Chapter 5

Lorenzo's POV

I had dealt with hostile men before;

Cartel lieutenants who had smuggled weapons under diplomatic plates. Politicians who had embezzled their way into debt and called it oversight. Rivals who had come to negotiating tables with knives hidden under their sleeves and smiles borrowed from men they'd had buried.

None of them had told me to go fuck myself four times in under twenty minutes.

None of them filled me with the urge to rip them apart but you see Jovan Rosfrith was setting records. I tried without luck thinking being his therapist was going to be easy.

Now I'm the one in need of s therapy session.

The therapist — Dr. Maren Holt, a woman I had retained specifically because her file said she had experience with high-conflict, involuntary subjects — sat across from him in the east wing sitting room with the resigned composure of someone who had not been warned adequately.

I watched from the doorway with a cigar in my hand.

"Mr. Rosfrith," she began, her voice measured, "I understand you didn't choose to be here—"

"Go fuck yourself." He cut her off rudely. “Better still choke on a tiny dick like Lorenzo's.”

What did my dick have to do with this therapy session?

“For the record, my dick isn't tiny and I can show you to back it my claims.” Jovan flipped me off.

“Mr. Jovan,”

“Dr Maren, you should know better than working for a man as cruel and disgusting like him.”

She paused then wrote something down. "That's a completely valid emotional response—"

"Is it? Is it valid? Because the man who arranged this circus is standing in the doorway like a shadow with a god complex, and I have been held against my will for three days, and you want to talk to me about emotional responses?" 

“If you would just calm down, we can see where the psychological problem stems from.”

“You're the mad one not me.” He pointed at me without looking at me. "Tell him to go fuck himself too, while you're at it. From me as a gift."

Dr. Holt turned to me. I stepped into the room and Jovan sat upright, showing no fear as he looked me dead in the eyes.

 I had catalogued this about him over three days. He was never more combative than when I was close.

I filed that information away. It would serve it's purpose in the nearest future, I was so certain.

"Dr. Holt," I said, "give us the room."

She gathered her notepad with admirable efficiency and left without question. That was why I paid her well.

I sat in the chair she had vacated, directly across from Jovan, and looked at him.

He looked back. His jaw was set. His eyes were doing the thing they did when he was furious and trying to look like he wasn't — that particular brightness, that controlled burn.

God, he was beautiful when he was angry.

I had thought this the first time I saw him, across a hotel bar, when he'd been twirling a wine glass and I'd been pretending to be someone named Matteo Rossi. 

I thought it now, sitting three feet from him in my own home, with everything between us that he didn't know was between us.

"I'm not doing therapy," he said.

"That's fine."

"I'm not talking to you."

"Also fine."

"I'm not—" He stopped then recalibrated. "Why aren't you arguing with me?"

"Because I don't argue with people who are afraid."

The temperature in the room dropped several degrees. Jovan Rosfrith sat up very straight.

"Say that again," he said softly.

"You heard me."

"I am not afraid of you."

"I didn't say you were afraid of me." I held his gaze. "I said you were afraid.”

He looked away first — not in defeat, more like a man who had decided that particular battlefield wasn't worth his blood today. His eyes moved to the window.

 "I want a phone," he said. “Or am I not allowed to make contact with the outside wod?”

"No." I replied. “You'll be granted one call when I see changes in you.”

"I want access to my email."

"No."

"I want—"

"You can want many things, Jovan." I stood then buttoned my jacket with the same unhurried precision I applied to everything. "For now, you have this room, three meals, and the freedom to be as unpleasant as you need to be."

"Oh, that's generous. That is genuinely generous. Three meals and a cage, how—"

"Two meals," I corrected pleasantly.

He blinked. "What?"

"You've just lost dinner. That language has a cost." I moved toward the door. "Tomorrow, we try again. Whether you speak or not is your choice but the food situation will depend entirely on your cooperation."

"You cannot—" His voice cracked with outrage. "You cannot withhold food from a person, that is — that's a violation, that's a human rights—"

"Good night, Jovan." 

"Go fuck yourself."

I paused at the door then turned back just enough to look at him over my shoulder.

"That's breakfast as well."

His sharp inhale followed me into the hallway. I walked to the end of the corridor before I allowed myself to exhale. Before the controlled expression I wore like armour loosened by a single fraction.

He had no idea.

That was the thing that lived beneath everything — the knowledge that sat in my chest like a coal, glowing and patient. He looked at me and saw a captor. A stranger with power and no conscience. A cold man who had taken him for reasons that hadn't yet been made clear.

He had no idea that I had been waiting for him for years. That I had built half of this empire with one eye always turned toward the question of when.

I lit a cigarette in the corridor and drew a long, slow drag.

Jovan Rosfrith was going to hate me for a very long time.

I had decided, somewhere in the space between wanting him and planning this, that I could survive his hatred.

What I could not survive was his indifference and whatever else he was — Jovan was not indifferent.