Chapter 34 Natalia
NATALIA
A week back in my father’s house, and I’ve perfected the art of being no one again.
It returned faster than I expected, the muscle memory of disappearing
I eat breakfast at the kitchen island while his men move through the halls like I’m invisible.
I keep my door open because a closed door invites questions.
I smile when spoken to, which isn’t often.
I say “yes, Papa” and “of course” and “whatever you think is best,” and not a single person in this house looks at me long enough to notice that the girl who left for the Outer Banks is not the same one who came back.
Turns out I never forgot how to do this. I just forgot how much it costs.
A month of sleeping without Luca. Three weeks alone in the beach house, watching the ocean and waiting for a phone call I couldn’t control, and now seven days here. I still wake up reaching for a body that isn’t beside me.
This morning, my father left before seven.
I heard the convoy from my room. Three SUVs, doors slamming in sequence, gravel popping under tires.
He didn’t stop by my door. He never does.
I’m not sure he’s spoken more than forty words to me since I got back, and most of those were about the wedding timeline.
Two of his men are still downstairs. I can hear the television. A third is somewhere near the back entrance, probably smoking. That’s the full inventory of people who know I exist right now.
I sit on the edge of my bed and pull the burner phone from inside the pillowcase where I keep it at night. Luca pressed it into my hand the morning he left for Vegas. During the day it lives in a tampon box in my bathroom cabinet, which is the one place no man in this house will ever look.
For a month, this phone has been the only thread between us. Most days it’s one word from me—safe—and one word back. Sometimes nothing for two or three days when he thinks the silence is smarter.
Today the screen shows something different.
Solaris Grand. 12:00. 714.
My pulse ticks up. I delete the message, then delete the deleted folder, then sit there holding the phone like it weighs forty pounds.
Seven fourteen. A room number. Twelve o’clock. Two hours from now.
I should not go.
I know I shouldn’t go, because today is the nearest thing I’ve had to an opening since I got back.
The house is nearly empty. My father left with most of his men.
I could pick the lock on his office in under two minutes.
I’ve been staring at that door all week, waiting for exactly this kind of window.
Instead I’m considering walking out of this house in broad daylight and driving to a hotel to see a man whose last name would get us both killed.
It’s the wrong call. I know it’s the wrong call.
But it’s been a month since Luca left the beach house.
A month of coded texts and empty beds and swallowing every real thought I have until my jaw aches from clenching.
A month of being a ghost in two different houses, and the only person who knows I’m still in here is the one sending me three-word messages on a phone I hide inside a tampon box.
I need him more than I need to be smart today.
I shower and dress. Dark jeans, a gray blouse, flats I can move in. Nothing worth noticing. Sunglasses in my bag for when I’m outside.
I walk down the stairs at eleven-fifteen. The television is loud. Some Russian game show, canned laughter bouncing off the marble. I pass the living room entrance, and neither man on the couch so much as blinks. I could be carrying a suitcase. I could be on fire. Wouldn’t matter.
The guard outside is the only one who might notice.
He posts up near the side gate most of the day, but every day around this time he drifts to the patio for a smoke.
I’ve watched him do it all week from the kitchen window.
Same chair, same lighter he has to flick three times, always facing the yard with his back to the gate.
I wait at the counter, pouring water I don’t want, until I hear the scrape of the chair and the click-click-click of the lighter.
Setting the glass down, I cut through the mudroom, and slip out the side door while his back is still to the gate.
The side gate doesn’t even squeak.
Two blocks north, I’m just another woman on a sidewalk. Strip mall, nail salon, traffic noise. The sun hits like a punishment after a week of keeping the curtains half-drawn in my room. I flag a cab at the corner and slide into the back seat, cracked vinyl already warm under my legs.
“The Solaris Grand, please.”
It takes a few blocks before my breathing slows down. I keep checking the side mirror anyway, watching the cars behind us, waiting for one to follow the same turns. None do. By the time we hit the Strip, my hands have stopped shaking, but I don’t unclench them.
The cab drops me at a hotel off the north end of the Strip. I’ve never been here before, which is probably the point. Expensive enough that nobody looks twice at women coming and going, discreet enough that nobody asks questions they don’t need answered.
The lobby is all brass and cream marble.
A couple in resort wear arguing softly near the elevators.
A man in a suit crossing toward the bar with his phone pressed to his ear.
Two women at the front desk laughing about something I can’t hear.
Nobody looks at me for longer than a second, but that doesn’t calm me down.
Men in my father’s world know how to look without looking.
By the time I reach the desk, my spine is tight enough to crack.
A woman behind the desk hands me a keycard without small talk, thank god. Elevator, seventh floor, long empty hallway.
I stand outside 714 for a second. My heart is still trying to break my ribs by the time I let myself into the suite.
Luca’s standing by the window. His hair is shorter than it was on the beach, trimmed but still brushing his collar. Dark shirt, dark pants, a watch I’ve never seen before that catches the light when he turns. He looks so different than the man I pulled off that beach, I almost can’t breathe.
He looks like an Andretti.
Seeing him knocks the air out of me anyway.
“Nat.”
He crosses the room in three strides, and I’m off the ground.
His arms close around me so tightly I can’t breathe, but I don’t care. My bag hits the floor. My sunglasses go with it. I bury my face in his neck and inhale, and the smell of him cracks something open that I’ve been holding shut since I walked back into my father’s house.
“Hey, Princess.” His voice is rough against my hair. “Hey. I’ve got you.”
I nod into his neck. I can’t talk yet. If I talk, everything I’ve been swallowing is going to come up at once, and I don’t know what shape it’ll take.
His hand moves to the back of my head. He holds me there, and I can feel his heartbeat slamming against my chest. He’s been carrying this, too.
I pull back enough to see his face. He looks tired. Not in a way anyone else would notice, but I can see it in the tightness around his mouth, in the faint bruise-colored shadows under his eyes.
“Hi,” I say. My voice comes out scraped.
His thumb traces my cheekbone. “Hi. You okay?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
I don’t even know if it’s true. I only know I’m done talking.
I grab the front of his shirt and kiss him, and whatever restraint he was holding onto dies fast. His mouth is hungry and desperate against mine. One hand slides into my hair, the other around my waist, hauling me in so tight there’s no air between us.
His mouth leaves mine long enough for him to say, low and ragged, “Jesus Christ, I missed you.”
I laugh once, breathless and shaky. “You’re not the only one.”
Then he kisses me again, walking me backward toward the bedroom until my legs hit the mattress.
My hands are under his shirt, pulling it up, and he breaks the kiss just long enough to yank it over his head before his mouth finds mine again.
He strips my blouse off fast, like patience is a language he has forgotten.
The second his palms hit bare skin I make a sound I couldn’t stop if I tried.
He pushes me back onto the bed, and I pull him down on top of me. The weight of him is the first thing that’s felt real in a month.
His mouth moves down my neck. My collarbone. He pulls the cup of my bra down with his teeth. His tongue finds my nipple, and I arch into him so hard my spine leaves the mattress. He sucks, then bites gently, and the ache between my legs sharpens into something desperate.
Clothes come off in pieces. His belt. My jeans, dragged down my legs and tossed. His hands shaking just enough that I notice. The bra goes and his mouth is on my other breast, tongue circling, sucking, while his hand slides down my stomach and into my underwear.
His fingers find me soaked.
He groans against my skin.
Two fingers push inside me and my hips buck up to meet them.
He curls them, slow, pressing against the spot that makes my vision blur.
I grab the back of his neck and hold on.
A month of nothing and now his fingers are inside me and I’m already close.
Embarrassingly close. Trembling around him with my face buried in his shoulder.
Every touch feels amplified by absence. Too much and not enough at the same time.
“I know,” he murmurs. “I know. Let it happen.”
I come on his fingers with a gasp that I couldn’t hold back if I tried. He works me through it, slow and steady, his mouth against my temple, until my legs stop shaking.
I don’t give myself time to come down.
I push against his shoulders until he reads it and rolls onto his back. I straddle him and feel his cock pressing hard against his boxers, against the wet heat between my legs, and the friction alone makes me grind down before I can stop myself.
His breath catches. His hands grip my thighs.