Page 16 of Intrigue (Dark Syndicate #4)

Selene

I wake with the sheets tangled around my legs. And sweat cooling against my skin. The scent of him still clings to me, no matter how many times I tell myself it’s gone. Sandro lingers like a haunting phantom, pressing against my ribs, curling around my throat. My stomach twists. I should get up.

Instead, I close my eyes. Just for a second.

The sounds of the apartment settle around me, from the scrape of a spatula to the clink of plates and the low hum of Cassian singing under his breath in the kitchen. I inhale. It should be comforting. It used to be comforting. Now it chokes me with something sharp and bitter.

I swallow it down and force myself up. The sheets slip away, and I push my hair from my face, fingers trembling. The moment my feet hit the floor, I regret it.

I force myself forward anyway.

Cassian looks up as I enter the kitchen. A warm smile breaks across his face, bright and easy, like he doesn’t see the cracks. Or maybe he does and chooses to pretend they don’t exist. He stands over the stove, flipping eggs, barefoot, wearing the old t-shirt I love. The one I used to steal.

He also hasn’t been sleeping.

I see because I lie next to him every night and it is like I can hear everything he is thinking out loud. I see it in the way his smiles don’t reach his eyes anymore.

I swallow the lump in my throat.

“You’re up,” he says, tone light. “Thought I’d let you sleep in. Made breakfast.”

“Thanks.” My voice scrapes against my throat. I reach for a glass of water instead of looking at him.

“You’re quiet.”

I sip my water. Swallow. Try to steady my hands. “Bad dreams.”

His eyes move to mine. “Something like that?”

I nod. He studies me for a long moment before setting the spatula down and stepping closer. “Selene.”

I exhale slowly. “Don’t.”

His jaw tenses. “I told you not to worry about me. I have it under control.”

I squeeze my fingers around the glass. “How could I not worry? Because of Sandro’s interference, now you have a debt to pay wavering over your head. And you have less than a month to pay.”

Cassian’s throat bobs. He looks away for a second, rubbing the back of his neck before facing me again. “I just want you to trust me.”

I don’t hear the rest of what Cassian says. Something about lawyers. About options.

Options. Like we have any.

Alessandro doesn’t give options. He takes. He crushes.

And he’s doing it now.

“Selene?”

Cassian’s voice pulls me back. His brow is furrowed, concern tightening his features. I force myself to nod, to breathe.

But I don’t know if I still can. I set the glass down carefully, afraid of shattering it. “Cassian…”

He forces a smile, brushing a kiss against my forehead before pulling back. “Hey, we should forget about all of this. We have the dress fitting soon. I booked the appointment.”

I hesitate. “Right.”

“I was going to surprise you, but—” he scratches his jaw, his voice light, almost like he’s teasing, “I can’t afford to fly my parents in for the wedding.”

I snap my head up. “What?”

He shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “They wanted to come, but I’d rather put that money toward getting you the dress you deserve.”

A pit opens in my stomach. He doesn’t say it, but I know what it means. He’s sacrificing for me.

And I know what I have to do.

My hands curl into fists. I hate it. Hate that I already made my choice before I walked into this kitchen. Hate that I knew it the second I walked into Sandro’s office last night, as he told me exactly how he would break me. How I would break Cassian. Hate that it’s working.

“I need to go out for a bit with Gia. Don’t wait up,” I say quietly.

Cassian nods understandingly, without questioning why I'm suddenly meeting my old friend Gia, especially after I’d previously told him of our falling out before I left Florence.

He's always been like that—never pressing when unsure. And not I’m certains he is assuming that Gia and I have reconciled.

His concern is always for my happiness, evident in every thoughtful gesture.

It hurts, knowing he cares when he shouldn't.

It breaks my heart in ways I can barely comprehend.

I turn before he can see the truth on my face.

***

Sandro’s penthouse is exactly how I remember it. Too much. Too clean. Too perfectly curated to look effortless.

I step inside, pulse thudding in my throat. I hate that I’m here. I hate that I came anyway.

“Selene?”

“Hello, Sandro.”

His eyes narrow. “How did you get past my passcode?”

I give a small, knowing smile. “Like I’d ever forget your birthday. Even if you pretend it doesn’t matter, it’s stuck in my memory.”

I watch with bated breath as a shadowy figure rises from the darkness.

He’s tall but delightfully so and when he straightens, I feel my toes curl.

He steps forward, one hand held at a reasonable distance away from his face and the other kept suspiciously close to his side.

I take him all in at once. The white T shirt stretches evenly against his very muscular chest, looking like he never takes it off.

It’s clean so it’s not really about that.

It’s in how it fits him so well, how it seems to have been made just for him.

He pairs this with jeans that hang low on his waist, clinging to his hips like a fucking invitation.

Tonight, in the cool stillness of his house, he looks impossibly delicious—dangerous, edible, a predator I want to sink my teeth into and let devour me whole.

“How are you here right now?” he asks. His tone is casual and calm and even though there’s still a tinge of surprise in them, he sounds more curious, frighteningly so, like he’s already calculating how to pin me down and take me.

I shrug off my jacket, letting it slide off slowly, a tease I know he’ll catch, and toss it on his couch. “What? You didn’t think you were the only one capable of breaking into a house, did you?”

“Ah.” He rakes a hand through his hair as he regards me carefully, eyes glinting with something dark and hungry. “You should be thankful I didn’t shoot you on sight. Most people usually avoid breaking into my place.”

“They’re not me.”

“I see.” That’s the only thing he says before stopping in front of me.

I have to strain my neck to catch the look in his eyes.

He’s impressed. That’s the look he gives me even as he tries to hide it by curving his mouth to a frown—a shitty mask for the lust pooling in his eyes.

“I don’t suppose you’re here to check out the architecture, so what are you doing here? ”

I spread my arms out, letting him drink me in. “Well, what do you think?”

I don’t know if I’m dressed inappropriately for the occasion.

Sandro has shown, every single time, that he wants me back in his bed, that he craves me there, sprawled out, helpless under him.

He leverages the power he has over me and has me falling at his knees every single time, a puppet to his twisted game.

The sex had been a brute result of that power, but today, at home, I decided I needed to get that power back, to make my own choices and decisions without having to follow him like some lost dog.

Tonight is about taking the power—ripping it from his hands and making him beg for once.

I’m dressed in a tight wrap dress, the color of which I hope brings out my eyes well enough, screaming fuck me in every shade.

I’d taken extra time on my hair to make it softer and cool and now it sits framing my face and neck, brushing my skin like a whispered promise.

The dress is low cut so my tits spill out just enough to make him twitch, but Sandro doesn’t quite acknowledge this.

Instead, he gives me a long look, one infused with a kind of indifference that’s staggering, a lie so blatant it’s almost cruel.

“You’re here for a reason,” he murmurs. “Speak.”

I clench my fists.

“I need you to fix this,” I grit out.

A side of his lips curves up. “Fix what?”

“You know what,” I snap. “The gallery. Cassian. Everything you’ve done.”

He exhales, dragging his eyes over me like he’s memorizing every inch of my destruction.

Then he leans in. “And what will you give me in return?”

My breath catches. I knew this was coming. I hate that my body reacts before my brain does.

“I can’t do a year, but I can give you a month,” I whisper.

He shakes his head. “That’s not going to work for me. One month isn’t enough.”

“Please, Sandro. Just leave us alone. Leave Cassian alone. You don’t even want me, you just enjoy breaking people, bending them until they snap. So here I am, as you asked, giving you a month. That’s all I have to give. All I will ever give.”

And then it will be over. Cassian and I can go back to our lives. Back to normal. Away from my father. Away from Sandro. Away from all of this. At least, that’s what I tell myself—over and over—like a mantra I’m afraid to stop repeating, because if I do, the doubt might creep in.

Something glints in his eyes, hurt, maybe, but it’s gone before I can be sure it was ever there.

“You think I don’t care for you?”

He reaches for my face. I pull back.

His eyes darken. “You hate me, don’t you?”

I swallow hard. “More than you’ll ever know.”

His lips barely graze mine, a whisper of contact before he murmurs—

“Then prove it.”

Then with more force, his hands frame my face, his fingers sliding through my hair, tucking it behind my ears, too gentle, too careful, a contradiction to everything I know he is.

Then he leans in, his breath warm against my skin.

“Say it,” he whispers.

I swallow again. “Say what?”

“That you don’t want this.”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out. Because I have come to realize that I can’t lie to him. I’ve never been able to successfully. He reads me like a book.

His fingers trail along my arm, like he’s memorizing the shape of my surrender.

“Tell me to leave you alone,” he whispers. “Tell me you’ll go back to him, pretend none of this ever happened.”

I clench my fists. “I—”