Beau leaned against the heavy wooden frame of the window, his silhouetted frame blocking out the late afternoon light streaming into the guest bedroom. The moment he moved, Giulia felt the breath she had been holding burst out of her lungs in a quiet, ragged exhale.
"You were sitting at the back," he said.
Giulia's heart gave a tiny, violent jolt against her ribs. She hadn't expected that. Out of all the people in that crowded conference room six months ago, she was a ghost. A nameless junior dev hiding behind a screen.
"You barely spoke," he added, his dark eyes fixing on her face with an intensity that made the room feel suddenly too small.
"I must have been shy," she countered, keeping her voice light, innocent, and deliberately weak. It was a classic, harmless excuse.
"No."
His answer came too quickly. It cut right through her defense, sharp and absolute.
Giulia frowned, shifting beneath the heavy silk sheets. "No?"
"You weren't shy." His gaze remained locked on hers, completely unbothered by her faint show of confusion. "You were hiding."
She stopped breathing altogether.
Hiding.
The word hung in the quiet room, heavy and terrifyingly precise.
It was true, she had been hiding, but no one was supposed to know that. She least expected that her boss was that intuitive.
Beau continued, taking a slow, measured step away from the window, his voice dropping an octave into a soft, contemplative murmur. "I could tell that you were trying to downplay your attractiveness with those nightmarish clothes, and those glasses. You even tried not to seem too intelligent. Only someone hiding would do things like that."
Giulia's fingers tightened around the edge of the blanket until her knuckles turned white. "You noticed all of that?"
"I couldn't help it."
Her heartbeat stumbled over itself. He couldn't help it?
A cold splash of reality hit her, and she immediately reminded herself that this was all part of his game. Beau Orsini was a corporate predator.
He was Finn's brother, a man born into wealth and control. He was trying to get inside her head, trying to dismantle her composure to see what made her tick. She refused to let him win. She refused to be played again.
"So what happened?" she asked, tilting her head with a fragile, confused frown. "Since you remember it so well?"
Beau's mouth curved into a faint, unreadable smile. "You spoke."
Giulia waited, her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths.
"You had the correct solution," he continued, walking closer to the foot of the bed. "Your analysis of the progression mechanics was brilliant. It was the only viable critique in the entire room."
Her eyes widened slightly despite her best efforts to play dumb.
"And then Pei ling interrupted you."
Silence descended upon the room, thick and suffocating. Giulia stared at him, her throat suddenly dry.
Beau had known. All this time... he had known.
"It made very little sense," Beau said quietly, resting his hands in the pockets of his trousers. "Pei ling was not usually a contributor. Her ideas were routinely dull, completely derivative, nothing like the answers she gave that afternoon. It was not hard to see that she had stolen your work at some point."
Giulia's heart seemed to come to a complete halt. The embarrassment and anger she had swallowed over a year ago surged back up her throat, mixed with a profound, disorienting shock. "What happened next?" she asked breathlessly. "If you knew?"
"I gave Pei ling more responsibility," Beau said, his dark eyes glinting with a cold, ruthless amusement. "I put her in charge of the feature rollout. I wanted to see her buckle under the pressure of trying to execute a vision that wasn't hers."
Understanding of the actions that had looked targeted against her entered Giulia's eyes, but the faint embers of satisfaction were quickly killed by a cold wave of suspicion.
Beau's words felt too contrived, too perfect. He was giving her a villain to hate and painting himself as a silent avenger. It was too smooth.
He was taunting her.
Fine. If he wanted a performance, she'd give him one.
"I truly am lucky to have such a devoted boyfriend," she said, her voice dripping with false sweetness. Beau merely inclined his head, accepting the praise without a flicker of guilt.
"I still wonder why you didn't stop her after you knew what she did," Beau queried, his expression hardened slightly, the subtle warmth leaving his features
Giulia blinked. "What?"
"You knew she took your work," he said, taking another step forward until he was standing directly beside the bed. "I watched your face. I saw the exact moment you realized what she had done. And you chose not to say anything."
Giulia swallowed hard. The air in her throat felt like sandpaper. She opened her mouth to offer an excuse, but no words came out.
"You didn't want the attention," Beau murmured, leaning down slightly so his shadow fell completely over her. "You didn't want the credit, because credit meant visibility. You wanted to hide. What are you hidning from?"
The words struck far deeper than they should have. They sliced clean through her carefully constructed lies and hit the raw, hidden core of who she was. The girl who had spent years learning how to run, how to erase her footsteps, how to stay completely out of the sightlines of evil people like Christie.
Giulia stared at him, her pulse hammering in her ears. For some reason, those quiet words frightened her far more than his earlier, cryptic remarks. Because he wasn't flirting anymore. He wasn't playing some perverted mind game.
He was seeing her. Actually seeing her. And Giulia wasn't sure she wanted anyone in the world to see that much.
Beau stopped right beside the mattress. "I've noticed that you've always been like that," he said softly.
"Like what?"
"Trying to make yourself smaller."
Her throat tightened so severely it hurt. Panic flared in her chest, but she buried it under a layer of brittle steel. She forced a hollow, melodramatic laugh. "You really pay close attention to your employees, Mr. Orsini. Is that part of the executive package?"
"I pay attention to things that don't make sense." There was something dark, and deeply dangerous in the way he said it.
Giulia's stomach twisted into knots. "And what doesn't make sense about me?"
Beau stared down at her for several agonizing seconds, letting the silence stretch between them until the atmosphere in the room felt electric. Then, his lips curved into the faintest, most devastating smile.
"That's what I'm still trying to figure out."
Her pulse accelerated wildly. He leaned closer, not enough to touch her, but just enough for her to catch the faint, intoxicating scent of cedarwood, rain, and expensive coffee clinging to his jacket. Just enough to make her hyper-aware of how massive he was compared to her, how easily he dominated the space.
A heavy, strange silence settled between them. For the very first time since she had woken up in the hospital, Giulia genuinely wondered whether the descicion she had made was worth the trouble it would no doubt bring.
Playing a game of fake amnesia to get back at Finn was one thing. But doing it right under the nose of Beau Orsini? A man who analyzed human behavior for fun?
"She hadn't outsmarted him. She had walked straight into a trap, and he had closed the door behind her.
Beau straightened up, smoothing down the front of his dust-streaked suit jacket. The intense, predatory focus vanished, replaced instantly by his usual smooth, unbothered composure."
"A maid will bring you a fresh change of clothes and help you clean up," he said, turning toward the heavy mahogany door. "Rest. The doctor said your head took a serious hit. Tomorrow we can go and see another doctor."
Giulia watched his broad back as he walked away. The latch of the door clicked softly, but before he could step into the hallway, a sudden wave of desperation washed over her.
"Beau."
He stopped, his hand resting on the brass doorknob. He looked back over his shoulder, waiting.
She hesitated. There were a hundred burning questions fighting to break free from her chest. Why are you helping me? Why did you carry me out of that hospital instead of calling an ambulance? Why are you playing along with the lie that you're my boyfriend when Finn is nowhere to be found? Why did you remember me from our very first meeting?
...And what was he going to do when he finally figured out what she was running from?
But she couldn't risk asking any of them. She had to see this thing to the end.
So instead, she looked him dead in the eye and let a sweet, completely fake smile curve her lips. "Thank you."
Beau tilted his head slightly. "For what?"
"For being such a devoted boyfriend," she said, her filter entirely gone, leaning heavily into the lie. "I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't stayed by my side all this time."
Something unreadable and intense flashed across Beau's face, a flicker of something dark, possessive, and entirely un-boss-like before his expression smoothed back into stone.
"As your boyfriend, It's my duty," he said quietly.
The heavy door clicked shut, leaving her completely alone in the massive, luxurious bedroom.
Giulia slowly sank back against the plush velvet pillows, letting out a long, shuddering breath. Her heartbeat was still racing at an erratic, dangerous speed.