Chapter Two
POOF!
She was alive.
Again!
It didn’t make sense at all.
But she was alive, and...and...
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
It was the same day again.
Thursday.
But this time, Payton wasn’t on her desk. She was back in Niccolò’s office, and her boss wanted to know why that was.
“I...”
I want to cry.
I want to say sorry.
I want to tell him I don’t deserve someone like him.
But because all those words still felt forbidden—
Payton could only look at him helplessly, and his gaze narrowed.
“Are you alright?”
Wasn’t that what he had asked her the last time?
“I...”
Words failed her yet again, but this time her knees also buckled, and oh!
Payton might have kept herself from blushing the first time, but her cheeks were completely on fire now, with Niccolò sweeping her up in his arms and—
The marks.
With her hands trapped against his chest, she belatedly noticed that those heart-shaped marks she had noticed the first time—
There were only two of them now.
Why?
It felt significant somehow, but with Niccolò gently laying her down on the couch, Payton found herself distracted and tormented all of a sudden, the memory slithering into her mind like a serpent, and no no no—
She remembered the last time someone did this for her, it was to kill her—
Stop it, Payton!
She had to clench her fists against the urge to shove him away.
Niccolò was not Eric. He never was, never will be.
“Lie down,” he said sternly, “and rest. Do you have vertigo?”
When she tried to shake her head, pain seized her temples, and Payton stilled.
Huh.
With all the die-reborn-die time jumps she had gone through in the past hour or so, maybe she did have vertigo now?
Niccolò loomed over her, and he looked unusually on edge. “Be honest with me.” His tone was also uncharacteristically stiff. “Do you have any problems at home?”
And the reason for that became clear when she realized what he was asking.
“W-Why would you ask that?”
“Because I hear people talk.”
Right.
People as in...her coworkers.
Eric was always keen to invite them over, and while Payton could never admit this to herself in the past...
It was time she stopped pretending to be blind.
Eric had been so full of himself that he was convinced her coworkers all loved him. Not once had it occurred to him that her friends were only there because of her, and that all of them...could see through him.
All of them but her.
Payton the Idiot.
But even so.
After getting murdered by Eric, then Rosé, the last thing she wanted was for Niccolò to get involved with her supernaturally messy life, and so—
“I think I know where you’re going here, Mr. de Vindice,” Payton heard herself say.
“This is about you never being a part of our guest list at home. I-Isn’t it?
” It was, as always, the lamest excuse ever, made even lamer by the way her voice had caught at the end.
But she had no choice. That was the best she could come up with, and so please...
She looked at Niccolò, her gaze unconsciously pleading.
Please. Please. Please.
The silence in his office was fraught with tension, and as she waited for his reply, she couldn’t help thinking it was just so ironic...
All those years, she had convinced herself that it was Eric’s ego she was protecting. But since she was done lying to herself...
She realized now that she had also been protecting her own ego.
The reason she had never invited the billionaire to their home...
It was so Niccolò wouldn’t see what the others did. And that way, he wouldn’t pity her the way the others did. But now...
“Payton—”
Keeping him away meant Niccolò staying alive, and when she realized he was determined this time to see the truth with his own eyes, even if it meant gatecrashing her party—
“My husband is a very jealous man, and I...I love him so much,” Payton said in a rush, “and that’s why I’ve never invited you. Y-You’re the kind of man who’ll make him feel bad, and I...I don’t want that.”
Payton felt like throwing up when she saw how Niccolò was gazing at her now.
“Is that so?”
“V-Very much so!”
“Duly noted, then. Is that all you have to say?”
“Um, yes—”
Niccolò opened the door to his office, and even though she knew she had asked for this, it still hurt, being asked to leave like this.
Don’t you dare cry!
You’re doing the right thing.
You’re saving his life, so don’t you forget that.
As Payton walked back to her desk, the door to his office slammed shut, and she started fighting back tears. It felt like she had just hurt Niccolò, but...what choice did she have?
And besides...
She remembered all too late she had a bigger problem to deal with as she sat down.
Was she really going home to the man who would eventually kill her?