Chapter 11 #5
The door to the spa opens, and I glance up automatically, fearing that it’s him.
But it’s a woman who enters, and she’s stunning.
Petite and polished, with dark hair swept back from a face that belongs on a magazine cover.
Her clothes are simple but clearly expensive, the kind of understated elegance that whispers old money.
She moves with the easy confidence of someone who has never doubted her place in the world.
Gloria materializes beside me. “Mina. See the woman who just sat down with Sara? That’s Miss Ariana Barone. Go and offer her a shoulder massage while she gets her nails done.”
Barone. The name tugs at something in my memory, but I can’t place it. One of Malus’s prominent families, maybe? There are so many of them, intermarried and interconnected, their names scattered across buildings and foundations and hospital wings.
“Of course.” I finish with my current client and cross the salon, my professional smile firmly in place.
Miss Barone is already settled in the manicure chair, her slender hands resting on the table in front of Sara. Up close, she’s even more beautiful.
“Good afternoon, Miss Barone. I’m Mina. Can I offer you a shoulder massage while you have your manicure?”
She barely turns her head to acknowledge me, but her smile is polite. “Please. I was working with a bad-tempered horse this morning and my shoulders have been tight ever since.”
Horses. I know nothing about them except they’re expensive creatures rich people own.
“I can help with that.”
I position myself behind her chair and begin working on her shoulders through her silk blouse, finding the knots and easing them.
Sara chats away while we work. Miss Barone murmurs responses but seems uninterested in being drawn into a deeper conversation. At this point, I would take the hint from my client and fall silent, but Sara loves to talk.
She notices the engagement ring on Miss Barone’s finger, and her exclamation draws my attention to it.
“Oh my goodness.” Sara’s voice goes high with excitement. “That diamond is enormous.”
The ring is a square-cut diamond that catches the light and throws rainbows across the manicure station. I couldn’t begin to guess the cost of a ring like that. A ring that size has never nor will ever concern someone like me.
Miss Barone glances at the ring, and then away again.
“You must be marrying someone very special.” Sara is practically vibrating with curiosity. “Anyone we might have heard of?”
Miss Barone hesitates. “You may have, actually. He just bought this hotel.”
My hands freeze on her shoulders.
“My fiancé is Cristiano Montoni.”
I suddenly can’t hear anything. I can’t feel anything. I can’t think. There’s just the ring, glittering on her perfect hand, and the words echoing in the sudden vacuum of my skull.
My fiancé is Cristiano Montoni.
Engaged.
He’s engaged.
He came to my workplace. He lay on my massage table while I touched his naked body, and showed off his semi-hard cock and those obscene tattoos on his back. He asked me to stroke his hair, looked at me like I was his home, his life, and said I don’t have you, Mina.
And he’s engaged.
To this beautiful, wealthy, appropriate woman who leisurely rides horses in the mornings while the rest of us are working, wears silk blouses, and fits perfectly into his world.
The pattern crystallizes with sickening clarity.
Back when I was eighteen, he took Valerie on a coffee date.
Pretty, rich, and acceptable Valerie, someone he could be seen with in public.
And then he followed me home on his motorcycle and seduced me in secret, high up in a tiny room in the Montoni mansion.
Miss Barone gets a ring. She gets to stand beside him in public, to be claimed and celebrated and shown off to the world.
I get a locked wardrobe. Asked to stroke his hair in a darkened, private room.
I’m not someone he wants.
I’m someone he takes.
My fingers dig into Miss Barone’s shoulders without conscious thought. I can feel the delicate bones beneath my hands, the muscles tensing in protest, but it’s happening somewhere far away, to someone else.
How long has he been engaged? The whole time he’s been back in Malus? The day he came to my apartment in the rain and asked to come inside?
“Ow—”
The sound doesn’t register.
I’m a dirty little secret, the housekeeper’s daughter he toys with when he’s bored.
I don’t have you, Mina.
Because he doesn’t want me. Not the way he wants her. I’m just something he can’t control, and that drives him crazy. He wants to screw me, and then he’ll go back to his beautiful fiancée and his perfect life, and I’ll be left with nothing but memories and burn marks from his belt.
“Ow! What the hell.”
Hands shove at my arms. Miss Barone twists in the chair, wrenching herself out of my grip, and suddenly she’s staring up at me with shock and anger on her perfect face.
“What are you doing?” She’s rubbing her shoulder, her dark eyes wide. “That hurt.”
I stare at her.
I can’t speak. Can’t explain. Can’t do anything but stand here paralyzed, while the whole salon goes quiet around us and Miss Barone’s diamond ring dazzles in the light.