3:17 a.m.
The terrace doors were open. A winter wind knifed across the Hudson and slipped under the silk robe she hadn't bothered to tie. Liliana didn't feel the cold. She felt everything else.
Between her legs she was raw, swollen, still leaking him.
On her lower back his initials burned like a fresh brand.
Around her throat the collar weighed more than platinum; it weighed the rest of her life.
She pressed her palms to the glass railing and stared down at Manhattan. Fifty-two floors below, yellow cabs crawled like beetles. Somewhere down there was the life she used to have: Sunday dinners with her father, confession on First Fridays, the quiet dream of marrying some safe, boring man who would never make her scream.
That girl was dead.
Dante had murdered her with twenty-five million dollars and a single thrust.
And the worst part—the part that made her want to claw her own skin off—was that she had helped dig the grave.
She hated him.
She hated the way he looked at her like she was both altar and sacrifice.
She hated the way her body opened for him before her mind could scream no.
She hated the way her pulse leapt when he walked into a room, the way her thighs clenched at the sound of his belt unbuckling.
But the hate wasn't clean anymore. It was braided with something darker, something that tasted like want.
She closed her eyes and saw the confessional again: her back against carved wood older than America, his hand over her mouth, the lattice cutting diamonds into her skin while he moved inside her and whispered that there was no forgiveness.
She had come so hard she saw stars behind her eyelids.
A good Catholic girl didn't come in a confessional.
A good Catholic girl didn't lick her own wetness off the devil's fingers and beg for more.
She pressed her forehead to the freezing glass and let the tears come—silent, furious, ashamed.
I should want to kill him.
I should be planning it right now: the knife block in the kitchen, the heavy crystal decanter on the bar, the moment he falls asleep and I drive something sharp into the hollow of his throat.
But the thought of his blood made her stomach lurch—not with triumph, with loss.
Because if he died, who would touch her like she was both holy and damned?
Who would look at her like she was the only light left in his blackened world?
She hated that she understood him.
She hated that she had seen the photograph he kept in the locked drawer—the little sister with Dante's gray eyes, smiling in a school uniform, the one her father had put in the ground. She hated that the rage in him made perfect, terrible sense.
She hated that she wanted to soothe it.
Footsteps behind her—bare, deliberate.
She didn't turn. She didn't need to.
Dante stopped just short of touching her. She felt his heat anyway.
"Cold?" he asked quietly.
"No."
"Liar."
He stepped closer. The robe parted under his hands; cool air and warm palms met her skin at the same time. He didn't kiss her. He simply wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder, looking out at the city he owned.
They stood in silence for a long time.
"I used to pray," she whispered finally. "Every night. For purity. For a good husband. For safety."
His arms tightened fractionally.
"I stopped the night you bought me," she continued, voice cracking. "Because I realized God had already answered. He just sent the wrong angel."
Dante turned her slowly, cupped her face, thumbs wiping tears she hadn't realized were still falling.
"I'm not an angel, Liliana."
"I know." She laughed, a broken sound. "That's the problem. I think I love the devil more than I ever loved God."
The confession hung between them, naked and irreversible.
Something fractured in his expression—something raw and terrified and viciously tender. He kissed her like a drowning man breaking the surface: desperate, reverent, furious.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against hers.
"Then fall with me," he said, voice rough. "All the way down. I'll catch you. I'll ruin you. I'll keep you. Every fucking step."
She closed her eyes and felt the last piece of the old Liliana snap off and blow away like ash.
"I already fell," she whispered. "I just didn't know how to land until you put your name on me."
He lifted her, carried her back inside, laid her on the bed like she was made of glass and sin in equal measure.
That night he didn't fuck her.
He made love to her—slow, devastating, eye-contact-until-it-hurt love. He kissed every bruise he'd given her like he was asking forgiveness he didn't deserve. When she came, it was with his name on her lips and tears on his.
Afterward, he held her so tightly she could feel his heart trying to break out of his ribs and into hers.
Against her hair he whispered the only prayer he knew anymore:
"Stay mine. Even when you hate me. Especially when you hate me."
She pressed her lips to the scar on his chest and answered with the truth that terrified them both.
"I already do."