THIRTY-NINE

THIRTY-NINE


The room was too quiet for how many people were inside. Screens glowed blue and white across the long wall of monitors, throwing light across the dark wood and leather of Wesley’s private command room. Men in black suits stood behind computers, murmuring to each other in clipped codes I didn’t understand.

Wesley stood at the center of it all, back to me, hands clasped behind him.

He didn’t turn when I stepped inside. He didn’t have to.

“You saw it,” I said.

He nodded once. “Ten minutes ago.”

I waited for the accusation. For the tightening of his jaw. For the lecture about keeping things from him.

But none of it came. Instead, he finally turned—and the look on his face sent a cold breath down my spine. He wasn’t angry. He was focused. Lethal in how still he was.

“We’re tracing the metadata,” he said, voice low. “He left a trail. Not much of one, but enough.”

The giant screen shifted. A blurred image of the post I had seen the night before—the twisted photo of me in the fake wedding dress—flickered onscreen, surrounded by code and location markers.

My stomach curled. “You think it’s really him?”

Wesley shot me a look. “There’s no one else who would send that image. Not with that caption. Not to you.”

I didn’t argue. I couldn’t. The dress, the veil, the cold perfection of it. Marco’s style wasn’t subtle. It was obsessive.

He stepped closer to the screen, arms crossed tight. “He used an encryption tunnel. Middle-layer masking. But the packet origin hit a local node in the city. Not routed from overseas. That’s sloppy for someone like him.”

Sloppy or intentional. I didn’t ask which. It scared me more to think it was deliberate.

“Why are you so calm about this?” I asked.

His eyes narrowed faintly. “You want me to panic? Because I will. But it won’t help either of us.”

“No. I just thought... you’d say something. About me not telling you. About hiding the emails. About—”

“I already know,” he said.

My breath caught.

Wesley turned to me then, his voice quiet, almost careful. “Catrina, I don’t need to ask why you didn’t tell me. You were scared. You thought it would make it worse. And maybe it would have. But this... this isn’t just some deranged message.”

“Then what is it?”

He held my gaze for a long moment. “It’s a claim.”

I swallowed, hard.

“You don’t send an image like that unless you believe you still own what’s in it. He’s not threatening to hurt you. He’s declaring he still has you.”

The words burned. Like ink sinking into skin.

I looked back at the photo on the screen, warped and white and false. My face, but not mine. My body, but hollowed out. I looked like a ghost.

And maybe that’s what he wanted me to feel like. Hollow. Powerless.

“You’re not his,” Wesley added sharply, like he could see what was happening inside me.

I nodded, but it felt like a lie. Not because I still belonged to Marco. But because a part of me wasn’t sure I belonged to anyone anymore. Not even myself.

And I didn’t belong to either of them. Not anymore.

Wesley walked toward the team, murmured something to one of the techs, then turned back to me.

“We’ll find the origin server. I’ve already contacted a third-party forensics team. They owe me favors. We’re going to track this to wherever he is.”

“And then what?” I asked, my voice barely audible.

He looked me dead in the eye. His voice, when it came, was slow and terrifyingly calm.

“If he wants you back so badly, let’s see how far he’ll crawl for it.”

That afternoon, a dress arrived in a garment bag the size of my anxiety.

I hadn’t asked for it. I hadn’t even known there was a meeting. But there it was—hung on the ivory hooks in Wesley’s dressing room like a silent command.

Black. Sleek. Smoother than anything I owned. And definitely tighter.

I stared at it for a long moment, arms crossed, resisting the pull of silk and silence.

Then I heard his voice behind me. “It’s not a request.”

I turned. Wesley leaned against the doorframe, suit crisp, expression unreadable.

“I’m not your accessory,” I said.

“No. You’re my advantage.”

The words should have burned. Maybe they did. But not the way I expected.

I folded my arms tighter. “So I’m leverage now?”

“In this room, in this moment—yes. We’re meeting a neutral broker. Marco’s name will come up. His money has touched their money. That makes things complicated. I need their eyes on me. Not behind me.”

“And this—” I gestured at the dress. “—this is going to distract them?”

He stepped inside. “No. It’s going to control them.”

He crossed the room slowly, fingers brushing the garment bag open. The dress shimmered like liquid shadow. When he met my gaze again, the hard edges had softened just enough.

“Let me do this my way,” he said.

I didn’t answer. But I took the hanger.

—

It fit like a secret I hadn’t meant to keep.

Cool against my skin. Sharp at the shoulders, dipped low in the back. The kind of dress that didn’t hide anything. Not curves. Not spine.

I stood in front of the mirror, arms raised awkwardly, trying to reach the zipper that refused to close.

Then I heard footsteps. The door creaked slightly.

“I’ve got it,” he said.

I froze.

He stepped behind me. No words. Just fingers on the zipper, smooth and precise. The sound of it rising was too loud in the quiet.

He didn’t touch me after. Didn’t linger. Just looked in the mirror with me, his face close behind mine.

“You wear power well,” he said.

It felt like a compliment. It also felt like a warning.

—

The car smelled like leather and control.

Wesley sat beside me, legs crossed, one hand resting casually on the edge of his knee. His phone buzzed, ignored. His mind was already at the table we hadn’t arrived at yet.

“His name is Jacobi Vega,” he said. “Broker, arms, tech, third-party laundering. He stays neutral to stay alive.”

“And Marco?”

“He’s had ties to the Vega circle for years. Bought silence with favors. But that was when he had more pull. Now...” Wesley shrugged. “Now he’s unstable. And people don’t bet on unstable for long.”

“But they still need to be convinced.”

“That’s why you’re coming.”

He didn’t look at me when he said it. He didn’t need to.

The windows showed nothing but blurs of the city. Even that felt like a metaphor.

I looked down at my dress, smoothed the fabric across my thighs.

“I’m sick of being bait,” I murmured.

“You’re not bait.”

“Then what am I?”

His jaw clenched. “You’re proof.”

The answer lingered in the air between us, heavy and strange. Proof of what? His control? His reach? Or just that he’d survived Marco’s betrayal and kept the one thing his rival couldn’t?

I looked at the side mirror.

The woman looking back at me had shadows under her eyes and blood-red lips. Her hair was a weapon. Her dress was armor. Her spine was straight, but only because she didn’t know how else to hold herself.

I don’t know who I’m performing for anymore—him, them, or me.

The villa was too beautiful for the kind of deals made on its grounds.

Candlelight flickered across polished wood, shadows stretching long over a stone patio designed for expensive lies. The table was already set when we arrived—seven chairs, pristine glassware, cutlery gleaming like knives with better manners.

Wesley’s hand barely grazed the small of my back as he led me in. A signal. A message.

I didn’t lean into it.

Jacobi Vega greeted us without standing. Silver at his temples, suit charcoal-gray, eyes like polished coal. He motioned us to sit, and the game began.

Every word that passed between them was dressed up in velvet, but the blades underneath were unmistakable. Territory talked about as “logistics.” Loyalty framed as “continuity.” Marco’s name wasn’t spoken outright, but his shadow sat at the table with us, uninvited but undeniably present.

Wesley never looked away. His voice calm. Steady. Dangerous.

I stayed silent. Poised. An accessory, yes—but an intelligent one. I watched every pour of wine, every missed bite of food. Jacobi’s glass was filled first, but he didn’t sip. The youngest man at the table—Baresi, I think—didn’t touch his plate. Hunger wasn’t welcome here. Control was currency.

Jacobi’s gaze drifted to me more than once, lingering longer each time.

"You’re quiet, Miss Morano,” he said eventually, lips curving in a way that felt practiced. “You observe well.”

I hated being called that. And I wasn't even married to him yet.

“I listen better than I speak,” I replied, giving him nothing.

He smiled wider. “And you look even better than you listen.”

Wesley said nothing. Not with words.

Instead, his fingers pressed lightly against my lower back under the table, firm and brief. A gesture that wasn’t affectionate—it was possessive.

He was trying to prove that if he could take me from Marco, he could take anything from him. I could see right through.

I didn’t shift away, but I didn’t lean in either.

More names were dropped, veiled in euphemisms. More lines were drawn. The air smelled like saffron, fear, and ambition. Somewhere distant, cicadas buzzed like the ticking of a bomb no one wanted to acknowledge.

By the end of the evening, the deal was half-inked in silence, the other half still balancing on the knife’s edge of Jacobi’s smile.

Everyone stood slowly.

A waiter collected untouched wineglasses, eyes down. Discretion was survival.

And then Wesley did it.

He leaned toward me—not rushed, not dramatic, but deliberate. His lips brushed my cheek, slow and cold as smoke.

“You’re mine,” he said, soft enough that only I could hear. And yet, somehow, I knew the room heard it too.

Time stopped. Even the shadows seemed to freeze mid-flicker.

He straightened, calm as ever. The message had landed.

The men at the table nodded in quiet acceptance. Jacobi raised his glass as if the declaration were part of the toast they hadn’t made.

It was over. The meeting. The performance.

But inside, I flinched.

He was doing it again.

Performing. Branding me like territory while the cameras recorded just enough to echo later in whispers.

I stood still beside him, head high, the picture of composure.

I didn’t react. Not to the cheek kiss. Not to the claim.

I waited until we were halfway to the car before I let my breath out.

The stars above the villa were too bright. Too perfect.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the tinted glass of the car door as Wesley opened it for me.

Same red lips. Same armor of silk and steel. Same unreadable eyes.

And the worst part?

I didn’t know anymore if I was the mask—or the one behind it.