face.
I traced the marks on my skin. The bruise on my cheek had faded to a sickly yellow, but I could still feel the crack of his palm against my face. The imprint of his fingers on my throat lingered, not just on my skin but deeper, in the place where breath lives. He'd marked me. Tried to break me. And some nights, when the dark pressed too close, I wasn't sure he hadn't succeeded.
Then Alessandro had come. Alone. Unarmed. He'd walked into that warehouse like a man walking into his own grave, and he'd done it for me. He'd knelt. I'd watched him lower himself to the ground, head unbowed, eyes burning with something I didn't dare explain.
I'd touched his wound in the hospital. Felt the torn flesh under the bandages. Counted the hours he'd sat there bleeding because he wouldn't leave my side. And for one dangerous moment, I'd let myself believe it meant something.
But it didn't.
It couldn't.
Because the man who took a bullet for me was the same man who'd summoned a woman to his penthouse to erase me from his system. The same man who'd forced me into this marriage, who'd threatened my family, who'd made it clear from the beginning that I was nothing but a piece on his board.
He saved me because I was his. His property. His asset. Losing me would've been a blow to his pride, a crack in his empire. Not a wound to his heart.
I pressed my palm to the cold glass and watched the rain streak down like tears.
The truth was ugly. I wanted to believe it anyway. I wanted to believe that the way he'd held me, the way he'd whispered my name like a prayer, the way his hands had shaken when he touched my face, meant something real.
But wanting was dangerous. Wanting was how women like me ended up destroyed.
He was my captor. My protector only by the twisted rules of his own making. I thanked him. That was the end of it. That had to be the end of it. Any other path led to a different kind of captivity, one I wouldn't survive.
A knock came at the door. "May I come in?" Helena's voice, soft and hesitant.
Guilt rose sharp and hot. I'd forgotten her. Her worry. Her waiting. Andrea had nearly died, and I'd been too lost in my own darkness to see hers.
She came in with a tray, dark circles carved deep under her eyes. "Good morning, Mrs. Rossi."
"Helena." My voice cracked from disuse. "Please, call me Yasenia. And I'm sorry. I should've asked sooner. How are you?"
