Chapter 14
Birdie
I manage to find ten outfits within the hour, which feels like a miracle considering I spend most of that time trying not to think about what happened in that fitting room.
As I step out, I hand the sundresses back to the saleswoman. “I don’t want any of these.”
Her brows lift. “But Mr. Conti has already paid for them.”
Of course he has.
A hot, vicious pulse of anger moves through me. Fine. Then I’ll set every last one of them on fire. Because that dress is a trap. A soft, pretty little gateway to disaster. To weakness. To his hands on me and my body forgetting every lesson pain ever taught it.
Never again.
My temper climbs another notch when I spot Lorenzo at the counter, leaning there like he owns the place, speaking in that low, effortless voice of his to a beautiful woman who looks entirely too pleased to be on the receiving end of it.
She’s practically draped over the conversation, smiling up at him like he invented oxygen.
Something ugly and furious twists in my chest.
I stride over and dump the pile of clothes onto the counter with enough force to make the woman jump.
“There.”
Lorenzo turns, glances at the stack, then at me, and smiles like I haven’t just walked out of a war zone. “Excellent. Now, where shall we go?”
“To hell?” I give him a sugar-sweet smile sharp enough to cut skin. “No? Shame. Then I want a phone.”
One dark brow lifts. “A phone?”
“Yes, Lorenzo.” My voice drips with venomous patience. “You know. The little device people use to call each other. Mine is in Italy.”
His gaze sharpens instantly. “And who will you be calling on this phone?”
“Dante,” I say without hesitation.
His expression changes only slightly, but enough for satisfaction to flare bright and mean inside me.
I tilt my head. “Why?” I ask softly. “Is that a problem?”
“Cara,” he warns, his voice low and lethal, “I would think very carefully before you say another word.”
That makes me laugh. Not because he’s funny. Because he’s unbelievable.
“Of course,” I say, shaking my head. “That figures.”
Then I turn to the saleswoman with a conspiratorial smile. “He’s jealous because my fiancé is a saint. A genuine, actual saint with a huge dick. And unlike some men, he doesn’t confuse obsession with love.”
The poor woman blinks. “Oh, I—”
“And do you know what this asshole did?” I jab a thumb toward Lorenzo without even looking at him. “He stole me from my wedding because the great Lorenzo Conti cannot bear the idea of losing. Not a deal. Not a fight. Especially not a woman who chose someone else.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him go absolutely still.
If he were the kind of man who unraveled, there’d be smoke curling out of his ears by now. Instead, he just stands there in that terrifying silence of his, looking like murder in an expensive suit.
I smile wider.
“Actually,” I say to the woman, as if we’re sharing gossip over cocktails, “you don’t happen to have a phone I could borrow, do you? I’d love to call my fiancé and let him know I’m being held hostage.”
“That is enough, Elizabeth.” His voice cracks through the boutique like a whip.
A few heads turn.
I face him slowly, all false innocence and sharpened teeth. “What?”
His jaw is so tight I can almost hear his molars grinding. “Not another word.”
My temper, already blazing, goes incandescent.
“Oh, that’s rich.” I take a step toward him. “Did you really think dragging me into a dressing room and fucking me would make me forget I hate you? That one stolen moment would erase what you did?”
The air between us turns electric.
I laugh again, but there’s no humor in it now. Just fury. “You don’t get to put your hands on me and then expect gratitude, Lorenzo.”
The saleswoman looks like she wants the floor to swallow her whole. I barely notice. Because now I’m looking straight at him. And I want every word to land.
“You are not furious because I want a phone,” I say, my voice dropping.
“You’re furious because the second I have one, I can call Dante.
I can remind you that I was going to marry a man who is kinder than you, cleaner than you, better than you—and that no matter how badly you want to win, I am not a prize you get to steal. ”
That one hits. I see it. A flicker in his eyes. Dark. Violent. Maybe even wounded.
I lift my chin. “So what’s it going to be? Are you buying me the phone, or are you going to stand there like a jealous tyrant and prove me right in front of everyone?”
Something cold settles over Lorenzo’s face.
He turns to the saleswoman. “Please have the items bagged and sent to my home.”
“Of course, Mr. Conti,” she says quickly.
Her cheeks are still crimson, but now she can’t even look at me. A minute ago she was eager and curious; now she’s staring determinedly at the counter like it might save her from being caught in the blast radius of our fight.
“Is there anything else I can do for you today?”
I say, “Yes—”
The word barely leaves my mouth before Lorenzo moves.
One second I’m standing there, furious and breathing fire. The next, he has me up and over his shoulder as if I weigh nothing at all.
The air punches out of me.
“Lorenzo—”
My stomach presses against the hard plane of his shoulder, and I go rigid so fast it hurts.
My body knows before my mind does. Every muscle locks and every thought splinters.
But if he notices, he doesn’t show it. He just strides through the boutique carrying me like a man hauling away a problem he’s done pretending to tolerate.
Humiliation burns through my panic.
“Put me down!”
Heads turn. Someone gasps but nobody stops him. Of course nobody stops him. Men like Lorenzo move through the world as though resistance is a thing that happens to other people.
He doesn’t answer me. Doesn’t slow down. Doesn’t even tighten his grip.
Outside, the sunlight is blinding after the soft gold of the boutique. He heads straight for a black SUV with tinted windows, parked at the curb like it has been waiting for him all along.
The sight of it hits me like a blow. I go still. Not because I’m calm. Because something deep in me tears open.
Black glass. Leather. The yawning dark of the back seat.
Fragments flash through my head, jagged and wrong. The blurred impression of motion. A seat beneath me. The chemical sting of something sharp. A prick at my neck. Heavy limbs. Darkness folding over me like water.
My hand flies to my throat. Oh God. Is that how it happened? Is that how I got to Italy?
The edges of the world begin to blur. My pulse turns savage. I can’t seem to drag enough air into my lungs. Lorenzo is still moving, still all hard fury and male certainty, and he either doesn’t realize what’s happening to me or he’s too consumed by his own rage to care.
He opens the back door and drops me onto the seat.
I barely catch myself with my hands before I crumple. My breath is coming in short, ugly bursts now, too fast, too shallow, each one scraping on the way in. The interior is dim and close and expensive, but all I can see is that black privacy screen already raised between the front and back.
No.
No, no, no.
My fingers claw at the leather seat. My vision tunnels. The air feels poisoned. I can hear blood rushing in my ears, loud as surf.
Lorenzo rounds the other side and gets in beside me, shutting the door with a solid, final thud that sounds too much like a lock.
I flinch so hard I slam into the opposite door.
That finally gets his attention.
His anger is still all over him—tight jaw, blazing eyes, violence banked just under the surface—but now something else breaks through it.
“Elizabeth?”
I can’t answer. I’m not here, not fully.
I’m in two places at once—the sleek back seat of his SUV and somewhere darker, older, half-buried in my bones.
My hand is still clutched at my neck like I can feel the phantom sting there, like if I press hard enough I can stop the memory from crawling any farther out.
He stares at me. “What happened?”
I shake my head, once, sharp and helpless.
My lungs refuse to work. My chest is caving in.
Tears sting my eyes, hot and furious, because I hate this—I hate him seeing this, hate my own body for betraying me, hate that some part of me is terrified of a man who is not the man who took me and yet, in this moment, every door shutting sounds the same.
“Elizabeth.” His voice changes. Still rough, but lower now. Less fury. More alarm. “Look at me.”
I can’t.
The privacy screen. The tinted windows. The closed doors. Him blocking the way out.
I make a broken sound and shove myself harder against the door, as if I can melt through it.
His expression shifts completely then. The rage drains out of it, leaving something rawer.
“Open the partition,” he snaps at the driver.
The black screen hums and slides down.
Light floods in from the windshield. Space returns, just a little. Not enough. But a little.
“Open her door,” he bites out.
There’s a click.
I don’t wait. I lunge for air, half-falling out of the SUV before I can stop myself, one shoe hitting pavement awkwardly as I catch the doorframe with shaking hands. I bend forward, dragging breath into my lungs like I’ve been underwater too long.
Behind me, Lorenzo is suddenly there but not touching me. His voice is low when he says my name again, and the worst part is that it no longer sounds angry. It sounds afraid.
“I’m fine,” I snap, shoving his hand away the second he reaches for me. “Leave me alone.”
“You’re not fine.”
I whirl on him, not caring that he can see the tears streaking my face, not caring that I must look half-mad.
“You’re right,” I say, my voice shaking. “I’m not fine. I want to talk to Dante.”
The words hit him like a blow. I see it happen. His expression changes with brutal clarity, like I’ve driven something sharp straight between his ribs. For one savage second, that should satisfy me. Instead, it just makes me feel emptier.
“Cara—”
I laugh, and the sound is wrong. Too high. Too brittle. It scrapes its way out of me like something fraying at the edges.
“Why do I even bother?” I swipe at my cheeks, but the tears keep coming faster than I can wipe them away. “Forget it. Just take me back to your stupid house, Lorenzo.”
He stands there for a moment looking utterly unlike himself. Not cold or furious, but helpless. And somehow that unsettles me more than his anger ever could.
His jaw tightens once, as if he’s swallowing down everything he wants to say. Then he steps back and gestures toward the SUV with rigid, careful restraint, like he’s afraid the wrong movement will send me bolting into traffic.
As I pass him, he reaches for me, his hand hovering at the small of my back.
I flinch so hard it’s practically violent.
His hand drops at once. I don’t look at him again.
I climb into the SUV with stiff, jerking movements and slide across the seat until there’s as much distance between us as the interior allows.
The open space doesn’t help. Neither does the lowered partition.
Neither does the rush of air still clinging to my lungs.
Because the panic may have loosened its grip, but the memory remains.
A black vehicle. Tinted windows. The awful blur of being moved. The phantom sting at my neck.
And worst of all, the thought that follows it. It isn’t Lorenzo’s fault I remembered. But the memory drags another truth behind it, one I do not want to look at too closely.
Someone drugged me once to get me out of his life.
The realization settles cold and poisonous in my chest. What are they going to do when they realize he has me again? My fingers curl into the leather seat. Because this—whatever this is between us, this war, this obsession, this ruinous, impossible thing—was dangerous enough before.
Now it feels lethal.