Then he extended his hand across the desk. “Done.”
She looked at his hand, then at him. “That quickly?”
“You came here with no weapon, no witness, no proof I’d help you, and started bargaining from a staircase with three guns pointed at your head. Either you’re reckless, or you’re useful. I prefer useful.”
She put her hand in his. His grip was steady, cool at the knuckles and warm at the palm.
“One more thing,” he said, still holding her hand. “If this is a setup, if Anthony sent you, or Vincent is playing some deeper game through you, I will know. And when I know, you will wish your fiancé had killed you first.”
Emilia should have flinched. Instead, to her own surprise, she felt calmer.
“I’m not lying.”
He let go. “Good,” he said. “Then welcome to your new cage.”
The room prepared for her in the east wing was magnificent in the sterile way luxury can become when designed by people who understand beauty as control. The bed was too large. The ceiling too high. The windows looked over the ocean, but iron filigree, decorative enough to pass in photographs, ran through the frames. A cage, exactly as promised, though draped in linen and pale blue silk instead of bars.
She stood at one window until the sun climbed fully over the water. The wedding dress still hung on her body like a skinned memory. Every bead on the bodice had been sewn by hand because she had always wanted her own label, her own atelier, her own name stitched into garments women remembered for the rest of their lives. For six months she had worked by night designing a masterpiece meant to mark the beginning of that dream. Instead it had become the costume she wore while outrunning her own murder.
When an older woman with silver hair and an immaculate navy dress knocked and entered carrying folded clothes, Emilia was too tired to be startled.
“I’m Nora,” the woman said. “Mr. Vale asked me to help you stop looking like the third act of a tragedy.”
Emilia almost laughed. It came out as a cracked breath instead.
Nora set jeans, a cashmere sweater, and a robe on the bed, then examined the wedding dress with a professional squint. “Would you like me to save it?”
“No.” Emilia touched the ripped train once. “Burn it.”
Nora looked at her, decided she meant it, and nodded. “Excellent. I always prefer a clear instruction.”
After Emilia showered and changed, she stared at herself in the mirror and barely recognized the woman looking back. Without the dress, the pinned hair, the diamond earrings chosen by men discussing alliances over cigars, she seemed younger. Smaller. Yet somehow more real. A bruise-colored exhaustion shadowed her eyes, but there was sharpness in them too. The kind that appears after something breaks and leaves room for something harder to form in the gap.
Dominic sent for her an hour later.
He was in the study again, tablet in one hand, coffee untouched beside him. He looked up once as she entered, taking in the damp hair, bare face, sweater sleeves pushed to the wrists.
“Better,” he said.
“Because I’m less likely to bleed on your rugs?”
“Because you look like someone who can think.”
She took the chair across from him and, annoyingly, felt heat rise to her cheeks. She hated that his approval, even in that dry tone, could land anywhere in her body at all. Attraction under these circumstances was an insult to dignity. Unfortunately, it was also not imaginary.
“My people confirmed that Vincent left St. Catherine’s shortly after you disappeared,” Dominic said. “He told your father you were overwhelmed and needed time. He also put men at the train station, the airport, and both interstate routes north. He knows you ran. He does not yet know where.”
“What about my mother and Claire?”
“Your mother is at the Moretti estate. Your sister too. He hasn’t moved on them. Your father increased security after the wedding collapsed, which ironically helps us.”
Emilia exhaled for what felt like the first time that morning.
Dominic turned the tablet toward her. “I want you to look at this.”
It was a schedule. Dates, times, meetings, dinners, church appearances, “charity” events, freight inspections that existed only on paper, three months of Vincent Barrett moving through the architecture of power like a shark in a custom suit.
“You have his calendar?”
“I have many things,” Dominic said. “Look.”
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