CHAPTER 3: Fit For His World

Adeline's POV

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The address Matteo texted leads to a door between a gallery and a private bank. No sign. No window display. Just gleaming steel and a small intercom button that probably costs more than my laptop did.

I hover there for five minutes. Thumb over the buzzer. Heart loud against my ribs.

A woman in head-to-toe Chanel glides past without glancing at me. Her heels click against the pavement with that assurance of people who have nothing to prove.

I glance down at my jeans. The rip in the knee that used to feel vintage now feels cheap. My sweater has a loose thread at the hem. I tug it. The thread gets longer.

My reflection stares back from the steel door. Ginger hair I barely brushed. Hazel eyes too wide. Skin pale enough to be allergic to sunlight.

Albert's voice surfaces without permission. *Try not to embarrass yourself.*

Last night I sat with my laptop and typed his name into three different search engines.

Albert Rossi. CEO. Rossi International.

Pages of results. Forbes profiles. Financial Times coverage. Acquisitions that reshaped entire industries overnight. A man who moved through boardrooms the way weather moves through cities. You don't see it coming. You only understand it after.

Feared. That was the word one profile used. Not respected. Not admired.

Feared.

One photo. A charity gala three years ago. He stood at the edge of the frame, not posing. Watching. The kind of man a room adjusts itself around without realizing it's happening.

I stared at that photo longer than I should have.

Then I went back to the warning text.

*Walk away from Albert Rossi before he destroys you. This is your only warning.*

I ran the number twice. Untraceable. No name attached.

Someone who knew enough to warn me. Someone who didn't want to be found.

I didn't sleep much after that.

Before I can back out, the door opens. I never hit the buzzer.

A woman stands there. Tall. Black on black on black. Hair pulled back so precisely it looks architectural. Her eyes sweep over me and I feel every flaw surface under that gaze.

"Mon dieu." Flat. Then she circles me, the way you examine something broken before deciding if it's worth fixing. "We have work to do."

No malice. Just fact.

"I'm Adeline Carter. I have an appointment."

"Oui. I know who you are." She gestures inside. "I am Colette. Come."

The boutique is all cream silk and controlled lighting. Dresses hang on the walls. Not a single price tag visible. Because if you have to ask, you definitely cannot afford them.

My sneakers squeak against the marble floor.

Someone materializes at my elbow with champagne on a silver tray. I take it because I don't know what else to do with my hands. No way I'm drinking it. My throat is sealed shut.

"We begin with measurements." Colette snaps her fingers. An assistant appears with a tape measure. "Then we discuss what Mr. Rossi requires."

The way she says *requires* raises the hair on my arms.

"He didn't really explain," I say.

"He never does." She gestures toward a platform surrounded by mirrors. "Remove your clothes. Everything except undergarments."

I stutter. "What?"

"I cannot work with fabric covering fabric." She tilts her head. "You are shy?"

"I'm human."

Her lips twitch. "The changing room is there. Five minutes."

The changing room is bigger than my bathroom at home. Plush carpet. Soft lighting. A velvet bench.

I catch my reflection in the full-length mirror and stand there.

I signed a contract to escort a billionaire I barely know. A man the internet barely has information about.

A man someone felt the need to warn me about.

My hands aren't steady as I pull off my sweater. My jeans pool at my feet, the broken zipper still fixed with a safety pin. My bra is clean but old. Cotton, not lace. Target. Five for twenty dollars.

I stare at myself. Pale skin. Freckles across my shoulders. A body that works fine for my life but probably reads as a problem in here.

I step out before I can change my mind.

Colette points to the platform without a word.

Three mirrors return my reflection from every angle. Three versions of the same girl who got a warning text and showed up anyway.

The assistants work fast. Bust, waist, hips, inseam. Colette watches, calling numbers in French.

"The waist is fine." She moves around me. "The shoulders need work. Does she always slouch?"

I pull my spine straight. "I'm standing right here."

"Oui. And you are slouching." Her fingers press between my shoulder blades. Not gentle. "You carry tension like a stone."

She isn't wrong. My shoulders have been up around my ears since last night.

They discuss my proportions in French. My college French is rusted over, but what I catch makes heat crawl up my face.

*Too pale. The hair is lovely but needs proper care. The posture, mon dieu. And those hands.*

I look down at my hands. Short nails because I bite them when I'm anxious. Cuticles I never bother with. Knuckles dry from winter and cheap soap.

*Walk away from Albert Rossi before he destroys you.*

I curl my fingers in.

"The body is strong," Colette announces. "We enhance. We do not reconstruct." She meets my eyes in the mirror. "You may dress."

When I return, fabric swatches cover a long table. She holds shades against my skin and discards without softening her conclusions.

"The auburn hair." She selects a midnight blue swatch. "Yes. This."

The color pulls something out of my hazel eyes. Green they don't usually show. Gold flecks I tend to miss.

"Six events. Six dresses. All must tell the right story."

"What story?"

"That you belong at his side." She sets the swatches down and looks at me directly, really looks, for the first time. "Mr. Rossi has many women who want to be seen with him. Beautiful women. High class. Women who know how to move in his world."

A hollow space opens in my chest. "Then why me."

"Because they bore him." She cuts me off. "You do not. That is worth more than all their polish combined."

The words land wrong. A man like Albert Rossi gets bored fast. But the things that hold his attention don't tend to walk away from it intact.

We go through six dresses. Every one is art. Every one feels wrong on me.

"You are fighting them," Colette observes. "You wear them like armor."

"Because that's exactly what they feel like."

"You're afraid."

"Completely."

"Of what?"

"That I'll ruin this. That everyone in that room will know the second I walk in."

"They will know."

Everything in me goes very still.

"They will know you are different. You aren't one of them. You don't play by their rules." She steps closer. "The question is whether you let that break you or use it."

She pulls a midnight blue dress from the rack.

I slip it on. The fabric moves over my skin without resistance. No embellishment, no decoration. The kind of construction you only recognize when you realize how effortless it looks.

The neckline settles clean across my collarbones. The skirt falls below my knees with a subtle slit that suggests without displaying.

I face the mirror.

The woman looking back is me but not me. The dress pulls color into my hair and skin I didn't know was there. My posture reads like a choice, not survival. I square my shoulders without thinking, reaching toward a version of myself this dress seems to already believe exists.

Colette appears behind my reflection. "You have something they do not. Authenticity. Do not lose it while you learn their games."

My throat pulls. "Can I really be myself and fit in?"

She is silent. Then honest. "That is something you have to figure out."

My screen lights up.

My chest seizes. The same way it did last night, staring at that warning text in the dark.

Unknown number.

I let it ring once. Twice. Pick up on the third.

"Miss Carter."

Albert. That controlled, even tone from the contract signing. No greeting.

"Mr. Rossi."

"Colette tells me you're difficult."

I glance at Colette. She studies her nails with complete innocence.

"I prefer selective."

A beat. The kind that has weight in it.

"Saturday. Six thirty. Don't be late."

"I wasn't plan..."

The line cuts.

Colette holds out the garment bag. "He called the moment you put on the dress."

I take it without a word.

I don't ask how he knew. I'm not sure I want the answer.

Because that's the thing about Albert Rossi that no Forbes profile bothered to print.

He already knows more about me than I know about him.

And someone out there thinks that's reason enough to run.