Chapter 15 The Twisted Feast
POV: Sienna
The shattered crystal from the kitchen had been entirely erased. Not a single microscopic shard remained on the black marble floor, leaving absolutely no evidence of the violent, possessive storm that had ripped through the penthouse just an hour ago.
In its place was a sprawling, macabre display of domesticity.
I sat rigidly at one end of the massive, custom-built obsidian dining table, the chilled slate of the chair offering no comfort against my bare back.
The midnight-blue silk of the dress Roman had forced me into felt infinitely heavier now, clinging to my curves like a physical brand of his ownership.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling smart-glass, the Vesperine District was completely swallowed by a torrential downpour.
Bruising grey clouds were occasionally fractured by the silent, violent pulse of distant lightning, casting sharp, skeletal shadows across the pristine dining room.
Inside, the silence was suffocating.
Roman sat directly across from me. He hadn't placed us at opposite ends of the twenty-foot table; he had deliberately arranged the settings at the head and the immediate right, forcing an agonizingly intimate proximity.
He had discarded his shoulder holster and changed into a fresh, pitch-black dress shirt, the fine fabric stretched tight across the broad expanse of his shoulders.
The top two buttons were undone, revealing the strong, corded column of his throat.
He looked like a deity of death playing house.
Between us sat a flawlessly executed formal dinner.
Rare, seared cuts of meat rested on bone-white porcelain, accompanied by roasted root vegetables and a heavy crystal decanter of blood-red wine.
There were no servants. No waitstaff to buffer the highly combustible space between us.
Roman reached out, his large, calloused hand dwarfing the delicate stem of a wineglass as he poured the vintage, pushing it slowly across the polished obsidian toward me.
"Eat, Sienna," he commanded, his baritone voice a low, smooth vibration that bypassed my ears and hummed directly against my ribs.
I stared at the glass, the dark liquid swirling sluggishly inside. My stomach was a tight, painful knot of residual adrenaline. "I’m not hungry."
Roman didn't raise his voice. He didn't even blink.
He simply picked up his own heavy silver knife and fork, cutting into his steak with surgical, terrifying precision.
"You have not consumed anything substantial since the gala.
Your body is running entirely on cortisol and panic.
You will eat, or I will stand up from this chair, walk around this table, and feed you myself. "
My breath hitched violently in my throat. I knew it wasn't an empty threat. The feral monster who had nearly snapped a boy's neck for merely looking at me was still simmering just beneath the surface of his tailored, polite facade.
My hand trembled as I reached for my fork.
I pierced a small piece of the meat, placing it in my mouth.
It was rich, perfectly seasoned, and tasted entirely like ash on my tongue.
I chewed mechanically, my eyes lifting to meet his across the flickering light of a single, unscented pillar candle he had placed between us.
"Does this make you feel normal?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, slicing through the heavy clink of silver against porcelain. "Playing the attentive husband over a candlelit dinner, right after you nearly murdered a technician for simply existing in the same room as me?"
Roman paused. He set his cutlery down, the metal resting perfectly parallel on the edge of his plate. He leaned back in his chair, his midnight eyes locking onto mine with a dark, consuming weight that instantly stole the oxygen from my lungs.
"Normal is a construct for sheep, wife," Roman murmured, the casual endearment rolling off his tongue with a terrifying, smooth familiarity. "I am not attempting to emulate polite society. I am claiming what is mine."
"By terrifying everyone who comes near me?" I challenged, my knuckles turning bone-white around my fork. "By locking me in a vault and parading me around in a dress you meticulously picked out, just so you can punish anyone who dares to notice it?"
"He noticed a vulnerability," Roman corrected, his voice dropping into a lethal, gravelly octave. "He saw a beautiful, unprotected asset in the center of my stronghold. I merely corrected his perception. My violence was not a punishment, Sienna. It was a boundary."
He reached across the table. I flinched, fully expecting him to grab my wrist, but instead, his long fingers lightly brushed the base of my wineglass, pushing it exactly one inch closer to my hand. The gesture was agonizingly small, hyper-controlled, and entirely dominating.
"Drink," he prompted softly.
I wrapped my trembling fingers around the crystal stem and took a deep swallow of the wine. It burned all the way down, a heavy, intoxicating heat that mirrored the sudden, treacherous warmth pooling low in my center.
I set the glass down, staring at the hard, unyielding line of his jaw. I hated him. I hated the suffocating perimeter he had drawn around my life. I hated that he treated me like a priceless artifact to be hoarded in the dark.
But as the silence stretched, thickening the air between us, a horrifying, undeniable truth began to bloom in the back of my mind.
For eighteen years, I had been an afterthought. I was the Moretti heir, a political pawn, a ghost wandering the halls of my father's house. I was raised by men who looked right through me, men who only saw the monetary shares attached to my name.
But Roman didn't look through me.
Roman looked at me. When his eyes were on me, the rest of the world ceased to exist. He had commanded a room of lethal syndicate bosses to bow to my name.
He had violently defended my honor against a fleeting glance.
The suffocating, absolute weight of his attention was terrifying, yes, but it was also the most profoundly anchoring force I had ever experienced.
The panic that usually accompanied his proximity was slowly morphing into something entirely different, something insidious and sick.
It was morphing into a twisted, dark validation.
I was no longer a chess piece on a board.
I was the center of a black hole, and the sheer, inescapable gravity of his obsession was beginning to feel less like a prison and more like a pedestal.
"You're staring, Sienna," Roman observed, his gaze dropping to my lips, tracking the tiny drop of red wine resting on my lower lip. The hunger in his eyes was naked, raw, and completely unapologetic.
"I'm just wondering how far the boundary extends," I breathed, the words slipping out before my rational mind could stop them. I leaned forward slightly, deliberately testing the invisible tether strung taut between us. The heavy silk of my dress shifted, exposing a fraction more of my collarbone.
Roman’s pupils dilated instantly, entirely swallowing the dark irises.
The muscle in his jaw feathered rapidly.
He didn't move, but the sheer, physical gravity of his desire pulled at me, a relentless undertow dragging me out into the deep.
He was a monster, yes, but a terrifying, wicked part of me was already wondering what it would feel like to finally let him bite.