"I am not a transaction." I set my palms flat on the table, leaning forward until the candlelight catches the fury I'm no longer trying to hide. "Whatever fever dream you've been nursing for the past two years, let me be very clear: I would rather watch this entire estate burn than climb into your bed as payment for a debt I never incurred."
Nico doesn't retreat. He doesn't flinch, doesn't shift in his chair, doesn't do any of the things a reasonable person would do when faced with a woman whose hands are shaking with the effort of not wrapping them around his throat.
Instead, he leans forward, mirroring my posture, and the candlelight turns his eyes warm and terrible.
"There she is," he says softly, and the tenderness makes my stomach clench. "The woman standing in front of me right now, with steel in her voice and fire behind her eyes—this is the woman I fell in love with."
I laugh. The sound is ugly, jagged, nothing like humor.
"Fell in love with me?" I repeat, letting the words drip with acid. "You don't even know me, Nico. You know a woman who gardened in your brother's estate and laughed at your jokes. That's not love. That's a fantasy you've been nursing because the real thing was never available to you."
His expression doesn't change, and somehow that's worse than if he'd flinched.
"You can tell yourself that," he says quietly. "If it helps you sleep tonight."
It won't. We both know it won't. Because the cruelty in my voice is the kind that only comes from hitting too close to something true, and the fact that he's not fighting back means he knows it too.
"What the fuck, Nico?" The words tear out of me before I can stop them, all pretense of control abandoned.
He holds my gaze, steady as a blade. "I'm telling you the truth. Something you've been starving for, whether you admit it or not."
"The truth?" I'm on my feet now, chair scraping back, hands shaking. "The truth is you kidnapped my fiancé. The truth is you're holding him hostage to get me into your bed. That's not love, that's—"
"Desperation," he finishes quietly. "I know what it is."
The admission stops me cold. I expected him to argue, to justify, to wrap his obsession in pretty paper. Not this. Not honesty that cuts both ways.
"You don't fall in love with someone by watching them from doorways, Nico." My voice wavers, and I hate it.
"Maybe." He tilts his head, considering. "But you'd know something about that, wouldn't you? Obsession that feels like love. Love that feels like drowning."
The accuracy of it steals my breath.
"Don't." The word comes out cracked. "Don't compare yourself to him."
"I'm not comparing myself to Dante. I'm comparing you to yourself." He leans forward, and his voice drops. "The woman I remember knew exactly what she was."
My hands are trembling. My chest feels hollow.
"You think you left because you were strong," he continues, softer now. "But we both know the truth. You left because staying would have consumed you completely. And now you're building a life with someone who will never consume anything—and calling it freedom."
If I accept Nico's terms, I save Ethan.
The thought surfaces like a body rising from deep water, impossible to ignore. Thirty days in this estate, in this man's orbit, in whatever version of his bed he imagines when he looks at me with that patient hunger.
I think of Ethan's face when he proposed. The trembling fingers, the modest ring. Would he still want those mornings if he knew what I'd done? Would he look at me the same way, or would he see Nico's shadow in every corner of our life?
The doubt coils in my stomach, ugly and sharp. I don't know if Ethan would want to be saved this way. I need to leave this room before the calculation overtakes the fury entirely.
"I'm done." I push back from the table and stand. "Whatever answer you're waiting for, you're not getting it."
I turn toward the door, and Nico moves. Not aggressively—nothing so obvious. He simply steps into my path with the unhurried confidence of a man who believes the conversation isn't finished, his body blocking the exit with casual precision.
The blocking is almost playful, which makes it worse.
This close, I can smell him—cedar and something darker that isn't Dante's signature but lives in the same dangerous neighborhood. The heat radiating off his body reaches mine, and my skin prickles with awareness.
My pulse kicks against my throat, and I hate the way my body catalogues his proximity like a threat and an invitation wrapped in the same package.
My hand finds the steak knife before my mind catches up. The weight of it is familiar, reassuring, and I hold it between us with the blade angled at his chest.
"Move," I say.
Nico looks at the knife. Then at me. His expression doesn't change—no fear, no amusement. Just the quiet assessment of a man who grew up in a house where cutlery at the dinner table occasionally served a dual purpose.
Then he moves.
His hand closes around my wrist and twists just enough to make me gasp. The knife stays in my grip, but I'm the one being guided, pulled forward until my back hits the wall beside the doorframe.
But he doesn't take the knife from me. He raises my own hand, still wrapped around the handle, and presses the flat of the blade against my throat. The metal is cool against my hammering pulse. His fingers remain locked around my wrist, controlling the angle, controlling me.
"You want to cut me open, Arianna?" His voice drops to a murmur, his mouth inches from mine. "Go ahead. But we both know that's not what you're aching for."
The blade traces a slow path down my throat, guided by his hand over mine. I should be terrified. I should be fighting. Instead, my spine arches involuntarily, pressing me closer to the wall, closer to him.
"I hate you," I breathe, but the words come out fractured.
"Your pulse says otherwise." He tilts the knife, letting the edge graze my collarbone, then lower, tracing where fabric meets skin. His free hand finds my hip, anchoring me. "Is this what he gives you? Your safe, predictable fiancé? Does he make you shake like this?"
I can't answer. My throat has closed around something that isn't fear. The knife continues its descent, skating over silk, over the curve beneath. My breath catches, and Nico's smile turns knowing.
"I didn't think so."
He releases my wrist, plucking the knife from my nerveless fingers and setting it on the hall table without looking away.
"Gianna, the housekeeper," he says, his voice perfectly steady. "She'll show you to a guest room."
I don't lower the knife. "And if I walk out the front door instead?"
"Then you walk out, I won't stop you." His voice is steady, almost gentle. "But you should know that the offer expires at sunrise. After that, Ethan disappears permanently, and not even I will know where."
The words land with the precision of a scalpel, cutting through fury and calculation alike.
"You're bluffing."
"I'm not." His eyes hold mine, and for the first time I see something other than charm in their depths. Something cold and certain. "Accept my terms by morning, or spend the rest of your life wondering what happened to him. Those are your options. Choose carefully."