I sat up, reaching for my scattered clothes, suddenly aware of my nakedness in a way I hadn't been minutes before. "I need to think. To process... whatever this was."
He watched me dress, his expression unreadable in the dim light of the bedroom. When I was finished, he rose and pulled on his pants, leaving his chest bare—a concession to modesty that seemed almost comical given what we'd just shared.
"Grace," he said as I moved toward the door. "This doesn't change anything you don't want it to change. You're not... obligated. This wasn't a transaction."
I paused, my hand on the doorknob, not looking back at him. "Then what was it?"
He was quiet for a moment, considering. "A choice," he said finally. "Your choice. Perhaps the first real one you've had since coming here."
The words hit me with unexpected force. He was right. This had been my choice—not coerced, not manipulated, not born of fear or desperation. I had kissed him. I had wanted him. I had chosen this.
And maybe... maybe that was why the late-night visits had started to slow. He hadn’t stopped coming entirely—but they weren’t every night now. Some nights passed in silence, his absence echoing louder than his presence ever had. I pretended not to notice. I told myself I didn’t care.
But I noticed.
And maybe, just maybe, he meant what he said. That this—whatever this was—had to be mine to choose.
I wasn’t ready to admit I wanted that. But I couldn’t lie to myself and say I didn’t feel the difference.
What did that say about me? About who I was becoming in this strange, twisted captivity that no longer felt quite like captivity?
"Goodnight, Rafe," I said softly, still not turning.
"Goodnight, Grace."
I slipped out the door and made my way back to my room, my body still humming with the aftereffects of our encounter, my mind a battlefield of conflicting emotions. I should have been disgusted with myself. Should have been planning my escape with renewed determination. Should have been anything except what I was—confused, sated, and terrifyingly close to understanding the man who had taken everything from me.
As I closed my bedroom door behind me, one thought crystallized with perfect clarity:
The most dangerous prison wasn't the one Rafe had built around me.
It was the one I was building within myself, brick by brick, choice by choice, surrender by surrender.
15
GRACE
Morning arrived with brutal clarity.
Sunlight streamed through the curtains I'd forgotten to close, illuminating the evidence of my surrender—a bruise blooming on my collarbone, my lips still tender from his kisses, my body aching in places that reminded me exactly what I'd done. Who I'd done it with.
I stared at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the woman I'd become. The Grace O'Sullivan I'd been three weeks ago would never have recognized this version of myself—sleeping with my captor, responding to his touch, wanting more even as I hated myself for wanting it.
Stockholm syndrome, my mind whispered. Trauma bonding. Psychological adaptation to captivity.
But those clinical terms felt hollow, inadequate to describe the storm raging inside me. This wasn't just about survival or adaptation. This was about choice—my choice, as Rafe had pointed out. I had initiated that kiss. I had pulled him closer. I had whispered his name as pleasure tore through me.
What kind of person did that make me?
A knock at the door interrupted my spiral of self-recrimination. I sat up, pulling the sheets around me despite being fully dressed in the clothes I'd hastily put back on after leaving Rafe's room.
"Come in," I called, my voice steadier than I felt.
The door opened to reveal not Rafe, as I'd expected, but a middle-aged woman in a crisp uniform—the housekeeper I'd glimpsed occasionally during my explorations of the estate.
"Good morning, Ms. O'Sullivan," she said, her accent faintly Italian. "Mr. Conti asked me to inform you that breakfast will be served on the terrace in thirty minutes. He also asked me to give you this." She held out a small envelope.
I took it, nodding my thanks. "I'll be there."
