Chapter 10 – Rules of Engagement

It had been three days since Matteo kissed her, or nearly had.

Elise hadn’t let it happen. But she also hadn’t stopped him early enough to make her intentions clear.

She knew the kind of men she was dealing with. Letting them get close was part of the game — but with Matteo, it had felt different. His calm was calculated, yes, but there had been something unnervingly patient beneath it. A willingness to wait for her to come to him. To need him.

And that was more dangerous than Cassian’s fire.

So tonight, Elise was choosing her battlefield.

The D’Amaro gentlemen’s club had long been off-limits to women like her — at least, the kind who didn’t kneel or nod on command. But she’d received an invitation, unsigned but unmistakable in its implication.

Cassian wanted to see her.

She intended to make him regret it.

The club wasn’t on any map.

You had to know someone. Or own someone. Or owe someone.

Elise arrived without fanfare, slipping through the velvet-curtained entrance in a black silk halter dress that glinted like spilled ink. No one announced her. But every head turned.

Inside, the air was thick with curated luxury — crystal chandeliers casting molten light across marble floors, shadows softened by jazz and whiskey. Men in tailored suits clustered near the fire. Women lounged like ornaments on velvet. It was a battlefield disguised as elegance.

She spotted Cassian before he saw her.

He stood near the bar, speaking to a man Elise recognised from the D’Amaro shipping ledger — a middle-tier fixer with a taste for teenage girls and high-interest debt. Cassian’s posture was relaxed, but his jaw ticked. When he felt Elise enter the room, he turned — as if magnetised.

His eyes moved slowly over her.

No hunger this time.

Just quiet, mounting pressure.

She smiled and walked past him.

Cassian watched.

So did Matteo.

He sat in the upper gallery, alone in the shadows, nursing a bourbon and not pretending to do anything else.

—

She took her place on one of the central lounges, draping herself across the leather like it had been shaped for her. The slit of her dress fell open across one thigh, her back arched just enough to expose the grace in her posture. A server stilled mid-step. A banker dropped his sentence mid-word.

Conversation drifted her way in slow waves — introductions, compliments, measured attempts at flirtation.

She answered some. Ignored others.

She was watching Cassian.

And he was failing to ignore it.

He broke off his conversation within minutes, leaving the bar to cross the room toward her. Matteo saw it happen — the tension in his nephew’s spine, the way his hands flexed at his sides like they wanted something they weren’t allowed to reach.

Cassian stopped in front of her.

“Elise.”

“Cassian.”

“You came without telling me.”

“I didn’t realise I needed permission.”

His gaze flicked to the man beside her — a minor hedge fund son trying too hard to impress her.

Cassian’s jaw flexed.

“You’re not bored yet?” he asked her.

She tilted her head. “If I were, you’d know.”

“Walk with me.”

She stood — not because he asked, but because she’d planned to. She didn’t say goodbye to the man beside her. He didn’t matter.

They moved through the hall toward the back terrace. The glass doors opened to a city skyline that glittered like it had secrets to keep.

Cassian didn’t touch her. But she felt it.

He was close enough to burn.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said quietly.

She didn’t respond.

“You’re in my head,” he continued. “Even when I don’t want you there.”

“Maybe you should be more careful where you leave the door open.”

He turned to her.

His face, so controlled in public, cracked for just a second.

“Elise. You’re dangerous.”

“I warned you.”

“And I didn’t listen.”

She stepped closer, just enough that he had to fight not to react. “What is it you think you want from me, Cassian?”

He didn’t answer.

So she leaned in, lips brushing the shell of his ear.

“You want me to belong to you,” she whispered. “But you don’t know what it means to earn something like me.”

His breath caught — audibly. His jaw shifted once, like he wanted to speak but couldn’t. His hand lifted, then stopped halfway to her waist before falling again.

“I’d burn for you,” he said, voice hoarse.

She pulled back slowly, her eyes searching his face.

And for the first time, she saw it.

Not just want.

Fear.

Not of her power — but of what she made him feel.

She could use that.

She stepped even closer, her hand rising to rest on his chest, above the steady hammer of his heart.

“Then burn,” she said.

She didn’t kiss him.

She didn’t have to.

—

Matteo watched it unfold from above — the way Cassian leaned into her, the way Elise didn’t flinch. It wasn’t just a seduction. It was a shift in gravity.

She had become the centre.

And both men were being pulled in.

He took another sip of bourbon.

The girl was playing them both.

And she was good at it.

But Matteo wasn’t just watching anymore.

He wondered — not for the first time — what would happen if she ever stopped playing.

And whether he’d survive it.

—

It was nearly midnight when Elise returned to the estate.

The club’s perfume still clung to her skin. Her heels clicked lightly over the marble floor as she crossed the foyer, heading toward the stairs.

Then she saw it.

A small box.

Unmarked.

Placed at the centre of her bed.

Her stomach turned.

She closed the door behind her and approached it slowly.

Lifted the lid.

Inside, cushioned in dark velvet, lay a single black diamond earring.

The match to the one she’d woken up wearing the night she came back.

Her hands went cold.

She hadn’t told anyone about that earring. Hadn’t worn it. Hadn’t even touched it again after hiding it away in her drawer, still unsure if it was real or some hallucination of trauma.

But this one was real too.

Identical.

Perfect.

And it should not exist.

There was no note.

No card.

No explanation.

Just the second earring — heavy, expensive, and laced with implications.

Her fingers hovered above it.

Then curled into a fist.

Someone knew.

Someone else remembered.

Or worse — someone had been watching all along.