Chapter 1 #2
I brace my knuckles against the marble and breathe through my teeth.
It hurts in my chest, a stitch that won’t release.
The text replays. For one more year, until I graduate, until I can start my business, I’m still financially dependent on my dad.
Between my sorority responsibilities, studies, and networking, I don’t have the time to get a part-time job.
The part of me that’s twelve and learning how to smile through a family dinner that felt like a board meeting wants to take this dress off and make a scene.
But if I do that, if anyone sees that I’m not the perfect, polished hostess that I pretend to be, I won’t even have an event planning business to fall back on in a year.
Footsteps whisper outside. Laughter, a knock against the wall, the house alive with people who only know one version of me. My throat tightens more. A sound slips out. It’s small, humiliating. I clap a hand over my mouth and will every part of me to behave.
A soft click behind me makes me aware of a new presence.
I freeze.
The door eases open, even though I remember locking it. A tall shadow slips in before I can move, taking up too much space and not apologizing for it. The door shuts soundlessly.
I see him in the mirror first.
Dmitry Antonov looks like wealth doesn’t impress him because he invented a meaner version of it. Dark hair combed neat, a black button-down open at the throat, sleeves half-rolled in the kind of arrogance you can’t fake. He’s not from our world.
He’s so big, there’s so little space for me in the bathroom anymore. He sucks up all the air and everything else, shrouding himself in dark miasma like a true crime lord.
He watches me cry like it’s an equation. No flinch. No smirk. Just a steady, clinical assessment that feels like heat. Then he takes out his phone, and I hear the click of his camera going off.
I lunge for his phone, but he steps back.
“What are you doing? How did you get here? The door was locked,” I whisper, furious with how small my voice sounds.
“It was,” he says, tone even, Russian lilt tucked like a blade behind velvet. “You didn’t answer when they called your name.”
No one called my name—
“Cal?” Lila’s voice floats down the hall, closer now. I see that the door is half open, and she can probably see me inside. “Where did you go? The Mertons are asking for you.”
Panic thumps my ribs. If they see my face like this—red eyes, streaked mascara—it’s over. The queen can’t bleed in public.
Panic spikes in my chest. I can hear footsteps approaching me. People outside can probably see me. The door is open. Somebody’s hand is pulling it away, mumbling, “If you’re done, can you come out? I need to go.”
“No!” I scream, but all that comes out is air.
I feel like the world is spinning away from me. I’m about to crash.
I try to turn away, to grab for concealer, for anything. My hands shake. I have an image to protect.
Dmitry moves before I do. Big hands bracket my hips and lift me. Just enough to angle me off the vanity and against him. The cool silk of my dress skims his shirt. He smells clean and expensive, something crisp with pine, like winter in a bank vault.
I stiffen. “Don’t—”
His mouth is at my ear. “If you don’t want them to see you crying with your mascara running down your cheeks, you’re going to let me help.”
Another knock. Closer. “Cal? Babe?”
He turns me without asking, my breasts smooshing against his chest. If I weren’t wearing a padded bra, he’d know my nipples were hard. He just lifted me up and put me on the counter like I was a doll. Like he owned me.
I swallow, realizing my body likes the feeling of being owned by Dmitry Anotonov. My veins are zinging with desire. My thighs clench, and the moisture between them is spilling down, soaking my panties.
Dmitry is so fucking dominant, so sure of himself, and it turns me on even though it shouldn’t. My pulse skyrockets. I feel a sense of danger, and it coils low in my belly. My pussy throbs. I feel the wetness between my pussy lips, the intense arousal of being caged by a dangerous man.
He holds me down with his strong hands, kneading my fleshy hips, making me feel seen in ways I never imagined.
As my walls are coming down, as I’m relaxing, he lowers his mouth to mine. His hot breath washes over my neck, making goosebumps erupt all over my skin.
My heart misfires. The tension between us is palpable. I can feel the chemistry scorching my skin, turning my skin red like a sunburnt crisp.
He doesn’t kiss me. He just looks like he’s taking an inventory: breath, pulse, ruin. Then he bends that last inch and covers my mouth with his.
It isn’t tender. It isn’t mean. It’s… deliberate. The shape of a kiss performed for an audience that doesn’t know it’s the only thing standing between me and public collapse. His lips are warm, firm, patient. He lets me decide whether to pretend.
Something inside me—trapped and feral—goes quiet.
It’s like he soothes the fighter in me, makes me lay down my arms and relax.
In his arms, I feel like I can surrender.
Because he’s giving me more than pleasure.
He’s giving me a safe space, a sanctuary to hide in, a place where my flaws don’t matter anymore.
He saw me crying, and he still kissed me. Just to protect my reputation.
I never knew Dmitry Antonov had a heart of gold.
I chide myself for believing in the rumors that he’s connected to the mafia, for being shallow and assuming he’s a thug because he has tattoos.
A thug would never care for a girl he just met.
I wonder if he took that picture of me earlier because he likes me.
The doorknob rattles. Dmitry lifts his head, his mouth a breath from mine.
“Occupied,” he calls, all amused sin. “She’s with me. Go take a piss somewhere else.”
He stretches a leg backward, pushing against the door, slamming it closed. The thud is both comforting and relieving. My shoulders relax, and he moves away from me as we’re trapped together in a quiet bathroom.
Then the squeal I knew would come penetrates through the door, the giggle racing down the hall like wildfire. “Oh my God,” someone stage-whispers—probably Cal. “She’s kissing him in the bathroom.”
I sag. He doesn’t let me fall. He tips my face toward his shoulder, shielding.
“Ten seconds,” he says, counting softly in a language I don’t know and want to. It sounds like Russian, but I can’t be sure.
I hate that my body chooses this moment to memorize him. The press of his abdomen against my aching pussy, the steady rhythm in his chest that I feel under my palm, the possessive way his hand spreads over my hip as if I’m his.
Ten seconds pass. He steps away.
“Better?” he asks.
I nod because yes, I can breathe. The world isn’t tilting. The mirror shows a girl with kiss-flushed lips instead of red-rimmed eyes, and that’s a scandal everyone forgives.
“Good,” he says, and reaches for a tissue like he lives here.
He dabs under one eye with disarming care, demolishing a trail of mascara with a surgeon’s focus.
He does the other, dabbing until my cheeks are free of mascara stains.
His knuckle grazes the corner of my mouth, and every time that happens, a blaze erupts in my groin.
His fingers are steady, rough, and gentle at the same time.
He holds my face with one hand, digging his fingers into my jaw as he works.
I don’t utter any protests. I’m stunned and speechless.
Being cared for by a man is a novel experience for me.
I could get addicted to this, to having my face caressed, to someone letting me fall apart and being there to clean up the mess.
My dad never wiped my tears after I cried.
He never put on a Band-Aid when I scraped my knee, either.
But this man I don’t even know cleans my face like we’ve loved each other for twenty years.
A tender emotion grows in my heart, filling my chest with warmth.
“Thank you,” I say. The tears have dried. The proof of my breakdown is gone, too. My eyes look like a raccoon’s, but at least there’s nothing on my cheeks. He did a good job.
Dmitry straightens, tossing the stained napkin into the trash can. Heat rushes through my stomach when I notice how wide his shoulders are. He towers over me like a sentinel. “Don’t thank me. I’m not your friend. I didn’t come here to save you.”
I draw myself back up, spine steel under silk.
His tone has shifted. It’s cold, harsh, raspy.
That sets off the warning bells in my head.
He wasn’t friendly before, but now he’s looking at me like he’s a predator and I’m his prey.
“If this is the part where you tell me to be more careful because you’re a bad guy, I’m fully booked for condescension this week. ”
His mouth inches into what could be a smile if he believed in them. “I think you are very careful, Callista Vale.”
The way he says my name makes it feel less like a signature and more like a possession.
He nods toward the door. “They’re gone. Five minutes. Then you will walk out looking perfect, and look at them like nothing in the world could reach you.”
“I know how to do my job.”
He studies me, pleased and bored at once. “Yes. You’re excellent at pretending to be untouchable.” His gaze skims the clasp at my nape, returns to my eyes. “And now you owe me.”
The floor shifts one inch.
I laugh, a soft, practiced sound that buys time. “Owe you? For what? Trespassing? Invasion of privacy? An unasked-for kiss?”
“For leverage,” he says simply. “I helped you keep your image.” He nods at the mirror.
“If I told them what I saw, you would bleed out by morning. You’re not who they think you are.
You are just a desperate girl trying to hang out with people who are nothing like you.
Your Daddy is not old money, nor is he a businessman. ”
My pulse bangs loud enough to embarrass me. “I never said he was any of those things.”