Chapter 2

That night, I slept better at the hotel than I had in a long time.

After breakfast, I returned to Sebastian's house to pack.

When I walked in, he was carefully arranging pots of flowers on the balcony.

But Sebastian hated flowers. Soft, useless things, he'd called them.

I'd once begged him to buy me a bouquet. He'd told me that, as the Silvestri Don's daughter, I needed to outgrow such frivolous things.

He looked up when I came in.

"You're here. These flowers mean so much to Vivian that I had to set them out myself."

His voice was almost apologetic as he spoke about Vivian Rossi, his childhood sweetheart.

"Vivian's very territorial. She doesn't like having a stranger's belongings in the house. If anything's been damaged, I'll pay for it."

He led me to the basement, where all my things had been dumped in a heap.

The crystal ornament he'd given me for my birthday last year lay shattered.

The oil painting I'd coaxed him into making with me had been folded in half and tossed into a corner.

Sebastian stroked my hair and said softly, "I'm sorry. Vivian was careless. Check everything. I'll pay you back double for whatever's damaged."

Double.

But money wasn't what I needed.

A small bone carving lay broken in the dust in the corner.

I'd spent a whole month making it myself, a gift meant to show him how much I loved him.

It bore his profile, etched in fine detail, and the date I'd first seen him and fallen in love.

Every tiny cut held some of the love I'd poured into it.

I crouched and gathered up the ornament, the painting, the carving, and everything else that had been carelessly tossed aside and broken.

Sebastian looked as if he wanted to say something.

But I just stood up and spoke in a flat voice.

"That's everything that's damaged. Please throw it out for me, Mr. Moretti.

"Don't worry about paying me back. It's all garbage that should have been cleared out long ago."

The love I'd so foolishly kept offering him should have gone in the trash with it.

Sebastian's expression changed at once. For a moment, he looked at me in a way he never had before.

But I looked down. I had no interest in figuring out what it meant.

I just wanted to make things clear.

"Sebastian, let's end this for good. I'm going to..."

His phone rang before I could tell him about the arranged marriage.

The same sweet voice I'd heard before came through the line.

"I'm already at the restaurant. When are you getting here?"

Sebastian smiled with a tenderness I'd never seen him show me.

He didn't even wait for me to finish before heading straight for the door.

"Sorry. Something's come up. Send me the list when you've finished. I have to go."

He hurried off, leaving me to slowly make my way out alone.

But a guard stopped me at the gate.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. You don't have clearance."

Sebastian's gated community had tight security. No one got in or out without authorization.

I'd only been able to get in because he'd registered my taxi's license plate in advance.

I hadn't realized he'd already revoked my access.

The guard looked uncomfortable.

"If you're an invited guest, you can call the resident and ask him to authorize a visitor pass."

I nodded and walked away.

To leave through the gate, I would have to ask Sebastian for help.

But I didn't want to say another word to him.

After walking around the grounds, I finally found a stretch of fence I could climb.

The sharp spikes along the top cut me in several places, and the pain was fierce.

Still, I gritted my teeth and dropped down on the other side. Without stopping to straighten my clothes or fix my hair, I hurried into a taxi.

Back at the hotel, I asked the front desk for rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs.

As I cleaned the cuts, my phone lit up. Sebastian had posted on Instagram.

His was the only account I'd turned on post notifications for.

In the photo, he was impeccably dressed, clinking glasses with an equally elegant Vivian.

I stared at the screen for a moment. Then I blocked him, switched off my phone, and pressed the cotton swab hard against a cut.