LEA
I don’t knowhow long I lie here, folded into myself. The violent sobs that ripped through me have quieted to shuddering breaths, but my body still quakes with the aftershocks. The fine Egyptian cotton sheets abrade my welted skin; each slight shift sends fresh flares of agony across my thighs and buttocks.
He is gone. I registered the soft snick of the door’s latch. It’s an absurdly small sound against the memory of the violence that came before it.
I unroll my body by degrees, biting my lip against a fresh cry as I shift onto my side. The stateroom is quiet but for the muted slap of waves against the yacht’s hull and my own labored breathing. Through the panoramic windows, night has consumed the world. The lake is a great void of black, marked only by remote lights from the shoreline.
I failed.
The knowledge settles with a crushing weight. All my careful preparation, my strategic compliance, my measured reactions—all of it disintegrated when it was most needed. He pushed, and I came apart. The noise that came from my throat wasn’t just from the physical hurt; it was the sound of my composure cracking, my control giving way. My identity splintering.
I cried in front of him. The one thing I swore I would never do.
Slowly, punishingly, I lever myself to a sitting position. My face is swollen, eyes puffy, throat raw. I touch my cheeks, and they are still damp. The proof of my weakness. My surrender.
Using the edge of the sheet, I wipe at my face. The soft material comes away dark with mascara. The perfect fiancée from the afternoon’s performance has vanished, leaving behind this broken, marked thing I don’t recognize.
I make myself stand, legs trembling. Each step toward the en-suite bathroom is an exercise in endurance, the motion pulling at inflamed skin. Inside, I turn away from the mirror, not prepared to see the visual evidence of my collapse. I start the shower, the water lukewarm; anything warmer would be tormenting.
Standing under the gentle spray, I watch the water circle the drain, carrying away makeup, salt, and flakes of the person I was an hour ago. I try to make sense of what occurred with the cold logic that has always been my shield.
He has been cruel before, methodical in his dominance. But this felt different. This wasn’t pleasure masked as pain or power shown through control. This was punishment—direct, deliberate, and designed to break me.
And it was successful.
I shut off the water and pat myself dry with a plush towel, carefully to avoid the worst of the welts. In the medicine cabinet, I locate first-aid materials. With careful motions, my fingers shaking slightly, I apply antibiotic cream where the skin is broken.
Finally, I make myself look in the mirror. My eyes are hollowed, skin blotchy, hair damp and disordered. But it’s the look that shocks me most. A blankness. An emptiness that wasn’t there before, as if a core piece of me has been carved out.
I wrap myself in a silk robe from the back of the door, the material cool against my skin. I move back to the bedroom, uncertain. Will he come back? Should I get dressed? Attempt to leave? The idea of seeing him sends a tremor through me.
Lightning flashes across the distant sky, lighting up the lake for a brief, electric moment. A storm is approaching. Fitting.
I ease myself onto the edge of the bed. The sheets are rumpled, carrying the imprint of my body, the scene of my undoing. I should feel fury. Rage. But all I feel is a dull confusion, a feeling that something fundamental has shifted. Not just in me, but in him.
Because he stopped.
He stopped.
Why?
I hug my arms around myself, trying to process this anomaly. It was as if two separate men were in this room. The one who whipped me beyond my limits, and the one who ceased the moment I finally broke.
The only explanation is so alarming I can barely allow the thought to form: my genuine distress affected him.
No, that can’t be correct. Nico Varela doesn’t care about the suffering of others. He uses it, measures it, applies it with clinical accuracy. He isn’t capable of empathy.
Is he?
I search my memory for evidence. The way he reacted when I dressed his wounds after Moretti’s assault. The raw exposure when fever lowered his defenses, showing the trauma of his parents’ murder. The look in his eyes after we were intimate at Alessandro’s estate.
There have been glimpses. Cracks in the armor of the brutal crime lord. Moments where something almost human showed through.
And now this. Stopping when he had me exactly where he wanted me.
Lightning flashes again, nearer this time, followed by a rumble of thunder that vibrates through the yacht.
If he is capable of mercy, if my suffering affects him, then he is not the monster I have constructed in my mind. Not entirely. And if that’s true, everything becomes more complicated.
