CHAPTER TWO

Marilyn

I didn't sleep.

I lay on top of the covers in the dark, fully dressed, staring at the ceiling while my phone lit up the nightstand with multiple notifications from Dylan, then Charlotte . I watched the screen go dark each time without touching it.

There was nothing either of them could say that I needed to hear.

The days that followed blurred together. I stayed inside, ignored the calls, let the coffee go cold, and gave myself exactly seventy-two hours to fall apart. I wasn't ashamed of it. Grief was grief, even when the people who caused it didn't deserve your tears.

I cried for the years I had wasted. For the version of Dylan I'd believed in. For the sister I thought I had.

Then I stopped.

On the fourth morning, I sat at my kitchen counter with fresh coffee and a clear head and thought about Raffaele Romanov.

He was Dylan's cousin on his father's side, the son of Mila DiLaurentis, Dylan's aunt, and heir to Denis Romanov's luxury automotive empire.

He was old money. He sat consistently at the top of every eligible bachelor list in New York, though I doubted he paid those lists any attention.

Dylan despised him. That had always been obvious, though Dylan was careful never to say it outright. Raffaele had the kind of power Dylan had spent his entire adult life trying to manufacture. The inherited authority, effortless status, the particular ease of a man who had never once needed to prove himself in a room. It made Dylan feel small. I understood that now in a way I hadn't before.

Raffaele and I had crossed paths over the years; galas, charity dinners, business events, but we had never been more than strangers in the same room.

Once, at a fundraiser, we had actually spoken. A real conversation, before either of us knew our connection to Dylan. He had been sharp, direct and oddly easy to talk to, right up until the moment Dylan's name came up. His expression had shuttered immediately.

"Get yourself a real man," he'd said before he walked away.

I had laughed it off at the time. I wasn't laughing now.

I knew better than to call or message him. A man like Raffaele didn't respond to requests from women he barely knew, especially women attached to someone he had no interest in. If I wanted his attention, I had to show up and take it.

So I did.

His current project was a software development firm on the forty-second floor of a glass tower in Midtown. I walked in at ten in the morning, dressed like I owned the building.

"Do you have an appointment?" the receptionist asked.

"I don't need one," I said, already moving toward the private elevator.

It was a gamble. I knew that, but hesitation would cost me more than the risk.

The elevator was mirrored on all sides. I watched my reflection on the ride up. I looked composed, steady, not a trace of the last four days visible on my face.

That was the point. I had cried everything I needed to cry and now, I wasn't going in as a woman who had been hurt.

I was going in as a woman with a plan.

Raffaele's office was exactly what I would have expected from him, minimal, precise, expensive without effort. Floor-to-ceiling windows behind a dark desk. Nothing on the surfaces that didn't need to be there.

The room was as cold as the man.

He was reading something when I walked in. He didn't look up immediately, which told me the receptionist had already called ahead. He was making me wait on purpose.

When he finally raised his eyes, I understood why women across every room he'd ever walked into couldn't stop talking about him. It wasn't just the jaw or the breadth of his shoulders or the grey eyes that were almost silver under the office lighting. It was the way he looked at you, like he was already three steps ahead and found the distance mildly entertaining.

He leaned back slowly. "Marilyn Beckham."

His voice was unhurried. "I'd say I'm surprised, but I'm not sure I am."

"Then you already know I'm not here for small talk," I said, crossing to his desk and taking the chair across from him without being invited.

A faint curve appeared at the corner of his mouth. "Clearly. You want to tell me what this is about, or are we going to let the tension build a little longer?"

"Dylan and Charlotte are sleeping together," I said.

"They have been for some time. They're planning to use our marriage to get access to my B&H shares, strip the company out from under me, and cut me out entirely."

His bored expression suddenly turned interested.

"I have video," I added.

Raffaele was quiet for a moment. Then he set down his pen.

"And what exactly do you want from me?"

"I want them destroyed." I said.

"Publicly and completely, with no way back from it. I want Dylan to lose everything he's been building on the back of my name, and I want Charlotte to watch it happen."

He studied me the way you studied something you hadn't expected to find interesting. "I always took you for the forgiving type."

"Then you didn't know me as well as you thought."

He rose from his chair and came around the desk. He stopped just in front of me, close enough that I had to tip my chin up slightly to hold his gaze. He smelled like cedar and something like mint.

"Dylan isn't worthy of being my enemy," he said. "He never has been."

"I'm not asking you to make him your enemy. I'm asking you to help me make him irrelevant." I held his gaze.

"And why exactly should I care?" He asked nonchalantly.

"Because Dylan is using my company."

"That sounds like your problem.” He shrugged.

"You hate what he represents. I'm offering you the cleanest possible way to take it apart. We both get what we want."

“Will you help me?”

The silence stretched. He tilted his head slightly, something moving behind those pale eyes.

"That depends," he said finally.

My stomach tightened. "On what?"

The smile that crossed his face was slow and deliberate, and something about it made the air in the room feel thinner.

"On what you're willing to give me in return."