Chapter 8 Naomi
NAOMI
Two weeks later, breakfast is a study in composure and quiet knives.
We’ve wined and dined every donor, trustee, and dilettante who can nudge the preservation project. Rhode Island ballrooms, bay-view boardrooms, yacht decks slick with money, smiles, photographs, perfectly calibrated touches.
Now Vasso says we “let the work marinate,” which is billionaire for sit still and see who blinks. I expect a victory lap. I don’t expect the next stage.
He peels an orange for me with surgeon precision, the rind spiraling into a sunlit ribbon that lands on the plate like a flourish.
He does this without comment, like the coffee he refills before I can reach the pot, like the linen napkin he tucks nearer my hand when a drip of marmalade threatens silk.
He’s been doing these quiet, domestic edits to my morning more and more, and it’s disconcerting in a way I have no vocabulary for.
“Now the preservation trust part of the milestone is taken care of, we need to move to the next stage,” he says, casual as the breeze lifting the sheer at the terrace doors. “We leave at the weekend.”
I pause with a segment of orange halfway to my mouth. “For?”
“Our honeymoon. Pack light or don’t pack at all. I’m partial to a no-clothes vacation.”
I laugh, because it’s safer than choking. “We’re not doing a honeymoon.”
He tips his head, amused. “We are.”
“It wasn’t in the contract.”
“It is.” He slides a folder across the table.
My ring flashes in the Rhode Island sun as I flip it open.
His lawyer’s immaculate prose looks back at me: Section 7.2—Public Optics: Parties will undertake reasonable joint travel for press and stakeholder relations, including but not limited to a post-ceremony honeymoon period of not less than fourteen consecutive days with photographic availability.
I scowl at the line someone—me—didn’t read closely enough. “That’s not a honeymoon. That’s a press tour with sunscreen.”
“Tomato, tomahto.”
I drop the page, reach for coffee I don’t need. He refills it anyway. “I’m not prepared.”
He peels another curl of orange, voice mild. “Prepared for what?”
“To pretend I’m blissful for two weeks while you parade me around the Amalfi Coast.”
“Greece,” he corrects. “And the coast is hardly a parade. It’s a celebration.”
I spear him with a look. “I didn’t consent to being celebrated.”
“You did,” he says quietly, and taps Section 7.2 with one knuckle. “Besides, my mother’s there in Greece. It’ll seem odd that I’ve married and yet my bride remains behind when I visit her without you. You can also meet designers to choose your bridal gown.”
Silence stretches. He lets it. He’s annoyingly good at that.
“What do you want, Naomi?” he asks finally. No edge, just velvet that promises more somewhere down the hall.
The question lands in the echo of that night in the living room—the feel of his belt slipping, the ache I carried to bed like a contraband secret.
My body betrays me before my mouth can pretend. Heat climbs my neck; my pulse trips. His gaze drops to the delicate flutter where my throat gives me away.
“That,” he says, calm as the sea on a blue day. “Can be arranged. Just say the word.”
I choke on air. “That’s not what I— Absolutely not.”
He watches me bite the denial in half and looks devastatingly entertained. “So. A price, then.”
“Yes.” The word comes out too fast. “If you want me to swan about on some yacht for fourteen days smiling at cameras, I want—” I swallow “—more time with Grandpa. Before we go. And when we get back. No business dinners on those days, no optics. Just… time.”
He leans back, assessing. “I thought you’d demand a diamond. Or a toy.”
“Money isn’t everything,” I say, and the old anger lifts its head, wild and sharp. “Isn’t that why we parted in the driveway ten years ago?”
He goes very still.
It’s a single heartbeat, but I feel the temperature of the room drop two degrees. “Careful,” he says, and it’s not a threat…more a reminder that some tripwires are shared.
I’m the one who should have been careful.
Shock breaks over me, and it’s not because that I said it, but because that I meant it, that the image is still bright as a fresh wound: the country club dress, the stretch limo door, the gravel, the boy who looked like a cliff I could jump from and live.
I make a quick excuse about calls and schedule and absolutely nothing, and I get up from the table with a dignity I’m not sure I actually possess.
His gaze follows, hot and unreadable, maddening. I make it to the corridor before my knees remember their options.
I tell myself I’m in control.
That flipping the script on him was power. Revenge. Victory.
And for a while, it feels like it.
Until I’m in bed later, staring at the ceiling of a room that smells faintly of cedar and salt, and I can still feel his hand on my back in a ballroom, his breath at my ear on a terrace, his mouth on mine while the world watched and I told myself it was the deal I signed.
You’re not the only one who can seduce, Vasso.
Except now I’m not sure who I’m seducing. Him… or me.
The suite stays silent. No footsteps. No retaliation. No storming down the hall to claim the last word with teeth and tongue and an apology he’d never give.
He lets me walk away.
It should make me smug. Safe.
It makes me restless.
I sit up, shove the duvet back, and pad barefoot to the balcony. The stone is cool under my feet; the night is a shoulder I lean on. Below, Rhode Island glows golden and cruel.
I’ve spent years building armor out of poise, training my smile to carry venom, choosing control over collapse, but this marriage, this man—they don’t threaten to break my heart; they threaten to make me feel again.
A soft knock cracks the quiet.
I turn.
The door opens, slow.
Vasso steps through barefoot, black slacks and plain tee that pulls across his chest, eyes shadowed. Not the three-thousand-dollar suit.
Something worse. Something real.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he says simply.
“Neither can I.” I don’t mean to confess; it escapes anyway. “I didn’t think you were the type to lose sleep.”
He gives a small, humorless laugh. “I’m not.”
Something in his voice twists my stomach. The lighthouse across the bay throws its slow blink. I hold my breath as if it can time us.
“Do you regret it?” I ask. “This arrangement?”
He steps out beside me, close enough to share breath, not quite touching. “No. But sometimes I forget what I’m playing for.”
“And what are you playing for, Vasso?”
His jaw ticks. He looks at me, and for once the fire in his gaze isn’t taunting or possessive. It’s quiet. Honest, in a way that feels like standing on sand during an incoming tide.
“I wanted to take back what was stolen from my family.” His mouth twists. “And sure, to make you pay… all of you pay, but mostly you in particular.” His eyes drop to my mouth, linger, then meet mine again. “And make no mistake, I still intend to. That hasn’t changed.”
“Then what has?”
He saunters closer. The air tightens and the world shrinks to the inches between us. The truth hangs there, salt-scented and dangerous.
He isn’t talking about land.
And I don’t know if I hate it.
“I should go back to bed,” I whisper, not moving.
“Should?” he taunts, voice a velvet hook.
I hate myself for not being able to take my eyes off him.
The strong column of his throat, the hard line of his shoulders under cotton, the mouth I haven’t forgotten, the taste I still know—dry, faintly bitter, heat underneath. I want to taste him again, and that should scare me more than it does.
“Take what you need, baby,” he says, arrogance sliding over the words like oil over flame. “I’m feeling generous enough to allow it.”
I laugh, helpless and furious at once. “And if what I need just so happens to be what you want too?”
He shrugs, a lazy sinner. “Then it’s a happy coincidence. My only stipulation is that one step forward means the door locks behind you.” His gaze flicks to the handle. “There will be no stepping back.”
I stand there, breathing salt and choices, my pride and my body conducting a quiet war in my chest. I promised myself a hundred times I wouldn’t go first. Then a sound leaves me—small, traitorous, honest as a prayer.
I reach.
He catches me.
He doesn’t kiss me so much as claim the kiss, a heat-slick tongue slide that feels like a continuation of every unfinished sentence we’ve lived with for ten years.
I push back with my hands in his hair, nails at his nape, the soft thud of my spine finding the door as he presses me into his body until I can’t tell where mine ends. The lighthouse blinks; the room tilts; the balcony door fogs faintly with our breath.
We break only to breathe, then fall to it again, mouths hungry and unforgiving.
Somewhere between the kiss and the second breath, the carpet finds my knees—or maybe I find it. His hands are sure and unhurried, lifting, skimming, banishing silk until cool air kisses skin and then his mouth does.
He takes his time the way men do when they plan to ruin patience as a concept: slow at first, reverent, then devastatingly focused, learning again what draws me open and what unravels me completely.
The world narrows to pressure and heat and the way my fingers fist in his hair when I forget my own name. I try to hold on but he persuades me not to.
When release strikes, it’s a tide tearing loose moorings; the sound I make is nothing I’ve rehearsed.
When I can think again, I find myself in his arms. He lifts me easily, as if carrying me across thresholds is a right he didn’t steal, and lays me in my bed with ridiculous care.
He kisses my forehead, a benediction I resent for how much it undoes me.
“You’re not—” My voice is a rasp. “You’re not going to take—”
“No.” He brushes hair from my cheek, knuckles grazing like he’s memorizing my temperature. “Not yet.”
“Why?” I hate the sound like a plea.
“Because I want you desperate.” His mouth edges a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “And unraveled. And very sure. When you come to me, I’ll take everything.” He straightens, steps back. “I’ll wait as long as necessary.”
“Even if it takes the agreed year,” I say, reckless, “and I walk away after?”
He stills, hand on the doorknob, a muscle in his jaw tightening as if the word after has sharp edges. “We both know it won’t take that long.”
The door clicks. He’s gone.
I stare at the ceiling, heart skittering, the taste of him still on my tongue, the echo of my own want still humming under my skin. Somewhere beneath the anger and the history and the pain, I know I’m not playing anymore.
I’m just standing in front of the one man who has ever made me feel seen. And broken. And real.
And I don’t know how to survive that.