Chapter 3
Diamond
Ihave a new strategy.
If Cesar Vega won't react to my tantrums, maybe he'll react to something else.
I come downstairs, wearing the silk robe I usually save for Instagram stories.
A pale pink one that barely hits mid-thigh and has a habit of slipping off one shoulder.
I haven't bothered to tie it properly. Underneath, I'm wearing a lace bralette and matching shorts that could generously be called underwear.
Cesar is in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading something on his phone. He looks up when I walk in.
His expression doesn't change.
Not even a flicker.
"Good morning," I say, reaching past him for a mug. Close enough that he should be able to smell the lotion I put on this morning, the effort I've put into this little performance.
"Morning." He goes back to his phone.
I pour my coffee slowly, letting the robe slip a little more. "Sleep well?"
"Fine."
"I didn't hear you moving around last night. Do you actually sleep, or do you just stand in the corner like a vampire waiting for dawn?"
That gets me the barest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. But something.
"I sleep," he says. "Light. Old habit."
"From prison?"
Now he looks at me. Those dark eyes, unreadable as ever. "From a lot of places."
I want to ask more. I want to know everything. I need to know what he did, why he did it, what those eight years were like. But I also don't want him to know I care, so I just shrug and take my coffee to the living room, making sure to put a little extra sway in my hips as I go.
I can feel him not watching me.
Somehow, that's worse than if he'd stared.
***
By noon, I've escalated. The robe is gone, replaced by yoga clothes that barely qualify as clothes.
A sports bra that's mostly straps and tiny shorts that show the bottom curve of my ass when I bend over.
Which I do. Frequently. I set up on the back deck with a mat, running through a routine I learned from a private instructor who charged four hundred dollars an hour and definitely wanted to fuck me.
The sun is weak but the air is warmer than it's been, and I work up enough of a sweat that my skin glows.
He finds me an hour later, mid-downward-dog. "You're in a sight line from the road."
"It's a private road."
"It's still a sight line." He's standing over me, and I have to crane my neck to look up at him. From this angle, I can see the tattoos disappearing under his t-shirt collar, the strong line of his throat. "And you're going to freeze out here."
I stand up slowly, stretching my arms overhead, watching his eyes not drop to my exposed stomach. "I live most of my life in New York. This isn't cold."
"It's sixty-five degrees."
"Like I said. Not cold."
His eyes drop for just a second to my chest. To where my nipples are pressing hard against the thin fabric of my sports bra.
"Your body says otherwise."
Heat floods my cheeks. I cross my arms, then uncross them because that's admitting defeat.
"Inside." It's not a request.
"Make me."
The words hang in the air between us. I watch his jaw tighten, his hands flex at his sides. Those hands. I've been thinking about those hands for three days—the size of them, the scars on his knuckles, the way they look like they could hold me down without even trying.
"Miss Sterling." His voice is lower now. Rougher. "Inside."
"I told you to call me Diamond."
"And I told you to go inside. One of us is going to get what they want. It's not going to be you."
He waits. I wait. The ocean crashes against the cliffs below, and neither of us moves.
Finally, I stand up slowly, making sure he sees every inch of what I'm not wearing and walk past him toward the house. Close enough that my shoulder brushes his arm.
He's warm. Even through his shirt, I can feel the heat of him.
"I'll be in my room," I say. "If you need me."
I don't look back, but I swear I hear him exhale. Like he's been holding his breath.
Good.
The afternoon passes slowly. I try to read, but I can't focus. I do my skincare routine, but that only kills an hour. I stare at my phone, at the apps I've deleted three times and downloaded twice, at the ghost of a life I'm not allowed to live right now.
I'm so fucking bored.
And boredom makes me stupid.
I download Instagram again. Just to look.
Just to see what's happening, what people are saying, whether anyone even notices I'm gone.
My DMs are a cesspool I don't touch, but my feed is fine.
Normal. People living their lives while I'm trapped in this glass cage with a man who won't even look at me.
I'm not going to post anything. I'm not that dumb.
But then I see it: a story from Maren, one of the girls who was supposed to come to Cabo with me. She's on a yacht somewhere, champagne in hand, laughing at something off-camera. The caption says living my best life with a little sun emoji.
And something in me snaps.
I open my camera. Frame the shot carefully with just the window, the ocean, the dramatic cliffs. Nothing identifying. Nothing that says Big Sur or Sterling property or anything specific. Just vibes. Just I'm somewhere beautiful too, bitch.
I post it before I can think twice.
For exactly thirty-seven seconds, I feel better.
Then the door to my room slams open.
Cesar is standing in the doorway, and he doesn't look unreadable anymore. He looks furious.
"What did you just do?"
My heart slams against my ribs. "Nothing."
He crosses the room and snatches my phone out of my hand. I don't even have time to react—one second I'm holding it, the next he's scrolling through my story, jaw tight, eyes hard.
"Nothing," he repeats. "A photo that shows a distinctive cliff formation visible from exactly one property on this stretch of coast. That's nothing?"
"It's just a picture of the ocean."
"It's a location marker. Anyone with Google and ten minutes could figure out where you are." He's deleting the story as he talks, fingers moving fast. "Do you have any idea what you just did? Do you have any idea how easy you just made it for him to find you?"
"No one's going to—"
"The man who wants to kill you has been tracking your posts for months.
He knows your patterns. He knows your aesthetic.
He knew when you got your nails done in January because you posted a photo of your coffee cup and he could see the reflection of the salon in the window.
" Cesar steps closer, and I step back, and suddenly my shoulders are against the wall and he's right there.
"This is not a game, Diamond. This is your life. "
"I know that!"
"You don't. Because if you did, you wouldn't have just broadcast your location to two million people including the one who wants to watch you die."
I open my mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. He's right. I know he's right. The fear I've been pushing down for days is suddenly right there, clawing at my throat, and I can't breathe.
"I'm sorry," I whisper.
"Sorry doesn't keep you alive."
He pockets my phone and steps back, and for a second I think that's it. Lecture over, punishment delivered.
Nope.
"Come with me."
He doesn't wait for me to agree. Just turns and walks out of my room, and I follow because I don't know what else to do. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my temples, in my fingertips, between my legs—
Wait. Between my legs?
No. That's not— I'm not—
He leads me to the living room. The big open space with the floor-to-ceiling windows and the designer couch that no one ever sits on.
Cesar sits on it now. Right in the middle, legs spread, hands on his thighs.
"Come here."
I stop a few feet away. "What are you doing?"
"What I should have done the first day." His voice is calm. Too calm. "You need to learn that actions have consequences. That rules exist for a reason. That when I tell you not to do something, I'm not making a suggestion."
"You can't!"
"I can. Your father gave me full authority to keep you safe by any means necessary. That includes discipline."
The word lands like a slap. Discipline. Like I'm a child.
"You're going to spank me?" I laugh, but it comes out shaky. "That's insane. I'm twenty-three years old. You can't just do that."
"I can. And I'm going to. You can either come here and take your punishment, or I can come get you." He tilts his head, studying me. "Your choice."
I should scream at him. I should run. I should call my father and have him fired, deported, arrested for even suggesting it.
I take a step forward.
Then another.
And then I'm standing right in front of him, close enough to touch, and he's looking up at me with those dark eyes that see everything.
"Over my knee," he says.
"Cesar!"
"Now."
My body moves before my brain catches up. I'm bending, lowering myself across his lap, and then his hand is on my lower back, pressing me down, and I'm staring at the floor with my ass in the air like this is actually happening.
Because it's actually happening.
"These stay on," he says, and I feel his fingers hook into the waistband of my tiny shorts, "but just barely."
He tugs them down—not off, just down, baring my ass to the cool air and to him. I'm wearing a thong underneath. Which means I'm basically naked. Which means he can see—
The first slap makes me gasp.
It's not gentle. It's not playful. It's hard, the crack of his palm against my bare skin echoing off the glass walls, and the sting spreads through me like fire.
"That's for the photo," he says.
The second one lands on the other cheek, just as hard. I yelp, fingers digging into the couch cushion.
"That's for lying to me about it."
A third. A fourth. He's methodical, alternating sides, covering every inch of my exposed skin with heat and pain. I'm squirming against his lap, trying to get away, but his other hand presses harder on my lower back, holding me in place.
"Stay still, mija." The word is low, almost gentle, completely at odds with the punishment he's delivering. "Take what you earned."
"Stop!" I gasp. "I'm sorry, I won't do it again!"
"You're right. You won't."
He keeps going. Five, six, seven. I lose count. The pain blurs into something else, something hot and overwhelming that spreads from my ass to my core, and I realize with horror that I'm not just gasping from the spanking.
I'm wet.
He has to feel it. His thigh is pressed right against my center, and every time I squirm, I'm grinding against him, and I can't stop, can't control my body, can't do anything but take what he's giving me and try not to moan.
The last spank is the hardest. I cry out, tears springing to my eyes, my whole body shaking.
And then it's over.
He pulls my shorts back up, the fabric dragging over my burning skin, and I whimper at the friction. His hand stays on my lower back for one long moment—warm, steady, almost gentle.
Then he lifts me off his lap and sets me on my feet.
I'm trembling. My face is wet with tears I don't remember crying. My ass is on fire, and between my legs, I'm throbbing with something that is definitely not pain.
Cesar stands up. He's breathing harder than he was before, but his face is unreadable again, locked down tight.
"Go to bed," he says. "And don't ever make me do that again."
He walks past me without another word, disappearing down the hall toward his room.
I stand there for a long time, shaking, aching, confused.
Humiliated.
And so turned on I can barely think.
I go to my room and lock the door.
I lie face-down on my bed because I can't bear to put pressure on my ass, and I stare at the pillow and try to process what just happened.
He spanked me. Like a child. Like a brat who needed to be taught a lesson.
I should be furious.
I should be on the phone to my father right now, demanding Cesar's head on a platter.
Instead, I'm sliding my hand into my shorts.
I'm so wet it's embarrassing, soaking through my thong, slick against my fingers the second I touch myself. I gasp at the contact. I'm swollen, aching, my clit throbbing like it has its own heartbeat.
I think about his hands.
How big they are. How hard they came down on my bare skin. The crack of his palm, the sting that spread through me like wildfire, the way he held me down like I weighed nothing.
I push two fingers inside myself and moan into my pillow.
I think about his thigh between my legs. The way I moved against him without meaning to, chasing friction, chasing relief. Did he feel how wet I was? Did he feel me dripping through my thong onto his jeans?
God, I hope he didn't.
God, I hope he did.
I fuck myself with my fingers, imagining they're his—thicker, rougher, calloused from whatever violence made him who he is. I imagine him not stopping after the spanking. Imagine him flipping me over on his lap, spreading my legs, pushing my thong aside and seeing what he did to me.
Look how wet you are, he'd say in that low, rough voice. You liked that, didn't you? Dirty girl. Getting off on being punished.
I'd deny it. I'd squirm and protest and tell him to stop.
And he wouldn't.
He'd push his fingers inside me just like this. Two, then three, stretching me open and he'd make me admit it. Make me say it out loud. Yes, I liked it. Yes, I'm wet for you. Yes, I want more.
I rub my clit in frantic circles, back arching off the bed, ass still burning where he spanked me. The pain mixes with the pleasure until I can't tell them apart, until my whole body is on fire, until I'm right there on the edge.
"Come for me, mija."
I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me so hard I have to bite down on my pillow to muffle the scream.
My pussy clenches around my fingers, pulsing, greedy, wanting something thicker, wanting him.
I keep rubbing, keep fucking myself through it, riding the wave until I'm shaking and gasping and tears are leaking from the corners of my eyes.
When it's over, I lie there in the wreckage of myself, hand still between my legs, ass still throbbing, heart pounding so loud he can probably hear it through the wall.
Cesar.
I just came harder than I ever have in my life, thinking about the man who spanked me like a disobedient child.
What the fuck is wrong with me?