LOGINCade’s POVThe blindfold was on before the bus had fully stopped.Rough fabric, the kind that had been used before, smelling of something chemical and dark, pressed against my eyes and was secured at the back of my head with the practised efficiency of someone who had done this enough times that it had become a procedure rather than an event. I did not flinch. Did not move. Let it happen with the stillness of someone who had made a calculation and arrived at compliance as its only viable output.Because they had Scarlett.That was the calculation. That was the only number that mattered in the equation. Everything else, the blindfold, the bus, and the gun that had been pressing against my abdomen with increasing emphasis since we left the hotel corridor, all of it was secondary to the single fact that somewhere behind me in a Houston service corridor, Scarlett was standing with the fragile assurance of Biggy's word between her and whatever came next.The darkness behind the blindfold w
Cade’s POVScarlett's eyes were on mine.I held them.Tried to put into the holding of them everything I could not say in this corridor with five armed men and a gun at her head, the specific, complete, irreducible everything of what she was and what she meant and what the two heartbeats inside her meant and what this moment cost me in a currency I did not have enough of.Her chin lifted slightly.A small movement. Barely visible. But I knew her face well enough to read it, to understand that what she was communicating in that fractional lift of her chin was not surrender and not defeat but something closer to 'I am alright, I am still here, do what you need to do.'She was braver than anyone I had ever known."Fuck," I said.The word came out of me like something physical being expelled, all the fury and the helplessness and the specific anguish of the next movement I was about to make finding its only available exit.I turned toward the bus.My feet moved across the service corridor
Cade’s POVWe were close.Twenty feet from the service elevator, maybe less, the corridor was empty ahead of us, Russo's men waiting at the rear exit four floors below, the whole thing almost clean, almost contained, almost the version of this situation where everyone got out, and the consequences were manageable.Almost.I heard her phone hit the floor before I registered that she had dropped it, the specific hard crack of a device meeting concrete, and I turned in time to see Scarlett bend down to retrieve it with the instinct of someone whose phone contained things that mattered, that contained her mother's voice notes and her scan images and my note photographed and saved and all the small irreplaceable evidence of a life being lived.The bend took her below my eyeline for half a second.Half a second was enough.Biggy came out of the stairwell door to our left with the efficiency of someone who had been positioned there deliberately, who had known the service corridor was the exi
Cade’s POVI looked at what I had typed.Considered it.Scarlett was off the bed before I had finished considering it, crossing the room with the speed of someone who had read my intentions correctly from across the room, her hand closing around my wrist and yanking the phone downward with both hands and the full commitment of a woman who was not playing.I let her take it."I'm joking," I said, and felt the laugh arrive despite everything, genuine and slightly helpless, the specific laugh of a man who had been caught doing something ridiculous and could not entirely regret it. "I wasn't going to send that."She held the phone against her chest and looked at me with the expression she wore when she was assessing whether I was telling the truth, running the available evidence against her knowledge of my established patterns."I know you, Cade," she said. "You were absolutely going to send that.""Well," I admitted, because she was right and lying about it would have been insulting to b
Cade’s POVThe message notification sat on her screen like a small, deliberate provocation.Scarlett looked at it and looked away, which told me everything I needed to know about whether she had already read the preview on the lock screen, which she had, and whether she intended to make this easy for me, which she did not."Go on," I said. "Check your message.""No." She kept her eyes deliberately elsewhere, performing disinterest with the specific quality of someone very interested. "I'll check it when I want to.""I insist.""And I said no." She turned to look at me then, the fire in her eyes the particular fire of someone who has decided on a position and is not entertaining a review of it.I looked at her for exactly one second.Then I reached past her arm and took the phone from her back pocket."Cade." She grabbed for it immediately, both hands, quick and serious. "Give it back."I raised my arm.She jumped, fingers closing on air, approximately four inches below the phone."You
Scarlett’s POV"I swear," he said, "I will cut his tongue out." His grip on my wrists tightened fractionally, not painfully, just with the increased pressure of someone whose body was expressing what their voice was trying to keep controlled. "You are mine. Mine alone. That has not changed because he showed you a rooftop and smiled at you.""You won't do anything," I said."You know me, Scarlett." His forehead dropped toward mine, not touching, just close, the proximity of something that wanted to close the distance and was holding itself at the last inch. "I don't bluff. Dare me, and I will serve you his tongue on a silver platter.""I dare you," I said."Scarlett." My name came out of him the way it sometimes did, like a sound he had not decided to make, like the word itself had escaped before he could route it through anything more controlled, a low, rough thing that came from somewhere below the anger and the jealousy and all the managed surfaces.I looked at him, at the dark eyes
Scarlett’s POVI'd never hit anyone in my life. Never raised my hand in violence. But the rage inside me needed somewhere to go, and Cade's face was there."Don't ever call me that again," I said, voice shaking. "That's what he called me. That's what the man who raped me called me while he painted
Cade's POVThe villa felt like a tomb.I couldn't stand still. Couldn't sit. Couldn't do anything except pace the length of the operating room while Russo's men spread blueprints across every available surface and spoke in hushed, urgent Italian that I only half-heard.Giovanni's architectural plan
Scarlett's POVA billionaire.The word circled my mind like a vulture, refusing to land, refusing to make sense. I kept testing it, rolling it around in my thoughts like a stone I'd found that might be precious or might be glass.One billion, two hundred and two thousand dollars.The number was so
Scarlett's POVThe jet's cabin felt like a tomb.I sat in the window seat, as far from everyone else as the confined space allowed, staring at nothing. My reflection in the window showed a stranger. Hair still perfect from the styling Silvio's staff had done. Silk dress still clinging to my body. M







