Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Julian had never spoken to Luciano. Had never broken the silence his brother had built to protect him. But he’d read every article. Tracked every public appearance. He knew his brother the way astronomers knew distant stars: by the light they threw, by the gravity they exerted, by the space they held in the dark.
And he knew this about his father: El Diablo Salvatore had never searched for his stolen son. Never hired investigators. Never placed a single call. A man with the resources to find anyone on earth had let his youngest child vanish, and the silence that followed was not mercy. It was indifference. It was a man for whom a baby was a possession, and a possession that removed itself from the collection was simply no longer worth the inventory space.
Was I not worth finding?
The question had lived in Julian’s chest for sixteen years. He’d built Gubat on top of it, poured concrete and code and capital over the wound until the empire was so large and so visible that no one could ever overlook him again. You could not discard a billionaire. You could not lose a man whose name was on buildings.
But you could want a girl with red hair and green eyes who carried a tray across a terrace, and wanting was the thing that made you disposable, because wanting gave someone the power to hand you back.
She was walking toward him.
Three fifteen. His water. She carried it across the terrace with her eyes down and her shoulders pulled in and her whole body doing the invisible thing, and then she reached his table and set down the glass, two cubes, and glanced up, and her eyes collided with his, and there it was. The collision. The shy girl gone. In her place, a girl whose green eyes locked onto his face with a directness that went through him like voltage.
“You’re here early today,” she said softly.
“I had a meeting cancel.”
“You’ve been here every day this week.” She bit her lip. He followed the teeth sinking into the lower lip, pink going white, and his hand tightened on the table edge. “That’s not a question. That’s a statement. I’m stating a fact. About your schedule. Which I apparently track now. I’m going to stop talking.”
“Don’t.”
The word came out before he could catch it, low and rough, and her eyes widened. He should not have said that. He should not have said anything that sounded like an invitation, because invitations were doors, and doors opened both ways, and this girl walked through every door he left even a crack ajar.
“Walk with me,” he said.
She blinked. “I’m on shift.”
“Your break started two minutes ago.”
Her lips parted. “How do you know my break schedule?”
He didn’t answer. He stood, and she fell into step beside him, because that was who she was around him. The girl who said yes when she should have said no, the girl who ran toward things instead of away from them, and they walked off the terrace and into the garden path where the jacaranda grew thick and the light went purple and the sounds of the club faded to nothing.
She was quiet for eleven steps. He counted. Then—
“Can I tell you something?”
He should have said no. Every rational impulse he possessed was telling him to say no, to turn back, to close his laptop and leave and not return until she’d moved on to a different job or a different obsession that didn’t involve walking too close to him under a jacaranda tree with her face tilted up and her heart visible in her eyes.
“Tell me,” he said, his voice dropping lower than he’d intended.
“I think about you all the time.” Her voice was barely holding together at the edges. Her face was crimson, and her hands were clasped in front of her like she was trying to physically hold herself together. “I know that’s crazy. I know you’re...you, and I’m...me, and I know there’s no version of this that makes sense. But I can’t stop. I’ve tried for a year now. I’ve tried really hard, and I can’t, and I thought you should know because I’m a terrible liar and it was going to come out eventually anyway, so.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please say something so I know you haven’t left.”
“I haven’t left.”
She opened her eyes. He was closer than he’d been a moment ago. He couldn’t remember deciding to move.
“You should stop,” he rasped. “Whatever this is. You should stop.”
“I know.” She didn’t move. “I can’t.”
“Katy.”
“I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say I’m nineteen and you’re twenty-nine and I work for you and this is inappropriate, and you’re right about all of it.” Her chin lifted, and her eyes were bright and terrified and utterly unguarded. “I don’t care.”