Chapter 4

(Leandro’s Pov)

I woke up around 8:16am. I lay still for three seconds and ran through what I could remember. I couldn't remember a single thing about how I got here.

“Where am I?”

I was still wondering where I was and then, suddenly I felt it. A manicured finger moving slowly across my chest in the most seductive way.

I got up from the bed and looked and I saw a totally naked woman on my bed. 

I jumped off from the bed, and the room tilted. I had to grab the bedpost with one hand while the headache hit.

The lady was lying across the sheets, watching me with her chin propped in her hand and a slow smile on her face. 

I had never seen her before in my life, with dark hair and an expensive makeup that had partially smeared overnight, wearing nothing but a sheet she was holding loosely at her waist.

She looked at me the way someone looks at something they're proud of owning. "Look who is awake” she said slowly. “Good morning sweet dick”

"Who are you?" I asked roughly as I looked around the room. My jacket was on the floor, my shirt beside it, my shoes near the door. 

"Where am I? What is this room?" She tilted her head slowly as she smiled again.

"You don't remember?" She sounded more amused than concerned. 

"We had quite a night yesterday, just you and I." She stretched one arm across the empty side of the bed, casually and satisfied. 

"Oh damn, you are so good in bed, by the way. Your dick tastes so good, I mean that sincerely."

The headache pulsed again. I pressed two fingers against my temple and looked at her, trying to locate a single memory from the night before that could explain how I had ended up in this room with this woman. 

But I couldn't remember. "Look, I don't know you," I said. "I have never met you before. I don't… " I stopped. 

My mouth tasted chemical and underneath the headache there was a heaviness in my limbs that wasn't tiredness, a sluggishness that sat too deep in my muscles. I knew what that felt like and then I realised ‘I was drugged. Someone drugged me last night.’

The bedroom door opened and someone just walked in. 

I turned around and behold, it was Tessa Ravenscroft.

She closed the door behind her and stood in the frame of it, dressed and composed, with a coffee cup in one hand, and looked at me across the room with an expression that told me everything before she said a single word.

She wasn't surprised to see me here too.

She had known I would be here when she opened that door. "Oh, you are up already Leandro," she said pleasantly.

That was when I remembered vividly all that happened. The drink I hadn't ordered, the room I didn't know and this woman I had never met, and Tessa standing in the doorway looking like someone who had just watched their plan land exactly where they aimed it.

I boiled in anger as I turned to the lady and ordered "Get out of here." 

Surprised, she glanced at Tessa who gave a small nod and then, gwoman gathered the sheet around herself without hurry and walked through a side door without looking back at either of us.

I waited until the door clicked shut. Then I looked at Tessa. "What did you put in my drink?"

She took a slow sip of her coffee and set the cup on the dresser beside her. 

"Leandro." "I said, what did you put in my drink, Tessa?"

"You're upset. That's understandable. But if you would just… "

"You drugged me." I said finally.

"You drugged me, put me in a room with a woman I don't know, and you watched me being used. That is what happened last night. That is what you did."

She met my eyes without flinching. That was always the thing about Tessa, she never flinched in situations like this. She had been engineered for exactly this kind of confrontation, trained through years of conflicts on politics, strategic marriages and family maneuvers.

Then she said, “Well we need to talk.”