Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Vivienne's Pov 

"Take your clothes off."

The command hit me like a bucket of ice water, completely shattering the dark, feverish haze of the elevator. I froze, my spine snapping straight. My hands instinctively tightened around the edges of his heavy cashmere coat, pulling it tight against my chest to cover the ruined silk gown.

Julian let out a harsh, exhausted breath. He stepped out of the elevator and onto the black marble of the penthouse, running a blood-stained hand through his dark hair. He didn't even look back at me.

"The dress, Vivienne," he said, his voice stripped of the hungry, feral edge from a moment ago, replaced by a chilling, transactional deadness. "It has Costa's blood on the hem. Take it off, throw it in the incinerator chute in your bathroom, and scrub the mess off your face. And lock your door."

He walked away, disappearing into the shadows of the west wing. The heavy oak doors clicked shut, plunging my side of the penthouse into a deafening silence.

I didn't sleep. I sat fully clothed in the center of my massive, cold bed, staring at the locked handle until the sun crept over the Manhattan skyline.

By noon the next day, the reality of my situation set in. I was entirely trapped. I had tried the private elevator—the panel glowed a steady, angry red, completely locked down. I tried the service doors in the kitchen. Deadbolted from the outside. My phone had no signal, the Wi-Fi was password protected, and the sheer glass windows offered a hundred-foot drop to the concrete below.

Do not touch my things. Do not make a sound. Stay out of my sight.

His rules from the day before echoed in my head. He wanted me to sit in my gilded cage and quietly lose my mind while he ran a criminal empire from the shadows. He wanted to break me through sheer isolation.

A slow, hot rage began to burn in the pit of my stomach. I walked out of the east wing, my bare feet silent against the cold floors.

The penthouse was immaculately clean. A flawless, untouched museum of gray and black.

I started with the kitchen. I grabbed a heavy cast-iron skillet and dragged it deliberately across the raw-edge marble island. The metal shrieked against the stone, leaving a long, jagged white scratch right through the center. I walked over to the liquor cabinet. I grabbed the crystal decanter of his prized, decades-old scotch, carried it to the sink, and poured every last drop down the drain. The sharp, peaty smell filled the air.

I wasn't done.

I found the central control tablet on the living room wall. I bypassed the security settings and linked it to the massive surround-sound system hidden in the walls. I cranked the volume dial as high as it would go and hit play on a heavy, thumping rock playlist.

The bass hit the floor like an earthquake. The sheer volume rattled the expensive modern art on the walls. The silence of his tomb was completely, violently shattered.

I stood in the center of the living room, my chest heaving, waiting.

It took exactly four minutes.

The private elevator doors practically blew off their hinges. Julian stormed into the penthouse. The icy, controlled billionaire mask was entirely gone. His tie was ripped off, his collar open, and his eyes were blazing with a fury so intense it made the air pressure in the room drop.

He didn't yell over the music. He marched straight to the wall panel, punched a code into the glass, and the music cut out so abruptly the sudden silence made my ears ring.

"Are you completely out of your mind?" he roared, spinning around to face me.

"You locked me in a cage!" I screamed right back, refusing to give an inch of ground. "You left me here like a dog! I am not one of your cartel soldiers, Julian, and I will not sit quietly in the corner while you play god with my life!"

He crossed the room in three massive strides, his shoes crunching over a glass I had intentionally shattered on the rug. He grabbed my upper arms, his grip bruising as he backed me up until my spine slammed hard against a concrete structural pillar.

"I locked you in to keep you alive!" he shouted, his face inches from mine. "Do you have any idea what happened last night? Costa knows I was at the Plaza. He knows you were with me. You think this is a game? You think scratching my counters proves you're tough? You wouldn't last five seconds on the streets I pull my power from!"

"Then let me go!" I thrashed against his hold, my nails biting into his wrists. "Let me walk out that door! I'd rather take my chances with Costa than spend another second suffocating in this house with a murderer!"

"You're not going anywhere!" he snarled, giving me a hard shake that knocked the breath from my lungs. "You signed the paper! You are mine!"

"I hate you!" I shrieked, slamming my fists against his solid chest, completely losing myself in the fight. I hit him again and again, but he didn't even try to block my hands. He just took it, his chest heaving, his eyes burning into mine. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate—"

He caught my wrists, pinning them flat against the cold concrete above my head.

The fight drained out of me in an instant, replaced by that terrifying, electric heat from the elevator. We were both panting, our chests rising and falling in unison. The rage rolling off him was suffocating, but beneath it was something entirely different. A raw, desperate hunger.

His eyes dropped to my mouth. He swallowed hard, his jaw clenching as he fought a visible, violent internal war.

"You think you hate me," he whispered, his voice jagged and breathless, his large body pressing flush against mine. "But you're looking at my mouth the exact same way you did last night. You're addicted to this fight just as much as I am, Vivienne."

I couldn't deny it. My heart was hammering a frantic, pathetic rhythm, and a dark, humiliating ache twisted in my stomach. I wanted to bite him. I wanted him to kiss me again.

He leaned in, his lips brushing my jawline, sending a violent shudder down my spine.

"But we aren't going to play today," he murmured, his breath hot against my ear.

He suddenly released my wrists and took a massive step back, leaving me shivering and completely untethered against the pillar. The absolute whiplash of his rejection felt like a slap.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, his face instantly snapping back to pure, dead ice.

"You aren't on lockdown just because of Costa," Julian said coldly, staring at the screen. "You're on lockdown because your father didn't just run with the money, Vivienne."

My stomach dropped to the floor. "What?"

Julian finally looked up, his blue eyes entirely devoid of mercy.

"Victor retaliated this morning," he said, his voice devoid of all emotion. "He just put a ten-million-dollar bounty on your head. And every hitman in the city is currently looking for my wife."