Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Vittoria
The security protocols for Valentino's arrival blur on my screen. I've been staring at the same access matrix for twenty minutes, but my brain refuses to cooperate. Tomorrow, my cousin lands from Sicily, and I need to have his clearances ready.
My phone buzzes. Amanda, probably, wanting details about last night's dinner. I ignore it.
Focus, Vittoria.
I pull up Valentino's file again. The man is paranoid about security, which honestly makes my job easier. He'll actually use the protocols I set up instead of treating them like suggestions the way Bruno used to.
A knock interrupts my concentration.
"Vittoria?" Mamma's voice filters through the door. "Someone sent you a gift. It's in the living room."
My fingers freeze over the keyboard.
"Coming," I call out, saving my work.
The walk to the living room feels longer than usual. I catch myself smoothing down my sweater like I'm about to face a firing squad instead of a delivery.
Get a grip. It's just a gift.
I round the corner into the living room and stop dead.
Flowers.
Not just flowers. An explosion of flowers.
Roses in every shade of red imaginable, from deep burgundy to pale pink to blood crimson.
Lilies. They cover the coffee table, the side tables, the floor near the windows.
Crystal vases line every available surface, their contents spilling over like something out of a funeral home's fever dream.
My stomach turns.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Mamma appears beside me, her hand pressed to her heart. "There must be two hundred roses here. Maybe more."
Two hundred corpses, I think. Two hundred living things, cut at the stem so they can slowly die in expensive crystal for someone's viewing pleasure.
I hate flowers.
Not the growing kind. I have three succulents on my windowsill that I've managed to keep alive for two years. But this? This performative waste of life? Cutting something beautiful from its roots just to watch it wither in a vase?
It's barbaric. And people call my family monsters.
"Who sent them?" My voice comes out flat.
"James Rogers." Mamma beams like she's just announced I won the lottery. "He's apologizing for cancelling your dinner. The card says—"
"I don't care what the card says."
I step further into the room, my bare feet crunching on scattered petals that have already fallen. Dead things shedding dead pieces. How poetic.
The arrangement must have cost a fortune. Thousands of dollars spent on something that will be garbage within a week.
Idiot.
Dmitri wouldn't do this.
The thought surfaces unbidden, and I hate that it's true.
Dmitri is many things but he's not stupid.
He wouldn't waste money on something so obviously tone-deaf.
Last night at dinner, he paid attention.
He listened when I talked about my security systems, even when his eyes glazed over during the technical parts. He asked questions.
He would know that a woman who builds surveillance systems for a living doesn't want her affection bought with dying plants.
But James Rogers? James Rogers sees "trophy wife" and thinks flowers and jewelry and grand gestures because that's what men like him have been taught works. Throw enough money at a woman and she'll eventually spread her legs in gratitude.
My jaw clenches.
"Vittoria." Mamma's tone sharpens. "You could at least appreciate the gesture. The poor boy is clearly smitten."
The poor boy has a secret fiancée, I want to scream. The poor boy got caught with another woman and had to cancel our date because his actual girlfriend found out.
But I can't say that without explaining how I know, which would mean admitting Dmitri told me, which would open a whole new line of questioning I'm not prepared to handle.
"It's excessive." I turn to face her. "And wasteful. And completely impersonal."
"It's romantic."
"It's a man throwing money at a problem instead of actually thinking about what I might want.
" I gesture at the floral massacre surrounding us.
"Did he ask what my favourite flower is?
Did he consider that maybe, just maybe, I might have preferences?
Or did he just call a florist and say 'give me everything red'? "
Mamma's expression shifts from pleased to confused to concerned in the span of three seconds.
"Cara, it's just flowers."
"No, Mamma. It's a statement." I pick up the card without reading it and crumple it in my fist. "It says 'I have money and I'm willing to spend it on you, so you should be grateful.' It doesn't say 'I see you' or 'I understand you' or anything that requires actual effort."
The roses seem to mock me with their perfect petals and their manufactured beauty.
Tomorrow they'll start drooping. In three days, the water will turn murky.
By next week, the staff will be throwing them out, and James Rogers will have moved on to his next grand gesture, never once considering that maybe some women don't want to be buried in expensive corpses.
I take a breath. Then another.
"Send them back."
Mamma blinks. "What?"
"All of them. Every single one. Send them back to Rogers with a note that says 'No, thank you.'" I drop the crumpled card onto the nearest arrangement. "I don't want them in this house."
"Vittoria, you can't just—"
"Now, Mamma."
The word comes out loud and clear. Mamma's mouth snaps shut, her eyes widening like I've slapped her.
Guilt flickers through me, but I shove it down. I'm so tired of being managed. Tired of having my future negotiated over dinner tables. Tired of men who think they can buy me with dead flowers and tired smiles.
"I have work to do." I step past her toward the hallway. "Valentino arrives tomorrow, and his security clearances won't configure themselves."
I don't look back.
The roses' perfume follows me down the corridor, clinging to my clothes like a ghost. By the time I reach my room, my hands are shaking.
The knock comes past nine, when I've finally managed to force my brain back into work mode.
"Come in."
Megan steps inside, she works for us, her blonde ponytail swinging as she holds up a small velvet box. "Someone sent this for you, Miss Sartori."
I push back from my desk. "Who?"
"He said his name was Igor." She places the box on my nightstand like it might bite her. "From Dmitri Baganov."
Of course it is.
"Thank you, Megan."
She nods and slips out, closing the door with a soft click.
The box sits there, mocking me with its elegance. Small enough to fit in my palm. I already know it's jewelry. Some gaudy diamond necklace or earrings meant to mark me as his property before he's even earned the right.
I snatch it up, ready to be pissed.
A folded note rests on top. His handwriting is bold, slanted, confident.
Wear this tomorrow at dinner. —D
"Presumptuous asshole," I mutter, flipping open the lid.
My mouth falls open.
It's not jewelry.
It's a plug. A small, rose gold plug with a delicate crystal base that catches the light. The kind Amanda has shown me pictures of, giggling about how her latest boyfriend bought her one. The kind that goes inside.
Heat floods my body so fast I nearly drop the box.
He didn't.
I stare at it, my brain short-circuiting between fury and something else. A sensation that pulses low in my belly and makes my thighs press together involuntarily.
He absolutely fucking did.
My fingers tremble as I set the box down like it's contaminated. Which it is. With his audacity. His complete and utter nerve.
I grab my phone, typing so fast I nearly crack the screen.
You're an asshole.
Three dots appear immediately. Because of course he's awake. Of course he's waiting.
You'll wear it.
My jaw clenches. Like hell I will.
That's an order, solnyshko.
The words hit me like a physical blow. An order.
I should be furious. I am furious. My hands shake with it, my pulse pounds in my temples, and there's this tight, hot feeling in my chest that I want to call rage.
But it's not just rage.
It's the way his command echoes in my head. The way my body responds to those three words like he's trained it to. The memory of his mouth near my ear at the restaurant, promising he'd have me begging.
I will never beg.
I type back: I don't take orders from you.
His response comes in seconds. You will.
God. God.
I throw my phone on the bed and pace to the window, pressing my forehead against the cool glass. Somewhere out there, Dmitri Baganov is sitting in his club or his penthouse or wherever monsters spend their evenings, smiling at his phone like he's already won.
He hasn't won.
I won't wear it. I won't give him the satisfaction of knowing he's gotten under my skin. That right now, my body feels like a live wire, sparking and dangerous, because a man I've known for weeks sent me a sex toy with instructions.
What kind of person does that?
The same kind who admits to stalking you. Who promises to murder anyone else who tries to marry you. Who calls you "little sun" while describing exactly how he'd take you on a restaurant table.
I close my eyes, but that only makes it worse. Behind my eyelids, I see his pale grey eyes tracking my every movement. Feel his breath against my neck. Hear that deep voice dropping into a growl.
My reflection stares back at me from the window, cheeks flushed, lips parted. I look like someone who's already lost.
I haven't lost.
I refuse to lose.
But I also can't stand here vibrating like a plucked string while he sits across the city, satisfied with himself.
Cold shower. That's what I need. Ice cold water to shock this insanity out of my system and remind my body that it doesn't get to make decisions without my brain's approval.
I strip off my clothes and step into the bathroom, turning the handle until the water runs frigid. The first spray hits my skin like needles, and I gasp, forcing myself to stay under the assault.
Think about code. Think about firewalls. Think about Valentino's security protocols.
But my mind keeps drifting back to that velvet box. To the weight of the plug in my palm. To the way he expects me to walk into dinner tomorrow with that thing inside me, knowing, while I sit across from him pretending nothing is different.
He wants me off-balance. Distracted. Thinking about him when I should be thinking about anything else.
And damn him, it's working.
I stay under the cold water until my teeth chatter and my skin turns numb. Then I wrap myself in a towel and pad back to my bedroom, deliberately not looking at the box on my nightstand.
My phone buzzes.
I shouldn't look. I know I shouldn't look.
I look.
Sweet dreams, solnyshko.
I throw the phone across the room.
It lands on my pillow, screen up, his message glowing in the darkness like a taunt.
I'm not wearing it.
I'm not.