Chapter 8

Something inside me shattered.

Leo.

I gripped my skirt so hard my nails cut into my palm. I fought to keep my face still.

Four years. We'd both changed.

Leo's money had kept me fed and safe. I'd grown out of that skinny kid he remembered, into someone he wouldn't recognize on the street. I'd learned to do my makeup. No wonder he never saw it.

And he'd spent all this time behind a mask, a different man than the one I used to know. I'd never once thought to connect them.

We'd been standing across from each other this whole time. Neither of us knew.

I locked myself in my room that night, running the same question over and over. Do I tell him?

If I did, what would he think?

He'd know that the woman he tied up, drugged, and handed to another man's bed was the same woman he'd waited four years for.

That truth would break him.

Better to leave it buried. Let the lie stand. No one had to know.

Besides, I couldn't make the Leo I remembered, gentle, always putting me first, fit inside the man standing in front of me now. The one who threatened lives without blinking.

I decided to keep it to myself.

A few days later, family business pulled Cole away. He left Rio and Marco behind to run the estate.

Before he left, he told me, "Stay put while I'm gone. Go through Marco if you need anything. Don't wander off."

I nodded and watched his car pull away.

When I turned around, Rio was there, doing his rounds.

He stood by the gate in black, distant, like I wasn't even worth a glance.

I stared at the side of his face, and something twisted in my chest I couldn't name.

The man I'd hated all this time. The same man I'd waited four years for.