The room upstairs smelled of old wood and lemon polish. Zara got two steps in before Ennio shoved her again.
She hit the table edge at the hip and grabbed it to stay upright.
Ennio: Look at her. Little runaway bitch thinks she's a guest now.
Ennio: Bellandi blood is on your hands, sweetheart. Your uncle's a dead man walking, and you're the whore who warmed the bed he made.
Tullio: She don't even flinch. Boss should've let me have her for an hour.
Zara: Say that again when he's standing next to you. I dare you.
The door opened without a sound. Saverin came in with a folded stack of papers and a face like the weather before a storm.
Saverin: Ennio. I said one word to her and I break your jaw. I remember saying it.
Ennio: I was just keeping her warm till you got here, boss.
Saverin: Get the fuck out.
The door shut. The lock turned, and Zara knew that sound was for her.
The papers hit the table and slid apart. Zara saw the seal before she saw her own name.
Saverin: You know what this is. Say it out loud so we both hear it.
Zara Moreau. Her name in ink. A Bellandi seal in red wax.
And under the signature line, a loop she had never once written in her life.
Zara: That's not my signature. My uncle forged it.
Zara: I never signed a fucking thing.
Saverin: Forged. So a man puts your name on a paper and you run for a year?
Saverin: You don't run from a lie, Zara. You run from the truth.
He came around the table so fast she didn't get to step back.
His hand closed on her arm and squeezed until her fingers went numb.
He walked her backward until her shoulders hit the wall. Her head knocked plaster, and her lip split open again.
Saverin: Why did you run?
Zara: Let go of my arm.
Saverin: I'll let go when I hear it. Why did you run?
Saverin: Tell me and I'll stop. Lie to me and I'll keep you in this room until you forget what a door looks like.
She believed every word. That was the worst part. He would do it, and he would do it gently, and that would be worse.
Zara: Because I knew what he did. And I knew what he'd do to me if I stayed.
Saverin: What did he do.
Zara: I'm not telling you in a locked room with your hand on me.
He stared at her for a long second. Then he let go and stepped back, and the air came back into the room.
Something in her chest snapped, and it wasn't fear.
Her fingers hooked his tie and she yanked him down until the contract was crushed flat beneath their arms.
Saverin: Have you lost your goddamn mind?
Zara: Shut up and kiss me before I change my mind.
He kissed her back like it was a debt. His palm slid up her ribs, hot through the cotton, and her whole side woke up under it.
His hand closed over her breast, full and hot, and his thumb dragged across the shape of it.
She made a sound into his mouth, and heat dropped straight down to her pussy, heavy and stupid and not sorry at all.
Saverin: No. Not like this. Not while you're lying to me.
Zara: I'm not the one who locked the door.
Saverin: No. You're the one who ran.
Saverin: You'll eat. You'll sleep. You'll stay.
Saverin: Tomorrow you tell me what your uncle did, and if it's the truth, this stops being a locked room.
The key turned in the lock from the outside, and his footsteps went down the hall and did not come back.
Zara stayed where he left her, rubbing the red marks on her arm, his taste still on her tongue.
The contract sat on the table with her forged name on it, and the lock on the door was not the worst thing in the room.