6

My breath seized the moment the chandelier came crashing down.

It couldn’t have lasted more than a second, but time distorted stretching into an eternity as shards of crystal exploded across the marble floor like scattered stars. A gust of cold air brushed past my skin, and for one gut-wrenching moment, I feared I’d just witnessed a death. My gaze darted through the cloud of glittering dust until I spotted Gelsomina on the left of the staircase dazed, but miraculously alive.

Relief came like a gasp but it froze midway through my lungs.

Someone had been standing right beside her. And as the settling dust began to clear, the outline emerged. Tall. Composed. Impossibly untouched. It was him Gosto. He stood unmoving, his hand calmly brushing specks of plaster from his tailored suit. He looked like sin wrapped in Armani.

Even now, with chaos clinging to the air, he looked lethal and beautiful.

Only then did I become aware of Ermes’s hand, still planted firmly on my waist. His grip had anchored me on the stairwell, his body balancing behind mine, far too close. The intimacy of that contact bloomed on delay and when it hit, it painted my cheeks in a flush of heat.

“Ermes,” a voice cut through the silence like tempered steel low, cold, and scathing.

My eyes snapped upward, locking onto Gosto's gaze, now sharp and burning with silent fury. His attention pinned Ermes in place with surgical precision. The hand on my waist disappeared at once, and Ermes stepped aside, clearing his throat like a man who had narrowly avoided something deadly. “Come upstairs,” he instructed.

I swallowed hard. My heart galloped against my ribs as I followed him, heels clicking unevenly on each step. Though he never touched me again, Ermes hovered close a guardian… or perhaps a buffer between me and the predator who watched from the shadows below.

At the top, the transformation was staggering. Staff moved like a well-oiled machine already dismantling what remained of the chandelier. Waiters in sleek black suits were calmly escorting stunned guests away. It felt... orchestrated, precise. Almost inhumanly so.

Then came Gosto.

He approached like a king surveying his court, and I instinctively stepped back. His presence was more than physical it was magnetic, ominous, a storm in a tailored jacket. “Take care of her,” he said to Ermes, motioning his chin toward Gelsomina.

His words were smooth as velvet but laced with warning a quiet, suffocating kind of menace.

I should’ve run. Every instinct screamed at me to. But I stayed. And when he turned his gaze on me, I didn’t flinch I met it, stubborn, shaken, and spellbound.

Ermes vanished. Just like that, I was alone with him.

His eyes moved over me, deliberate and thorough. Not lewd. Calculated. “Are you hurt?” he asked, and I almost staggered at the warmth in his voice such a jarring contrast to the chill he’d just inflicted on his manager.

I blushed furiously. “I...I think I’m okay,” I stammered, cursing how breathless I sounded.

His lips curved in a smirk, sinful and smug. A predator amused by the rabbit frozen in his teeth. “I haven’t introduced myself properly,” he murmured, his voice dipping lower honeyed steel. “Agostino Santini. I own this club.”

Of course he did. And somehow, hearing him say it made it real in a way it hadn’t been before. That voice that name sank into my skin like a brand.

“Domitilla Crivelli,” I whispered back, feeling absurdly exposed.

The smirk deepened into something worse: a smile. Devastating. Lethal. “Take the night off,” he said.

I started to protest. “Really, I’m ”

“You sprained your ankle,” he interrupted, eyes narrowing. “My driver will take you home.”

“I can manage ”

“I wasn’t offering,” he said, voice hardening. “Take off your heels before you go down the stairs. If you don’t, I will carry you myself.”

My body flushed, torn between outrage and some darker, shameful desire to test his threat.

Before I could decide, my gaze dropped to his broad shoulders, straining against his jacket. I bit my lip to silence the gasp that wanted to escape.

“Don’t do that,” he said darkly.

I blinked. “Do what?”

He didn’t answer. He stepped closer, and with the lightest touch, brushed his thumb across my lower lip. Heat crackled down my spine.

The world quieted. Just him, me, and the electric pulse between us.

“It was nice meeting you, Domitilla,” he murmured, like a secret meant only for me.

“It was nice Mr. Sant ”

“Call me Gosto.”

My knees almost gave out. “Nice to meet you, Gosto,” I managed, heart thundering.

I was driven home in a Bentley. The damn car cost more than my life. The entire night had unraveled like a fever dream.

Once I hobbled into my apartment, the ankle Gosto had diagnosed began to throb in earnest. By the time I reached my bed, I had to hop on one foot, praying three days would be enough to recover.

The next day brought a small miracle my college classes were canceled. With nothing but time, I stocked up at the pharmacy, bought a new romance novel, and curled into bed, trying to forget Gosto’s eyes, his hands, his mouth.

I must’ve drifted off.

“Domitilla.”

His voice was silk. My eyes flew open.

Gosto sat beside me, his hand stroking my cheek like a lover in a dream. “Mr. Santini?” I breathed.

“Gosto,” he corrected, voice sin incarnate.

I blinked. “Why… why are you here?”

He gestured to a dark glass beside the bed. “Drink this. It will heal you.”

Without thinking, my fingers wrapped around it.

“What is it?” I asked, staring at the thick crimson liquid.

“Something ancient,” he said, eyes tracing the hollow of my throat. “Something that works.”

I drank.

It tasted like smoke and berries and secrets.

When I looked at him again, he was staring at my lips. Then he whispered, “I want to taste you.”

He was on me in a blink, his mouth hot and relentless, his body pinning me to the mattress. I moaned, fingers tangled in his hair as he devoured me.

And then a sharp sting. Blood.

I pulled away, gasping. Gosto leaned back, baring his teeth.

Fangs.

I screamed.

And woke up.

Alone. Trembling. But healed.

My ankle — completely pain-free.