CHAPTER FIVE: The Slap

Nero didn't sleep.

He'd tried, for about an hour, lying in the dark replaying a conversation he should have forgotten by now. A dog assuming every hand is there to feed it. The words wouldn't leave him alone, circling until he gave up and called down for company instead, the way he always did when his own head became somewhere he didn't want to be.

Sabrina arrived within the hour, familiar, easy, exactly as uncomplicated as he needed tonight. She didn't argue with him. She didn't call him anything he hadn't asked to be called. It was simple, and it worked, and by the time the sky outside his window had started going grey at the edges, he still hadn't managed to stop thinking about a girl two floors away who'd looked at him like he was something she'd scraped off her shoe.

He told himself that meant nothing. He kept telling himself that until the sun was properly up and Sabrina was still there, laughing softly against his shoulder, and neither fact had managed to convince him of anything at all.

---

The staff came for Ivy at half five, same as the morning before, brisk and efficient with towels already folded.

She sent them away.

"I can bathe myself," she said, sharper than she meant to, and when the older woman hesitated, Ivy added, "I mean it. I don't want your hands on me this morning."

They left without arguing. She caught something in their faces on the way out, though. Not offense. Something closer to relief, like they'd been half expecting the refusal and were glad not to have to push through it.

She washed quickly, dressed in the plain clothes laid out for her, and made it to the east corridor with four minutes to spare before six. She told herself the tightness in her chest was nerves about whatever work he actually intended for her. She told herself that all the way down the stairs.

The sound reached her before she'd even turned the last corner.

A woman's voice, low, breathless, unmistakable even through a closed door.

Ivy stopped dead in the corridor.

She should have turned around. She knew that, even as she stood there, some old and useless curiosity keeping her feet planted where they were. She told herself she was only confirming what she already suspected, that knowing exactly what kind of man owned her now was practical information, not morbid interest.

She pushed the door open, barely an inch, just enough to see.

Just enough to see him.

Their eyes met across the room, hers wide with the shock of being caught, his dark and unreadable even now, even like this. For one endless second neither of them moved at all.

She stepped back so fast she nearly stumbled, heat crawling up her neck, and pulled the door shut behind her with a hand that wasn't steady.

She heard him say something low, unhurried, and a moment later the woman came out, adjusting her dress, sparing Ivy exactly one unbothered glance on her way past, like this was a Tuesday she'd lived through a hundred times before and would live through a hundred more.

Ivy stood frozen in the corridor, humiliation burning hotter than anything she'd felt since the headlights first hit her front garden.

The door opened fully a moment later. He stood there, shirt half buttoned, entirely unbothered, like she'd interrupted nothing more significant than a phone call.

"You're early," he said.

"I didn't mean to—" She stopped herself, furious that she'd been about to apologise for anything at all. "You told me to be here at six."

"I did." He studied her, something almost amused pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Did you enjoy the view?"

"Don't."

"No need to be embarrassed." He stepped closer, unhurried, the way he always moved, like the whole world was arranged for his convenience and always would be. "It's only a body, Miss Whitmore. You'll get used to seeing mine eventually. Might even end up wanting a closer look yourself, once you stop pretending you're not curious."

"I'm not curious about anything you have to offer."

"Your face says otherwise."

"My face says I think you're disgusting." She held her ground even as he closed the last of the distance between them, even as every instinct told her to step back. "You couldn't wait one night. One night, and you already had someone in your bed."

"I don't wait for anything I don't have to." His hand came up, slow, and brushed along her jaw, the same casual ownership as the night before, like her body was simply a thing he was entitled to touch whenever he pleased. "You'll learn that about me. In the meantime, I wouldn't mind finding out if you taste half as sharp as that mouth of yours sounds."

Her hand moved before her mind caught up to it.

The slap landed hard enough to snap his head to the side, hard enough that the sound of it cracked through the corridor and left her palm stinging.

For one terrible second, neither of them moved.

His head had barely turned back before the corridor changed completely.

The warmth drained out of his face like a light switching off. What was left underneath wasn't anger exactly. It was stiller than anger, colder, the kind of expression she imagined men saw right before something terrible happened to them and never got the chance to describe afterward.

He didn't touch his own jaw. Didn't acknowledge the sting that had to be there. He simply looked at her, and the silence stretched so long that somewhere down the corridor she heard a member of staff's footsteps stop dead and reverse direction, like even they could feel what was gathering in the air.

"Say something," she managed, her voice smaller than she wanted.

"No." His tone hadn't risen at all. That was worse than if it had. "I don't think I will."

He turned and walked back into his room without another word. The door didn't slam. It closed with a quiet, deliberate click that somehow frightened her more than if he'd thrown something against the wall.

Ivy stood alone in the corridor, her palm still stinging, her heart slamming so hard it hurt, and the full weight of what she'd just done finally landed all at once.

This wasn't Daniel back home, who would have taken a slap and sulked for an hour before apologising first. This wasn't a man whose worst possible response was silence and a bruised ego.

This was Nero Vitale, the man three separate strangers had warned her about before she'd even met him, the man her own father had begged on his knees in front of. And she had just struck him, in his own house, in front of his own staff, with absolutely nothing standing between her and whatever he decided to do about it.

Her legs finally gave out. She sat down hard against the corridor wall, hands shaking, and understood, with a clarity that turned her stomach

to ice, exactly what she had done.

She had just made the biggest mistake of her life.