Chapter 22
One month later
Club Annex, Location Unknown
The dark-brown door looms before me, its wood texture a jumbled mass of twisted lines folding upon themselves.
Those lines remind me of endless pathways—some circular, others bending and splintering off in another direction.
Kind of like the choices life gives you.
Options. Possibilities. Alternatives that shape the future based on the decisions you make.
My future, though, is a straight line. Decided by someone else. And I have no idea where it will lead.
A month has passed since I was at the Annex last. A month since I stood before a similar door, faced with a monumental choice.
A month since my future could have turned out very different (assuming I would have had a future at all) if my silent guest hadn’t rescued me.
I shudder to think what destiny may have awaited me if he hadn’t come.
I never got the chance to thank him. Never expected I’d see him again, not with everything that happened soon after. But here I am.
“Iris?” Maggie gently grips my arm. “Are you alright? We can call this off if you’d rather not—”
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m fine.”
Nearly five weeks. That’s how long it has been since I’ve shared a moment with my silent guest. I never could have imagined that I’d miss someone I don’t really know, but life truly can be so strange.
I’ve missed our evenings filled with my nonsensical ramblings.
Missed the comfort, the joy of simply being there, conversing with someone who I knew was listening to me.
Someone who I believed cared. It was only after our meetups stopped that I realized how much they meant to me. More than I previously thought.
After my attempt at the red-dress night, Maggie reached out and apologized for the monumental mistake that occurred while she was away.
She assured me that nothing like that would ever happen again.
And she also let me know my regular guest was interested in seeing me on the following Saturday.
But I had to decline. Mom still wasn’t out of the woods after her surgery, and I was spending most of my time with her at the private hospital.
The week after that, I needed to turn down another visit. And the week after that, as well. There was no way I could’ve slipped away without Adriano Ruffo’s stalker army noticing my absence.
The suffocating vigilance started shortly after Mom was moved out of the ICU.
Ruffo sent a car and his chauffeur to drive me wherever I needed to go. I refused the service. So then he sent his henchmen to follow me. Everywhere I went. To work. To the hospital. Even to the grocery store.
Men in black suits, just like those who showed up to take care of his murdered wife’s body.
Like those goons, each of my stalkers was always armed. A small detail they tried—not very successfully—to conceal beneath their loose black suits. Ruffo obviously believed me to be a flight risk.
Were his men instructed to make me disappear should I try anything stupid? Like go to the police? Or flee? As if I had anywhere to go.
Tonight, however, I managed to slip from his clutches. I didn’t dare do so before, too afraid Ruffo would discover with whom I’m meeting and where. And then would do something unspeakable to the one man who’s shown me kindness.
But I’ve run out of time.
Because Ruffo moved up the date of our wedding. And, as of tomorrow, I’ll be Adriano Ruffo’s wife.
This morning, I asked Maggie if she could contact my silent guest to see if he would like to meet with me tonight.
Nothing like that has ever happened at the Annex before.
Not with regard to guest and hostess interactions.
Not with us. It has always been him seeking to book evenings with me.
And we’ve never met on any other day but Saturday.
But this Friday night is our last chance.
My final night of freedom.
I slip the silky blindfold off the knob and tie it securely over my eyes. All that’s left now is for me to wait for that familiar sound of the door being opened.
And hope… Hope that spending this evening with my silent guest will help me forget that, come tomorrow, I’ll be married to the most ruthless man I know.
As usual, the lights in the room are down so low that barely an outline of the furniture is visible. A pitcher of fresh lemonade is on the coffee table. Two glasses are set beside it, ready to be filled. The sofa I sit in is facing hers, just as it always is.
Five weeks.
Five weeks I’ve been deprived of her.
My Little Scheherazade, whose stories I crave as my lungs crave air.
I nearly lost my fucking mind because of it.
I need her. Her voice. Her calm presence. Her complete trust in me. The man she shouldn’t trust at all. And if she knew the truth…she wouldn’t.
Five weeks.
I can’t help but think I forced her hand. Could my moving up our wedding have led her here?
To him?
When I told Iris our new wedding date, she called me cruel.
Accused me of deliberately keeping her mother from attending, given that it’s still too risky for the woman to be among a crowd after her heart transplant.
I’m a heartless bastard who didn’t consider that when I changed the timing of our nuptials.
She leveled all of that on me, blamed me for many things.
Most of them true. Though not the bit about her mother. There are other forces at play.
The rhymey bastard sent two messages in the past month. The first arrived a day following Serafina Fabbri’s surgery and was vague as usual, but it did sound like he was now threatening a woman. So I assigned a full security team to protect my Iris.
The one this week, however, made that threat undeniably clear.
11:17 Unknown:
When one finds something rare,
He should guard her with great care.
A reckless moment without measure,
Could take away your priceless treasure.
After reading that shit, I sent my cell phone flying off the rooftop deck of Ruffo Enterprises Tower right into the harbor.
Destroying my phone is the only outburst of rage I allow myself, and only when I’m alone.
A fucking inconvenient problem. Because I had to trudge down to my office to use the landline to tell Brahms to double the protective detail on my future wife.
His minions have obviously been doing a good job, since she wasn’t able to give them the slip. Until tonight. To come to the Annex.
Heads will roll for this fuckup.
Five weeks.
Five damn weeks of not being able to be alone with her.
An eternity.
I need her. Need her like my next fucking breath.
She is my weakness. A vulnerability that can be exploited. A fault in the armor that surrounds me.
I can’t let it be seen.
I can’t even allow myself to accept it. Or admit the inconvenient truth.
I need her.
Want her.
Desire her.
Never in my life have I needed anyone. The very idea is outrageous. Preposterous. Foolish.
I need no one.
I want no one.
Desire does not rule me.
Whatever this is… This thing she is doing to me…
This absurd obsession she’s created… I don’t have a name for it.
Bartholomew keeps insisting I have feelings for the girl.
Ridiculous. I tell myself it’s curiosity.
Nothing more. She is unusual. Difficult to categorize.
I simply want to understand the anomaly.
That is all. There are no lovesick feelings involved whatsoever.
But still, I crave her presence.
That is why I resorted to this asinine plan in the first place.
Pretending I’m just like all the other men here. Indulging in the best fantasies money can buy.
That, I can accept.
The hostess’s door opens, and just like the first time I watched her enter this room, I forget to breathe.
She is a vision. Effortlessly beautiful.
Her soft, sandy-colored waves fall like a magnificent waterfall around her shoulders.
The long, flowing silk dress wraps around her slender body, accentuating every feminine curve as she walks.
As a whole, the outfit makes her appear like an ethereal being from another realm.
Maybe she actually is. There is no other logical explanation for the effect this woman has on me.
For why my dick is harder than granite whenever I’m within fifty feet of her. Why cold showers have become my norm. Why no other woman has been able to hold my interest since my little flower fell into my grasp. And why I can’t get through a single night unplagued by X-rated dreams, starring her.
Her steps are slow, measured, as she is led to the sofa across from me. But unlike every other time since our first encounter, there’s something different in the way she holds herself.
Perhaps it’s in the tilt of her head. She’s looking down at her feet despite not being able to see them. And her hands are fisted. In determination or concern? Strange. My ability to read people’s body language is usually spot on, yet I’m struggling to do so tonight.
My eyes roam across Iris’s face, her body, soaking her in.
Silently, I wait for her to begin speaking.
Wait for another dose of my drug of choice.
Her nearness. Her voice. Her. I’d wield every weapon I have to keep her by my side.
Away from any other man who might want to claim or hurt her.
I’ve already killed two assholes who tried.
And I’ll do it again. And again. If only she knew the true power she has over me, it would terrify her completely.
It’s been a long time since anyone could boast such a hold over me.
Such dominion. Since I allowed someone to have such control.
Maybe that’s why I’d never confided in good old Barty about these visits with Iris.
And I tell that bastard practically everything.
He undoubtedly would’ve tried to spin it as more evidence of his harebrained notion that I am in love with her.