Chapter 7

Livia Solene

My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic, deafening drumbeat while his light brown eyes lock straight onto mine. The playful, intoxicating warmth that usually dances in his gaze is entirely gone, replaced by an absolute blankness. 

He stands there while I am shivering beneath the white hotel sheets, staring into a face that suddenly feels terrifyingly unreadable. 

He is quiet. He doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t laugh or try to twist my words. He just stands there, confirming the one devastating truth I refuse to accept.

He’s married.

I drop my gaze down to his hands, searching frantically for any sign of a gold band that I did back in San Diego, any physical anchor to reality, but there is nothing there except the intricate, sweeping black tattoos wrapping around his thick fingers and massive wrists. 

I grip the edges of the white comforter, pulling it tighter around my naked, trembling body like a shield against a world that is aggressively caving in on me.

“Dante, answer me.” My voice cracks, laced with a pathetic, desperate edge. 

I am still begging him to lie to me. Hoping with every fiber of my being that he will shake his head, laugh it off, and tell me no. Hoping that whatever twisted joke this is will dissolve, or that the "wife" he casually threw into conversation earlier was just a lie told to silence Vincent. Hoping that I am the only woman he’s seeing.

“I am married.”

The three simple words detonate inside my chest, shattering my world into a million jagged, bleeding pieces. It isn't just the shock of betrayal from the man who gave me three days of pure, unadulterated heaven in San Diego, the man who worshipped my body and made me feel like a living goddess, that breaks me. 

It is the suffocating, nauseating horror of the realization crashing down on my shoulders. I have become the very thing I despise. I have crossed the exact line that has tortured me for four years. I have stepped willingly into the shoes of the vile, predatory mistresses who tore my life apart.

“Oh, God, Dante.”

The air leaves my lungs in a sharp, painful gasp. I yank the comforter away, my bare skin instantly meeting the cold, conditioned air of the suite. My hands shake with such violent tremors that my fingers barely function as I grab my ruined silk dress off the floor. I scramble into it, pulling the fabric up over my shoulders, and desperately try to yank the back zipper up. It snags halfway, my frantic movements only making it worse, while I shake my head at Dante over and over again, completely rejecting the sight of him.

He slowly steps forward, his feet making no sound on the plush carpet, and walks in my direction with his hands raised slightly in a placating gesture.

“Livia, hear me out first—”

“No!” I hiss, the syllable tearing raw from my throat. I snap my head back, glaring straight into his intense eyes with all the fury and self-loathing I possess. “I know I am being a hypocrite. I know I am a married woman myself, tied to a bastard who treats me like garbage, but I don’t want to be your mistress, Dante.”

Panic blurs my vision. In a blind rush of survival instinct, I drop to my knees where his discarded trousers lie pooled on the floor. I thrust my hand deep into the pocket, searching frantically for the scrap of sheer black lace he stripped off me earlier. I need them. I cannot walk out of this hotel room, bare and exposed. But my fingers brush empty air. The pocket is bare.

Before I can dive for the other side, Dante’s heavy hand catches the fabric of his pants, and he casually throws them farther away out of my reach, his expression tightening.

“Livia, my marriage is a—”

“You are married, Dante!” I cut him off, my voice cracking under the sheer weight of my fury and heartbreak. I push myself up to my feet, stumbling slightly as I point a shaking finger at him. “I refuse to be the reason for any woman to cry! I will not do anything to disrespect a wife, because I know how it feels, Dante!”

The memory flares in my mind with blinding clarity, searing every raw nerve. All of Vincent’s mistresses, every single one of them, knew the truth. They knew he was married to me, knew the vows he took, and yet they still crawled into his bed, spreading their legs for my husband.

They laughed at me, flaunted their youth, and completely and utterly degraded me as a woman, reducing my entire existence to a pathetic joke.

And now? What’s the difference between them and me? What makes my sin any cleaner just because Dante made me feel special in Balboa Park? In his city?

“Livia, can you just please listen to me–”

“I-I don’t want to see your face anymore, Dante!” I sob out, backing away until the back of my legs hit the edge of the king-sized bed. “Please leave me alone. Forget about this. Forget what happened between us. This is all wrong! Everything about this is wrong!”

My eyes drop to the floor, scanning frantically for my purse. I dive down, snatching the leather bag off the carpet, and spin entirely on my heel. I turn my back on him. I don’t care anymore that I am completely bare beneath my dress. 

That my secret is sitting right there in his pocket. The only thing vibrating through my veins is an overwhelming, suffocating need to escape this room, to erase the last hour, and to run back to my miserable cage before Vincent’s shadow catches up to me.

“Livia, no.”

Dante moves with terrifying, predatory speed. His large, calloused hand shoots out, clamping around my wrist with iron-clad strength, stopping me dead in my tracks just inches from the heavy wooden door.

“If you knew that I am married,” he demands, his low baritone vibrating with a dark, intense challenge, “are you telling me you wouldn't have agreed to my offer?”

I whip my head back to look at him, my chest heaving, utterly stunned and horrified that he would even dare to ask me such a twisted question. 

How can he even ask that?

He is kind. He is attentive. He is quite literally the best, most mesmerizing man I have ever laid eyes on. He treated me like royalty in San Diego, hanging onto my every word about art and fashion, looking at me with a reverence that made me feel alive. He cares for me with a fierce, unwavering intensity that my own husband wouldn't muster if my life depended on it.

He is everything Vincent is not, and yet, right underneath that breathtaking surface, he is cut from the exact same cloth. He has a wife waiting in the shadows. He is no different from the monster I am trying to escape.

“If I had known that you were married, Dante,” I whisper, my voice dripping with absolute disappointment, “I wouldn't have even looked at you.”

I wrench my wrist backward with all my might, ripping my hand free from his grip. I don't give him a single second to reply. I fling my weight against the heavy wooden door, pulling it open without checking the corridor outside, and sprint blindly toward the elevators.

My feet slap frantically against the floor. I slam my palm against the button over and over again, my breath coming in short, ragged gasps as my mind screams at me to move faster. 

The silver doors slide open instantly. I hurl myself inside, jamming my finger down on the button for the first floor.

Before the doors can slide shut, Dante appears in the hallway, his tall, broad frame surging forward like he’s ready to tear the metal apart to get to me. I shake my head violently, pressing my back flat against the cold steel wall of the elevator cab, holding my hands up in a desperate barrier.

“Don't see me again,” I choke out.

He freezes. He stops dead in his tracks just a few feet away, watching me with a dark, agonizing storm brewing in his light brown eyes, letting me go.... The heavy metal doors glide together smoothly, sealing him out of my sight.

I feel so utterly helpless, so profoundly stupid. I risked everything. I broke my own moral code, defied my upbringing, and cheated on my husband for what? To turn around and find out I am nothing more than a cheap home-wrecker? To inflict the exact same agonizing pain on another innocent woman that I have wept over for four miserable years?

The very first time I met Dante in San Diego, every internal alarm bell in my soul screamed that he was dangerous, that letting him touch me would lead to absolute ruin. And yet I ignored every warning sign. I let him pull me into his orbit, letting him make me feel cherished, entirely content to live in blissful ignorance.

Now look at where I am. Wearing a messy dress, shivering, and drowning in a suffocating wave of toxic guilt. 

I didn't know. God as my witness, I had no earthly idea he was bound to someone else. Why didn't I ask him? Why was I so blinded by his touch, so desperate to escape my gilded cage, that I didn't even care to check his background? 

He even took me to his penthouse in San Diego, acting like an absolute king of his own domain! How could I have been so blind?

The elevator doors slide open, revealing the grand, opulent hallway of the five-star hotel. I scramble to my feet before anyone can look too closely at me, keeping my head ducked low as I rush past the polished marble pillars and terrified front desk clerks. 

I ignore the curious, judgmental stares of the wealthy patrons lounging in the armchairs. I burst through the glass revolving doors out into the cool New York night air, my eyes scanning the street until I spot a vacant taxi idling at the curb.

I yank the back door open, slide into the leather seat, and slam the door shut.

“Where to, miss?” the driver asks, glancing at me suspiciously through the rearview mirror.

I rattle off my home address, my trembling fingers instantly flying to the hem of my dress. I keep pulling the silk fabric down over my thighs, smoothing it out repeatedly with a frantic, obsessive motion, terrified that the fabric will ride up and expose the humiliating reality that I am completely bare underneath. The sheer exposure makes my cheeks burn with a scorching, mortifying heat. This is the absolute lowest point of my life.

The taxi weaves aggressively through the dense, honking Manhattan traffic, the neon lights of the city smearing into long, distorted streaks outside the window. Every second feels like an eternity. When the car finally pulls up in front of my high-rise building, I shove a wad of crumpled cash through the partition, not even waiting for change, and bolt out of the vehicle.

I race through the grand front doors, completely ignoring the doorman’s polite greeting, and shove my way into the elevator bank. I don’t care about the other residents standing nearby. I just need to get away. I need the cold, silent sanctuary of my room.

The second the penthouse doors open, I sprint straight inside, locking the heavy deadbolt behind me with a loud, metallic click. The apartment is dead silent, wrapped in an eerie, suffocating gloom. Vincent isn't back yet, still wrapped up in his own twisted affairs across the city.

I rush down the long hallway into the master bedroom and strip the ruined silk dress off my body, letting it drop to the floor in a lifeless heap. I turn on the shower in the master bathroom, cranking the handle all the way to cold. I step straight under the biting, freezing spray, letting the icy water hammer against my skin, desperately trying to wash away every lingering trace of Dante’s hands, his mouth, his scent. I scrub my skin until it turns raw and red, but no matter how hard I rub, I can’t wash away the stinging guilt clinging to my bones.

Ten minutes later, I step out wrapped in a thick towel, dry my hair, and crawl into bed wearing my softest, comfiest oversized grey sweater and matching sweatpants. I pull the heavy duvet up to my chin, staring up at the dark ceiling as the adrenaline finally begins to drain out of my body, leaving behind a hollow, aching emptiness.

My phone, lying face-up on the mahogany nightstand, suddenly lights up the dark room with a blinding white glare.

I reach over slowly, picking the device up with trembling fingers. My stomach twists into a painful, suffocating knot the second I see the screen. It’s him. A flood of incoming messages and missed calls from Dante lights up the display in an endless, relentless stream. 

He isn't going to stop. He is far too intense, far too possessive, and far too determined to let me slip through his fingers.

Can’t he just find another woman? I think bitterly to myself, a fresh wave of tears stinging my eyes. Can’t he just go back to his wife and leave me alone to rot in my own misery? Why does he have to be so relentless?

Despite my better judgment, despite the screaming voice in my head telling me to throw the phone against the wall, my thumb betrays me. I can’t stop myself. I unlock the screen and tap open the chat thread, my eyes scanning the urgent, demanding words he typed out into the void.

“Mi reina, please answer my calls.”

“Let’s talk. Don't do this.”

“Don't run away from me, Livia. You belong with me.”

“Please meet me again. Let me explain everything.”

A heavy, jagged sob catches in my throat. I swallow hard, the lump in my neck burning like swallowed glass. I know if I reply, if I let him talk, his deep, rich baritone voice will melt my resolve and drag me right back into his arms. I know how dangerous he is.

So, I don't hesitate. I don't give myself time to second-guess.

My thumb moves deliberately across the screen. I select every single message, one by one, and hit delete, wiping his frantic pleas completely off my screen. Without pausing to breathe, I back out of the chat, pull up his contact card, and block his number entirely.

I toss the phone face down onto the far side of the mattress, rolling over to face the cold wall, and pull the heavy blankets over my head. But even in the absolute silence of the penthouse, the phantom warmth of his hands still burns against my skin.