Chapter 5 Belle
BELLE
Ineed another shower. I let the water wash over me.
Every time I close my eyes, I see those bloody knuckles and wonder how I can possibly be attracted to someone who just turned a man's face into ground beef.
What does that say about me? Normal women swipe right on accountants named Dave who collect vintage Star Wars figurines, not men who collect other men's teeth as trophies.
"What the actual fuck, Belle?" I turn off the shower and slap my head against the wall.
I step out of the steam like I'm breaking surface after a long, stupid dive—lungs tight, skin flushed, brain still buzzing with Luca running in circles around it.
I wrap a towel around myself.
On one hand: God damn, that was terrifying.
On the other hand, he beat the shit out of that guy because the idiot disrespected me.
Which is... sweet? In a deeply disturbed, call-your-therapist kind of way.
I pad back into the bedroom, leaving wet footprints on the marble floor, and freeze.
There's a black velvet box sitting on my bed like a grenade with the pin pulled.
I know what's in there before I even touch it. Every woman knows that particular size of impending doom.
It's sitting on my pillow, right where his head was last night, right where he made me scream his name until my voice broke.
The placement isn't accidental. Nothing Luca does is accidental.
My stomach drops. Not in a cute rollercoaster way—in a did the floor just vanish way.
My heart stutters like it's forgotten how to beat properly. I know what that is. Everyone knows what that is.
"No way," I whisper, approaching the bed like the box might bite. "No fucking way."
Up close, the box isn't cute. It's monstrous.
Heavy in my hands like it has its own gravitational field. There's no card. No note.
Just a discreet embossed crest on the lid.
Yeah. Okay. Cool. Please tell me this isn't what I think it is.
I flip open the lid and nearly drop the damn thing.
This isn't a ring. This is a statement.
The diamond is obscene, an oval cut that could fund a small country's healthcare system.
It doesn't just catch light; it hoards it, then weaponizes it. This isn't jewelry. It's a declaration of war against subtlety.
It's the kind of ring that requires its own bodyguard and insurance policy. Four carats, minimum.
"What the hell?" I breathe, unable to tear my eyes away from it.
I should shut the box. I should put it under the bed and then punt myself to a new country.
Instead, my traitor hand lifts the ring out. The band slides against my wet fingertip as if it's been waiting for me my whole dumb life.
No. I don't. I won't—
I try it on.
The fit is perfect. Like the universe tipped its hat at Luca's arrogance.
It looks ridiculous on my hand—far too big for fingers this thin. My stomach flips. My heart forgets how often it beats per second.
My brain short-circuits, trying to make sense of this. An engagement ring? From Luca? After one night together?
This is insane. I'm being punk'd. Where are the cameras? Where's Ashton Kutcher hiding? Because this can't be real.
I take off the ring, snap the box closed and set it down like it's radioactive. My hands are shaking.
Suddenly, the room feels too small, the air too thick. I need answers, and I need them now.
I don't even bother putting on clothes. My wet hair drips down my back as I storm out of the room, the ring box clutched in my fist like evidence for all the ways I've been wronged.
I storm through his house like an avenging angel in a towel, leaving wet footprints and dignity behind.
Two guards try to stop me. I hold up the ring box like a weapon.
"Move, or I'll tell him you kept me from him."
They move.
I burst into his office without knocking.
Luca stands by a floor-to-ceiling window, looking like a GQ cover model in a fresh suit, barking orders into the phone.
He turns as I enter, his eyes landing first on my face, then on the box in my hand.
He says something into the phone—"I'll call you back"—and hangs up.
"What the hell is this?" I demand, holding up the box.
His shirt is black. His knuckles are bandaged now, neat white strips that make the memory of the gym floor flash bright and copper in my head.
He watches me watch him. His gaze drops to my hand and notices my fingers unadorned.
"Too big?" he asks, voice low enough my bones feel it.
"Too… what?" My heart races. "I think you left it on the wrong bed."
He glances down at the towel I'm cinched in and that… doesn't help my argument.
I feel the heat rush down my neck, my back, turning me flush.
My entire body buzzes like a garden of bees, and now I wish I'd put on some damn clothes.
Luca starts walking toward me. For every step he takes forward, I take one back, until I realize he's herding me back to a corner against the door.
"Luca, answer me. What is this?" I ask again in a whisper of a voice.
We reach a corner, and I keep backing up until my legs hit the couch.
He closes the door to his office behind him, and suddenly the space feels microscopic with him in it.
"It's an engagement ring," he says finally, like he's explaining something simple to a child.
So, I wasn't wrong. I didn't just let my imagination run too wild.
I fall back on the couch, the towel riding up my thighs.
My body reacts before I can scold it—heart up in my throat, breath acting shy, skin tightening like it wants to be touched.
Traitor. Every cell is a chorus: we remember you; we want more.
I swallow hard and pretend it's not obvious.
"I know it's an engagement ring," I snap. "What I don't understand is why it was on my bed."
He stops just close enough that I can feel heat. The kind you don't get from radiators.
I look up, and his eyes cut to the box, back to my face.
"Because you're going to wear it," he says simply.
I laugh, a high, slightly hysterical sound. "I'm sorry, I must have missed the part where you asked me to marry you. Or, you know, the part where we've known each other for more than forty-eight hours."
"I'm not asking."
Three words. Three simple words that make my blood run cold and hot at the same time.
"That's not how this works." I stand back up again. "You can't just—"
"Your father owes me seven million dollars," Luca cuts in. "Money he doesn't have and will never be able to repay."
The number hits me like a physical blow. Seven million?
My father, who drives a ten-year-old sedan, owes this man seven million dollars?
"That's impossible," I whisper.
"It's the truth." One of his eyebrows lifts a millimeter. "Marriage will clear your father's debt."
The sentence is a trap door. I tumble through it fast enough to get airless. "What?"
"Your father owed men much worse than me," he says, and there's no gloat in it, only fact. "I bought his mess. I kept blood off your family's steps. I kept a roof over his head when it wasn't… efficient to do so."
I go very still. The room shrinks to the space between us and the box in my hand. "Y…you kept the roof over our heads?"
His jaw ticks. "All I'm saying is, he was out of moves."
He takes one more step. I feel it. My knees go weird.
He doesn't touch me, but he doesn't have to. The idea of him touching me moves through my body like a whisper that has hands.
"Here's the deal." He moves closer, and I hate how my body leans toward him like a plant to poisoned sun. "Your father's debt vanishes. Every cent. Every threat from every man he owes. Gone."
"In exchange for?"
His hand comes up, thumb ghosting over my pulse point where last night he bit down hard enough to brand. "You. Legal. Binding. Mine."
The word 'mine' hits different when the man saying it has his hand at your throat and you're wet from it.
"When?" I manage.
"Tomorrow. Nine a.m. Judge owes me a favor."
Of course he does.
My heart is a trapped bird. I'm suddenly aware of how small my towel is and how fucked up my future.
"And if I don't?" I ask.
"You have twenty-four hours to decide if you can live with the choice your father made. Be my wife, and I let him go scott-free. Otherwise, there's trouble coming his way."
My chest aches with anger that doesn't know which direction to point—at Luca, at my father, at my own stupid heart for beating faster because the Beast says wife like a promise and not a trap.
I can't breathe properly with him this close, and the towel is losing interest in staying up.
"I… I need to think about it," I whisper, and turn on my heels, running off like the wind, right back to my room.
The first thing I do when I get back, is chuck the ring across my bed.
The second, I call my father.
"Belle?" he sounds relieved to hear from me. "Isabelle, my girl—"
"How could you do this to me?" The words come out choked. "Seven million dollars? And now, you sold me to him? Your own daughter?"
"It wasn't like that," he says weakly. "I never thought it would come to this. I thought I could pay it back."
"With what money, Dad? The company's been dying for years!"
"I know, I know." He sounds defeated, broken. "But Luca... he made an offer."
"To buy me, dad! TO BUY ME!"
"Please, Belle." I hear him sob. "I had to do this to save you, because I can't take care of you anymore. It wasn't supposed to be this. But I kept losing and he kept covering. Every month I told myself I'd fix it, and every month, I fell behind."
He stops.
"I'm sorry."
Sorry is a paper umbrella in a hurricane. It's not enough. It's also everything he has.
I put my hand over my eyes. Hot tears slide down, and I hate them because I want to be pure fire right now.
"So, I was set up. This whole thing with me coming to his house, it was all planned so I'd marry him."
"He promised he wouldn't hurt you," my father says desperately. "He swore it."
"That's great, isn't it?" I laugh bitterly. "That the crime lord who's forcing me to marry him pinky-promised not to beat me?"
"Belle, listen to me." His voice drops to a whisper. "There are men looking for me. Real bad men. Not like Luca—worse. The kind who'd use you to send me a message."
My blood goes cold. "What kind of message?"
"The kind that comes in pieces."
I can't breathe. Can't think.
"Luca's the only reason they haven't already—" He stops. "Just... if you say yes to him, you're untouchable. His name alone is armor. Without it..."
He doesn't finish. He doesn't need to.
I hear myself breathing into the phone.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he sobs. "I'm so sorry. I never meant for this to happen. I just wanted to save the company, save the jobs. I never thought..."
I swallow around the burn from his words. "I have twenty-four hours."
"So… fast? I… I really fucked up."
I can hear the agony and uncertainty in Dad's voice. I want to say I forgive you, but my heart's not all that big.
"What are you going to do?" he asks.
"I don't know…" I whisper. "But I've got to go."
"Belle—"
"I love you," I whisper, knowing I still mean it as I cut the call.
My dad, he's many things, but he's not cruel.
He dug himself into this mess so I wouldn't have to hold the shovel, and now the whole damn boulder is rolling onto my shoulders.
I toss my phone onto the bed, beside the ring box that's still sitting there like a ticking bomb.
I don't want this life. I know that.
I wanted bakeries and slow Sundays and a dog that steals socks. I wanted a dad who didn't gamble the roof.
And most importantly, I wanted a man whose hands made things instead of breaking them.
But last night he looked at me like I was the only real thing he'd ever walked into.
And my body answered yes like it had been waiting under glass for someone to tap the right code.
I stand. I need water. Cold, stupid water to clear my fuzzy little head.
I walk to the bathroom on autopilot, the tile cool under my feet, the lights too blinding.
I twist the tap and splash handfuls onto my face until my breath stops trying to sprint.
Drops slide down my chin. I look up.
There I am. Hair damp, eyes wide, future knocking.
I stare at my reflection, kiss-swollen lips, bite marks on my throat, eyes that look like they've seen God and realized he's got tattoos and kills people.
"You're going to marry him," I tell the girl in the mirror. Not a question. A diagnosis.
She nods back, this stranger wearing my face who gets wet when dangerous men threaten her, who came three times for a man who bought her like cattle.
"Because you want to live?" I ask her.
She smiles, sharp and suicidal. "Because I want him."
The truth tastes like gunpowder and wedding cake.