CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LUNA
I was still standing in the bathroom threshold when the sound came.
A sudden, sharp rap on the bedroom door.
It cracked through the silence with the force of a whip. Loud. Invasive. It echoed off marble and glass and the too high ceiling. My breath clipped short. My spine jerked straight. A jolt of cold adrenaline exploded through my veins.
I froze where I stood, mid-step, feeling my pulse slam violently beneath my skin.
Who is it?
The question twisted tight in my stomach. The air felt heavier. Thicker. As if the house itself leaned closer to listen.
For a moment, I did not move at all. The stillness wrapped around me like a shroud. I waited for another knock, or a voice, or the sound of Riley’s hand on the handle. My throat tightened at the thought of him being on the other side. Watching. Waiting.
When nothing came, I forced my limbs to move. Stiff. Mechanical. As if my body belonged to someone else and I was borrowing it to survive.
I stepped out of the bathroom’s cold sanctuary and into the larger bedroom. The opulence swallowed me whole. Plush carpets. Gilded frames. A bed too large and pristine to be real. Light fixtures that glowed like captured stars. Everything looked expensive enough to buy a future I no longer had.
My legs carried me across the room in a slow, uneven rhythm. Each step sank deep into the carpet, like the house was trying to pull me in. Absorb me. Make me forget who I had been before I crossed its threshold.
I reached the main door and hesitated just long enough for fear to whisper again. Then I pulled it open.
I braced myself for Riley.
For his height filling the frame. For the cold amusement in his gaze. For the quiet dominance that followed him like a shadow.
Instead, the person standing there was not Riley at all.
It was the one who had greeted us when we arrived. The one in the immaculate black suit that fit him like armor. His expression was blank, professional, carved into neutrality so perfect it almost felt artificial. A mannequin come to life.
He dipped his head in a gesture that suggested respect but felt like ritual.
“Miss Carter,” he said. His voice was smooth and even, untouched by emotion. “Dinner will be served in the main dining area in five minutes. I have been instructed to inform you.”
The word instructed chilled me more than the message itself.
Five minutes.
A countdown.
A summons.
My heart fluttered like a bird that had realized the cage door was not open at all, only unlocked to usher it somewhere else.
I swallowed and forced my voice to emerge. “Thank you,” I managed. It came out soft. A little breathless. More fragile than I wanted. “I’ll be right there.”
The man gave a small bow, impossibly formal, then turned without another word. His footsteps made no sound on the plush carpet of the hall, which only heightened the eerie quiet that swallowed him as he retreated.
The moment he disappeared, the hallway looked longer. Darker. Like a tunnel carved out of silence.
I closed the door slowly, feeling the latch click into place with a muted finality. The room around me felt colder. The air pressed against my skin again, thick with luxury and loneliness.
Five minutes.
And I would have to face Riley.
The thought moved through me like a blade made of ice and inevitability.
I stood in the center of the gilded room, wrapped in silence, and for the first time since arriving, I truly understood how alone I was inside this palace of polished lies.
Alone, yet watched.
Alone, yet owned.
Alone, yet expected.
And the clock was already counting down.
I forced myself downstairs, even though every step felt like a small betrayal of my own instincts.
Dinner. A civilized word for something that felt anything but.
I expected Riley to be waiting for me, sprawled in a chair like he owned gravity itself, wearing that half amused, half dangerous smile that said he already knew exactly how to ruin the remainder of my night.
The thought of facing him scraped at something raw inside me.
The mansion changed flavor when he was near. The air grew charged, unstable. At least I knew where the danger sat. At least I could see it breathe.
Without him, the uncertainty spread like smoke.
The dining space opened before me in one long exhale of marble and chandeliers.
The room was vast enough for echoes to get lost. Every polished surface gleamed.
Rows of silverware were placed with surgical precision by staff who moved like drifting shadows, careful and quiet and trained not to exist beyond their duty.
He was not there.
Not a footprint.
Not a whisper.
Nothing.
Something in my chest tightened, the knot sharp enough to pull my breath thin. I stood at the threshold longer than I should have, searching for any sign of him. A jacket thrown over a chair. A glass half drunk. A door left open.
Nothing.
I approached one of the staff members, a woman with her hair pulled into a perfect twist and her expression carved from calm. I swallowed the tremor rising in my voice.
“Sorry. Do you know where Riley is?”
Her eyes flicked up only briefly. Her face did not change. Her tone was polite, flat, unreachable. “He is out, Madam.”
Out.
The word dropped heavy as stone.
“Do you know when he will be back?” I asked, trying to sound like the question was casual curiosity instead of thinly veiled panic.
“I do not know, Madam.”
No explanation. No hint. No comfort.
She moved away before I could push again, gliding out of the room with the same graceful invisibility. The doorway swallowed her up.
A cold realization slid into me like ice water.
I did not have his phone number.
I had nothing. No way to reach him. No way to know where he went or who he was with or what version of him would return. No way to predict the hour he might reappear in this mansion like a storm breaking open.
His constant presence was a threat I could brace for.
But his absence was a void.
A dangerous vacuum.
A place where imagination stretched too far and too dark.
Where I waited for a footfall that never came, a voice that never spoke, a shadow that never materialized.
Not knowing when he would return felt like standing beneath a chandelier made of knives. The silence above me was heavy, but I could not move. I could not relax. I could only wait for the moment gravity decided to pull it down.
I hated that I cared.
I hated that fear and curiosity blended until I could not tell one from the other.
Most of all, I hated that part of me strained to hear him.
As if my bones could sense him before the rest of me did.
The silence in the dining room pressed against my skull until it felt like a living thing.
I ate because I had to. Fork to plate. Plate to mouth.
Mechanical. Tasteless. Every bite scraped down my throat like obligation.
The staff moved around me with soft footsteps, their presence a reminder that this house watched even when it pretended not to.
I finished quickly, almost rudely. I could not stand the weight of those empty chairs or the looming possibility that Riley might walk in at any moment. Or never walk in again. Both were sharp in different ways.
The instant the last dish was removed, I rose. My pulse quickened with purpose. I left the dining room with my head low, my feet barely kissing the marble. Upstairs. Away. Alone.
Temporary freedom pulsed inside me like a fragile star trying to expand. Riley was gone. The threat was gone. At least for now. The chance to reclaim something that belonged to me flickered, faint but real.
I took it.
In the massive bathroom, I shut the doors and turned the locks with decisive clicks. It sounded final, like sealing myself into a world I controlled.
I twisted the gold faucet until steaming water roared into the claw foot tub.
The sound filled the space, drowning out the echo of my own thoughts.
I grabbed a bottle of bubble bath, poured it without restraint, watched the water bloom white and lush.
Steam curled around my ankles, rose over my skin, touched my cheeks with warm, forgiving hands.
I peeled my jeans off first, tugging them down my legs with a shaky exhale, and the moment the denim left my skin, something in me softened.
The tension knotted in my hips eased, slipping away with the fabric.
My top followed, lifted over my head in a slow, deliberate pull, leaving my skin bare to the warm mist that drifted through the room.
The steam kissed along my collarbone, slid over my stomach, curled around the backs of my knees. Each piece of clothing that fell to the marble felt like shedding a layer of pressure I had carried since meeting Riley on the beach.
Naked in the rising heat, my skin prickled, alive again, as if the air itself whispered that I was safe for these few stolen minutes. My body felt new, unburdened, almost weightless.
When I stepped in, the heat shocked me, then claimed me. My breath loosened. I sank until the water hugged my shoulders and my hair floated like light around me. The tub held me as if it understood exhaustion without needing explanation.
For the first time since entering this house, my body stopped bracing for impact.
The bathroom felt sacred. Warm, quiet, safe in ways nothing else here had been. The marble shimmered softly in the low light, the walls muffled every distant sound, and the doors behind me stood locked. My sanctuary.
I closed my eyes.
I let the heat seep deep, finding the knots buried in my muscles, undoing them with slow, purposeful tenderness. My pulse softened its frantic rhythm. My thoughts drifted without sharp edges.
For a moment, a single brief moment, I was not watched.
Not cornered.
Not waiting.
I was just a girl in a bath too beautiful to be real, breathing in steam that smelled like a life that might have been mine.
Solitude wrapped around me, gentle and absolute.
And I let myself sink into it, greedy for every second.