Chapter Seventeen
Serena
I try to open my heavy eyes.
My vision is blurred, swimming, and a blinding white light burns directly in front of me.
It takes too much effort just to blink. Slowly, painfully, I try to take in my surroundings.
The room is wrong, dirty white walls, lifeless and stained, closing in on me.
There’s a metal table nearby, cluttered with unfamiliar tools that glint under the harsh light.
In the corner of the room, I see a man dressed in white. A doctor. Beside him stands another figure, a woman. I try to focus on them, to understand what’s happening, but my body feels impossibly heavy. I can barely move. I can barely breathe.
“For fuck’s sake, just give it to her,” the woman snaps.
The words cut through the haze.
“I can’t just give her medicine like that,” the man replies calmly. “She’s pregnant. It will affect the babies.”
The room tilts.
Pregnant.
Realization slams into me with brutal force.
I try to sit up, to escape the bed, but nothing responds. Panic ignites. I look down and see leather cuffs wrapped tightly around my wrists. My legs too, restrained, immobilized. My stomach is bigger than it should be, stretched, unfamiliar. My breath turns shallow.
Where am I?
I thought I was home.
I thought he rescued me.
I thought I was safe.
“I don’t want her to gain any weight,” the woman says coldly.
The words don’t make sense. Nothing makes sense.
“HELP!” I scream.
No one looks at me.
“Someone help me, please!” My voice cracks, tears soaking my cheeks, but it’s as if I don’t exist. They don’t hear me. They don’t see me.
“I’ll feed her only the bare necessities through an IV,” the man continues, clinical and detached. “She still needs to stay healthy for childbirth.”
And somehow, without understanding how, it changes.
I’m no longer on the bed.
I’m standing.
Watching.
“Yeah, whatever,” the woman says dismissively.
They turn toward the table.
Toward me.
Except something is wrong.
They don’t have faces.
Where their faces should be, there is nothing, smooth, blank, hollow. My scream tears out of me as the faceless figures begin to move closer, slow and inevitable.
And then I see it. My body. Limp, motionless, strapped to the table. I’m not inside it. I’m standing apart, watching it like it belongs to someone else. Watching my own chest rise and fall, slow and distant, while the room hums around me. I’m not there anymore. I’m only the one looking.
Is this an out-of-body experience? Is this real? I touch my face, desperate for proof. My skin is real. The tears are real. The fear is suffocatingly real.
The woman steps closer, to my body.
“My precious cognac diamond,” she murmurs, brushing her fingers through my golden hair. “Those beautiful eyes.”
She forces my eyelids open.
The image is grotesque, violating.
“You’ll pay for all the inconvenience,” she whispers. “And you’ll do so much more.”
She kisses my cheek.
I can’t move. I can’t scream. I’m trapped in the horror, forced to witness everything, powerless to stop it.
Then the faceless head turns.
Toward me.
I freeze.
“You!” she screams.
In an instant, she’s in front of me, her hand closing around my throat, squeezing hard. My lungs burn. I try to scream, but no sound comes out. Her grip tightens, merciless, crushing, and the terror of her empty face fills my vision as everything starts to collapse.
“Serena, wake up!”
A voice cuts through the darkness. A masculine voice. It sounds like a fallen angel sent to pull me back from hell. I feel the pressure around my throat tightening, crushing, and panic surges again.
“Come back to me, baby, please.”
The voice pleads now, desperate, and I try to look around. The room shifts. Blurs. The faceless figures are gone. The white walls, the table, the tools, everything disappears.
“Wake up, please!”
The voice breaks.
I blink.
I open my eyes.
Lorenzo’s face fills my vision, beautiful, terrified, real. Fear is written in his eyes, raw and unguarded, as his hands grip mine. My hands.
They’re pressed against my own throat.
A wave of horror washes over me.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my voice shaking. I don’t want him to answer. I already feel the truth clawing its way up my spine.
He takes both my hands in his, gently pulling them away, grounding me. He kisses my knuckles, one by one. The warmth of the gesture spreads through my chest, soft and steady, pushing the terror back just enough to breathe.
For a second, the nightmare feels unreal.
“You had a bad dream,” he says quietly, watching me with caution, like I might disappear if he looks away.
I stare at my hands. Then back at him.
“Did I try to. . .?” My voice cracks, tears burning my eyes. “Did I just choke myself?
He doesn’t speak. He just nods.
Pain flashes across his face, sharp and helpless.
What is happening to me?
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, serious now, grounded, present.
I shake my head.
I can’t tell him. I can’t tell anyone, especially not someone this close. I don’t want him to see that place. I don’t want him to know how deep it goes.
It was just a nightmare.
It wasn’t real.
“No, thank you,” I tell him.
For a moment, it looks like he wants to argue.
His jaw tightens, his lips pressing into a thin line as he stops himself from saying anything else.
The restraint only makes him more dangerous.
I look at him properly then, really look, and gosh, he’s so fucking hot.
My cheeks burn as memories from last night flash through my mind, vivid and unwanted.
I blame the pregnancy hormones.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t do this. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
He moves before I can think, crossing the space between us and pulling me into the bed by my waist. His grip is firm, possessive, and suddenly he’s right there, his lips so close to mine I can feel the warmth of them as he speaks.
“Happy birthday.”
His fingers brush my lips and it knocks the air out of me. I’d almost forgotten. Today is my birthday. December 14th. I’m twenty-five now.
So much has changed.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He kisses me softly, slow, sensual, nothing rushed. It sends shivers down my spine. He shifts us effortlessly, sitting at the edge of the bed and pulling me into his lap. I settle there, my body fitting against his like it remembers how.
He kisses me again, unhurried, deliberate.
And suddenly I’m afraid. Afraid of how good this feels. Afraid of the moment it ends, because I know it has to. We can’t be together. There are too many reasons, too many consequences. But I shove the thought away.
It’s my birthday.
I deserve this.
He wraps his arms around me and carries me to the window, setting me down gently, my back pressing against the cold glass. His lips trail along my neck and I bite my lip, my body responding without permission. I could let this man fuck me anywhere, anytime. I hate how true that is.
On the window? Done.
In the car? Done.
Outside, where everyone can see? I wouldn’t even hesitate.
He could take me anywhere and I’d follow.
His mouth finds my collarbone, then my ear. He kisses it, licks it, and a small whimper slips out of me before I can stop it.
“Turn around,” he whispers against my ear.
He lifts me carefully, helping me move because of my heavy belly, and sets me down so I’m standing now, my back to him. I feel him behind me, solid, hard, unmistakable.
Then my breath catches.
Outside the window, stretching as far as I can see, there are roses.
Hundreds. Thousands.
White roses, mostly, soft, luminous, but threaded through with red and pink. And then I see it. The way they’re arranged. The shape. The details.
It’s me.
A portrait. A massive one, crafted entirely from natural roses. My chest tightens, emotion rushing up so fast it makes my eyes sting. It’s beautiful. Overwhelming. Impossible.
How did he do this?
How did he even think of it?
Where will all these flowers go?
I feel like crying.
It’s the most beautiful thing anyone has ever done for me.
“Do you like it?” he asks, kissing my back as his hand slides lower, cupping my pussy.
Have mercy on me, because I can’t take it anymore. He’s so perfect and so wrong at the same time, which only makes him dangerously irresistible. He’s everything a woman could ever want, except for the murderer part of him. Which is also hot. Well, when he’s not murdering your father, at least.
A small moan slips from me as his touch turns slow, deliberate. “It’s breathtaking,” I say, my eyes fixed on the replica of me made entirely of flowers.
“Still not as breathtaking as the woman standing in front of me.”
I grab onto the window frame to steady myself because he slips a finger inside me and my back arches instantly. How is it possible that he can give me this much pleasure with so little effort?
He kisses my back again as he adds a second finger, and I start riding his hand, helpless, needy, as he fucks me slowly with his fingers.
“If there’s something else you want,” he says low, “all you have to do is ask.”
I swear I could come just from the way he talks to me. Pregnancy hormones, I tell myself again, because the truth is terrifying. He could whisper about how he wants to fuck me and my body would already be betraying me.
“I want you inside me,” I whisper.
The vulnerability of it makes my chest ache. The way he pulls words out of me I don’t want to say, but crave so badly.
“Is that so?” he murmurs against my ear.
A soft moan escapes me.
“Please.”
I need him. I need him so much it scares me. A tear slips down my cheek. He’s under my skin again, deeper than before. The last time he left, I barely survived it. How would I survive it now?
I push the thought away.
He presses his cock at my entrance and I’m already gone. He pushes in slowly, deeply, fucking me at an unhurried pace that makes my eyes roll back.
“Give me one more chance,” he breathes, like it costs him everything. “I don’t know how to exist without you.”
Thrust.