Chapter 3

Lilith’s POV

I did not sleep easily that night. I kept turning from side to side, feeling the wrap of a tide around me.

It felt heavy, dark, and too warm in all the wrong places, and in the midst of that darkness, he appeared.

Not Lucian.

It was the stranger from the gala.

The same man whose eyes had met mine across the ballroom, those set eyes that carried a shine that immediately recognized to be different from what I was used to.

They were eyes that didn’t demand, didn’t claim, only saw.

Again… In this particular dream, I wasn't Don's wife. I wasn’t property.

I was just a woman bare, alive, trembling under a gaze that carried no threats, only a sense of knowing.

It was like he could see through me. Like…like he somehow knew my story.

It felt like an answer to a question I had been too afraid to ask: what would it be like to be with a man who wasn’t him?

He reached for me, fingers tracing the side of my face like he was trying to remember what gentleness felt like.

“Tell me what you want,” he whispered.

The moment the question left his lips, I wanted to answer right away.

I wanted to share every single experience and thought I had kept bottled inside me all these years, but my voice refused.

My body spoke instead, arching toward a warmth I didn’t recognize.

Then a fire came, not the one that took the Laurent's, but another kind.

This one filled my lungs with a longing that I found weird but recongized all the same.

As soon as I let out the third gasp, I jerked back to life again.

My eyes blinked many times as light seeped in through the curtains, settling over the same white ceiling I had stared at for years.

I could feel my chest rising too fast; my pulse refused to slow.

“Why was I even dreaming about a total stranger?”

“What do I even label this?”

I mean…. Why him? Why now?

What was so different.

I pressed a hand to my heart as if I could hold it still.

“He’s just a man,” I finally whispered to convince myself. “He was just another man”

As true as this line was supposed to be, it didn't feel so me. It was not feeling like he was just another man, neither was he even speaking or appearing in dreams like it.

Right from that second I set my eyes on him, something had switched. Yes…I know it sounded just like what one read in books and watched in movies but that was the truth.

Maybe staying so long in this house had made me weird.

Made me see things or events that shouldn't be special as special or… maybe he was really special.

Because for the first time in years, after I looked into those eyes, I had felt something that didn’t come from fear.

Later that morning, I dressed myself up for once, a small rebellion no one would notice … and went downstairs.

In the kitchen, the maids became stiffer as I entered.

They waited for instruction, lowering their eyes.

I ignored the tension and reached for the knife.

Cooking was the one thing that still felt like mine, and for a moment, it almost smelled like freedom.

Not too long after that, Lucian’s voice vibrated through the hall…. harsh, low, furious as usual.

“That fucking traitor.” He cursed. “He had the nerve to show his face?”

The knife slipped mistakenly from my hand and when I looked down a thin line of red was already blooming across my finger.

I didn’t flinch. Pain was something my body had grown to understand.

After that, I heard the whisper of one of the maids to another of her colleagues close by.

“Signor.”

At the sound of that one word my face almost rumple

Brother?

The word made my breath still.

No wonder Lucian had been so irritable lately.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about this brother of his, and I could tell he must be some kind of hothead for Lucian of all people to be so uncomfortable at the sound of his name, there was always this unease whenever he spoke of the boy whom he always called a never do well.

But judging from experience, when Lucian hated someone it mostly meant the person wasn't that bad… but then I should probably not be thinking this way.

Later that day, I escaped the house under the pretense of visiting the orphanage.

My major source of joy since I came to stay in this prison was visiting the orphanage.

The laughter of children, the smell of chalk and sunlight made me ache with something dangerously close to peace.

I painted beside a little girl named Anya, her fingers smudged with blue paint, her smile missing a tooth.

And for a fleeting moment, I remembered what safety once felt like again.

After the visit, I called Sophie.

She was the only one left who remembered me before I became Lilith Verona.

“Lunch? ” I asked.

“Always, ” she said. “Give me thirty. ”

I chose a quiet place uptown, Italian.

I took a booth by the window and I ordered some wine and appetizers.

Sophie texted: “Running late. Ten minutes max,”

I smiled and texted back: “Don’t get kidnapped.”

I excused myself to the restroom.

The hallway was quite dim and lined with dark wood, it was clean, and empty.

I walked slowly, my heels soft against the floor.

I turned the corner and stopped.

Not because I wanted to, but because of what suddenly greeted my eyes…because of who greeted my eyes.

The second thing that stopped was my heart. It was him.

He was there, the stranger from the gala, the same man from my dream.

He was there. Leaning against the wall like he owned the place. He didn't look surprised to see me. He looked... patient. My breath caught, but he didn't speak, and I didn't either.

The silence continued to stretch between us.

He stepped forward, slowly and with confidence.

“Fancy meeting you here, Mrs. Verona," he said, his low voice not sounding surprised in the least, as if he had been expecting me.

Every instinct told me to run. Instead, I stood my ground. “Are you following me?”

That same dark amusement lit his gaze. “Now why would I do that?”

There was something in his tone…no it was hardly pity, neither was it naked lust….it felt like he was talking to the hurt place inside of me.

It wasn’t what he said. It was how he said it.

Like he understood what it cost to keep breathing in a world that belonged to someone else.

After some time, I drew a shaky breath again and nodded once. “Maybe I’m just lost.”

“Maybe we both are,” he murmured.

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. When his gaze dropped briefly to my lips, I felt it pull…. but this time, it wasn’t a rush of hunger. It was awareness.

He didn’t touch me. Not yet. But when he finally leaned in, his voice brushed my ear.

When he took the final step towards me,

I shifted with my back gently hitting the wall.

“Who are you? ” I finally asked.

He didn’t answer. Instead, his eyes dropped to my mouth, and the air instantly grew twice as thick.

I wanted to move, scream, leave, however none of these happened, I remained glued to the wall.

When he suddenly kissed me, it was not rough.

The feeling was deep and slow like it was like he had been waiting for it for years.

Like he was asking for permission, he already knew I would give.

For one terrifying, exhilarating second, I hesitated. Then, the thought of Lucian’s ownership, of his cold, claiming touch, flashed in my mind. And in that moment, kissing this man back didn’t feel like a betrayal of myself, but a reclamation. My body wasn’t betraying me; it was finally, finally listening to me.

One of my hands rested on his chest, while the other was just there and not pushing.

My lips parted and my knees started to grow weak.

Then just when his hand started to lower to my waist, what sounded next was the sudden ring of my phone.

We froze at the same time. The heat between us snapped like a wire.

He paused, withdrew and started to smooth his shirt, his attitude still composed like nothing had happened.

Right after then, just like he did at the gala, he turned without another word and started to walk away.

And as for me, all I could do was remain there with my heart racing, my lips tingling, and my chest rising and falling like a faulty pendulum. .

I didn’t bother checking my phone.

I just saw myself leaning with my head against the wall, my eyes completely shut and my breath shaking.

I should have walked away.

I should have just turned and never looked back.

Instead…. I didn't, I…allowed myself to experience the taste of danger when it smiled.

And now, I finally knew what I had been starving for the first time in almost a decade, and it was not Lucian, but something about his voice brushed an old memory I couldn’t place