Chapter 40: Enzo fills the clawfoot tub with rose-scented bubbles, his large hands guiding Alma's exhausted body into the water. He kneels beside her, a washcloth moving in slow circles over her shoulders as he murmurs in Italian - his touch lingering on each bruise he left earlier. When his fingers trail between her thighs, it's not to claim but to cleanse, his thumb carefully parting her swollen folds to rinse away the sheikh's imagined presence. Wrapped in a plush robe, he carries her to the canopied bed
The silence in the speeding Range Rover was a living thing, thick and vibrating with the memory of what they’d done. Alma stared out at the blur of Dubai’s absurd skyline, her body humming with a strange, hollow electricity. The sheikh’s money was in their account. His capitulation was in the contract Enzo held in a black leather folio on his lap. They had won.
Yet, she felt skinned.
Enzo drove with a grim focus, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on her thigh, his thumb making absent, possessive circles. The contact was the only thing tethering her. He didn’t speak until they were ascending in the private elevator to their own penthouse.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice rough.
She turned her head. His profile was carved marble, but a muscle twitched in his jaw.
“Never again,” he stated, not looking at her. “That was the first and last time. We bought our freedom with that. We do not sell the keys.”
The elevator doors sighed open into the serene, airy space. The morning sun was now brutally high, bleaching the white linen and pale wood. It felt like a different world, a museum diorama of a normal life.
“Go run a bath,” Enzo instructed, shrugging off his suit jacket. “The deepest, hottest bath you can stand. Use everything. I’ll be in shortly.”
She obeyed, moving on autopilot to the vast limestone bathroom. She started the water, pouring in a generous stream of sandalwood oil, watching the steam rise. She stripped, letting the black slip fall to the floor. In the mirror, she saw the marks: the bruise on her hip from his grip, the reddened patch on her collarbone from his mouth. The physical evidence was a relief. It was real.
She sank into the scalding water with a gasp, the heat biting then soothing, drawing the tension from her muscles. She submerged her head, wanting to drown the phantom feel of the sheikh’s eyes. When she surfaced, Enzo was there, leaning against the doorframe. He had removed his watch, rolled up his sleeves. He looked like a man about to perform surgery.
He knelt beside the tub. Without a word, he took a sponge, lathered it with a bar of unscented soap, and began to wash her.
It was not erotic. It was methodical, exhaustive. He started with her shoulders, scrubbing with a firm, almost clinical pressure, as if scouring a stain. He moved down her arms, lifting each one, paying careful attention to her palms, her fingers, the spaces between. He soaped her back, his knuckles working along her spine. He washed her breasts, his touch impersonal, cleaning the swell and the hollow where his mouth had been. The sponge moved over her stomach, her navel.
He nudged her forward to wash her back, then her buttocks. He parted her legs and cleaned her there too, the sponge moving over her most intimate flesh with the same detached thoroughness he’d used on her hands. He rinsed her with a pitcher of clean water, the stream sluicing away the suds, and with them, the last psychic residue of the other man’s gaze.
He was washing the transaction away. Erasing the buyer.
When he was done, he dropped the sponge. He stared at the water, now clouded with oil and soap. “Out,” he said quietly.
She stood, water cascading from her body. He wrapped her in a thick, heated towel and carried her, not to the bed, but to the long, low sofa in the living room. He laid her down on the soft linen and knelt before her, the towel falling open.
He didn’t speak. He just looked. His gaze travelled over her clean skin, lingering on the marks he had made, as if re-mapping her as his territory. Then he bent his head and put his mouth on her.
This was nothing like the bathroom on the yacht. This was slow, achingly deliberate. His tongue laved her, not to claim, but to re-consecrate. He licked into her with a deep, languid rhythm that made her hips arch off the couch. He sucked her clit between his lips, not to punish, but to draw out a different kind of sound—a broken, grateful sob that tore from her throat.
“Enzo…” she breathed, her hands tangling in his hair.
He ignored her, lost in his task. He licked and kissed and worshipped until she was shuddering, her heels digging into his back. He brought her to the edge twice, his mouth relentless, then backed away, leaving her gasping and empty. Only then did he undress, his eyes never leaving hers.
He lay beside her on the wide sofa, pulling her on top of him. He was already hard, his cock pressing against her stomach. He guided himself to her entrance, his hands on her hips.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice a low scrape.
She looked down, her hair forming a dark curtain around their faces. She sank onto him, a slow, inch-by-inch descent that made them both groan. He filled her completely, a different fullness now, one of sanctuary, not conquest. He didn’t move.
“This,” he said, his eyes burning into hers. “This is us. This heat. This right here. Not that sterile room. Not his fucking money. This.”
He began to move her then, his hands on her hips setting a slow, grinding rhythm. It was deep, possessive, but profoundly tender. Each rock of her body took him deeper, fused them closer. He reached between them, his thumb finding her clit, circling in time with their movement.
“You were magnificent,” he whispered, his breath hot against her lips. “My ruthless, perfect girl. You broke him. You knew exactly how to break him.”
He kissed her, a deep, consuming kiss that tasted of salt and her. The pace remained achingly slow, a drawn-out possession that felt less like fucking and more like a vow. She came silently, a series of internal flutters that squeezed around him, her body bowing forward, her forehead resting against his.
He followed her over, his release a hot, pulsing flood inside her, his grip on her hips tightening to the point of pain. He held her there, impaled, for a long time, his breath ragged in her ear.
They were still joined, damp and spent, when his phone buzzed on the floor. It was Sergio’s ringtone—a blast of race engine noise.
Enzo cursed under his breath, his body going rigid beneath hers. He made no move to answer it. It went to voicemail. Thirty seconds later, it buzzed again.
“He knows something,” Alma murmured, reluctantly lifting herself off him. The loss of connection felt like a wound.
“He knows nothing,” Enzo said, but his voice lacked conviction. He sat up, running a hand through his hair. “He has instincts. Like a goddamn bloodhound.”
The phone buzzed a third time, insistently.
Enzo snatched it up. “Sergio. What is it?” He listened, his face hardening. “No. We just got back. The deal is closed. Yes, on our terms.” A longer pause. Enzo’s eyes flicked to Alma, a storm brewing in them. “Who told you that?” Another pause. His knuckles were white around the phone. “Gossip from a disgruntled stewardess means nothing. Do not call me again with this.” He ended the call and threw the phone onto a chair. It clattered against the wood.
“He heard,” Alma said flatly, pulling the towel around her.
“He heard a version,” Enzo corrected, standing and pacing. “Someone on the sheikh’s staff. A whisper about a private entertainment. He doesn’t know it was you. He thinks it was a girl Enzo brought. A professional.”
“He was worried about the team’s reputation,” Alma said, translating Sergio’s panic.
“He was worried about you,” Enzo snapped, stopping his pacing. He looked at her, his expression torn. “He asked if you were ‘safe’ from my ‘appetites.’” He let out a short, bitter laugh. “The irony is fucking poetic.”
He walked to the window, his broad back tense. “This is the crack. This is how it starts. He trusts you. He doesn’t fully trust me. Not with this. Not with the human parts of the machine.”
Alma stood, the towel held tightly around her. The sanctuary of the last hour evaporated, replaced by the cold, familiar grip of strategy. “So we control the narrative. We give him a truth to focus on.”
Enzo turned. “What are you suggesting?”
“You said he has instincts. Use them. Let him catch a scent of something real, but not the real thing. Let him think he’s protecting me from your darker deals, from the seedy underbelly he suspects you operate in. He’ll feel noble. He’ll be distracted. And he’ll stop looking for what’s right in front of him.”
A slow, reluctant admiration dawned in Enzo’s eyes. He crossed the room, cupping her face. “You are terrifying.”
“I learned from the best,” she whispered.
He kissed her, hard and quick. “Then we give him a show. A smaller, quieter one. One where you are the prize he thinks he’s shielding.”
He picked up his phone, scrolling. “We’re due in Monaco in seventy-two hours. Sergio will be there, prepping for the simulator sessions. The three of us, in close quarters.” He looked at her, a new, dangerous plan solidifying behind his gaze. “Let him see you flinch when I raise my voice. Let him see a bruise I don’t bother to hide. Let him offer you his protection.” A grim smile touched his lips. “And you will hesitate, and then you will take it. You will let him feel like your savior.”
The idea curdled in Alma’s stomach. Using Sergio’s decency as a tool felt fouler than anything they’d done in the sheikh’s penthouse. “He doesn’t deserve that,” she said quietly.
“No,” Enzo agreed, his voice devoid of mercy. “But we do what we must to survive our own victory. We let him play the hero. And in the shadow he creates for us, we survive.”
He pulled her against him, his embrace suddenly fierce. “You are mine,” he whispered into her hair, the words a vow and a threat. “Every part of this game. Even the part that belongs to him now.”
Outside, the relentless Dubai sun glinted off a thousand glass towers. Inside, they stood together, architects of the next necessary lie, the hot, clean scent of sandalwood clinging to their scrubbed skin, a fragrant ghost of their brief, stolen peace.
Inside, they stood together, architects of the next necessary lie, the hot, clean scent of sandalwood clinging to their scrubbed skin, a fragrant ghost of their brief, stolen peace. It dissolved with the next breath, replaced by the sterile, refrigerated air of the jet. The seventy-two hours blurred into a procession of luggage, tarmac, and the low hum of engines. Alma slept fitfully, her dreams spliced with the buzz of a phone and the sticky feeling of champagne. Enzo worked, his laptop casting a blue glow on his impassive face, the signed contract now just another digital file.
Monaco welcomed them with a cool, salty breeze and postcard perfection. The chaos of Dubai felt like a fever dream. Here, the power was older, quieter, woven into the limestone cliffs and the sapphire harbor. Enzo’s residence was a testament to that deeper wealth: a secluded villa carved into the rock face, all soaring windows and terraces drowning in bougainvillea. It felt less like a home and more like a beautifully fortified command post.
Sergio was already there, his energy a palpable force field in the spacious living area. He was pacing by the grand piano, a muscle ticking in his jaw. He wore sweatpants and a team polo, his hair still damp from a workout. He moved with the coiled, restless grace of the racing machine he was. When Alma entered behind Enzo, Sergio stopped dead. His eyes, the color of polished shale, scanned her with an intensity that felt more invasive than the sheikh’s leering.
“Alma,” he said, her name an exhale of relief. He crossed the room in three strides, ignoring Enzo completely. His hands came up as if to grip her shoulders, then stopped, hovering. “You’re okay?”
“I’m fine, Sergio,” she said, offering a professional smile she didn’t feel. She could sense Enzo beside her, a statue of calm observation.
“You’re sure?” Sergio pressed, his gaze darting over her face, searching for cracks. “That story about the yacht… it sounded like a fucking circus.”
“All deals are circuses,” Enzo interjected, his voice smooth as aged whiskey. He placed a guiding hand on the small of Alma’s back, a deliberate gesture of ownership. “The clowns just wear different crowns. The water is hot, Sergio. Go shower. You smell like the garage.”
It was a dismissal, a fatherly shove. Sergio’s eyes flashed with a brief, familiar rebellion before he reined it in. He gave Alma one last, lingering look. “We’ll talk later,” he said, not a request.
The performance began that night.
They dined on the terrace under a blanket of stars. Enzo held court, dissecting the new contract’s fine print with clinical precision. Sergio listened, pushing food around his plate, his attention splintered. Alma sat between them, a silent goblet waiting to be filled with their tensions.
When the cognac was poured, Enzo’s tone shifted. He leaned back, swirling the amber liquid. “The sheikh requested a personal follow-up. A cultural liaison for the remainder of the season. He suggested Alma.”
Sergio’s fork clattered against his plate. “Absolutely not.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Enzo said, his eyes cold. “But it requires a delicate refusal. One he will accept without taking offense.” He turned his gaze to Alma. It wasn’t the warm possession of the bath. It was the assessing, icy look of a strategist viewing a piece on a board. “You’ll draft the polite fiction tomorrow. We’ll cite conflict with your visa status. Make it convincing.”
His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried a whip-crack finality Alma knew was for show. She felt Sergio tense beside her. She lowered her eyes, letting her shoulders curl inwards slightly. A subtle flinch. A tiny surrender.
“Enzo,” Sergio said, a warning in his voice.
“It’s handled, Sergio,” Enzo cut him off, standing abruptly. “Alma, my study. Now. We need to review the Singapore logistics before I forget.”
He walked inside without looking back. Alma stood, her movements deliberately weary. She didn’t look at Sergio.
“Alma,” Sergio called after her, his voice low.
She paused, half-turning. She let him see the careful blankness in her eyes, the slight tremble in her hand as she pushed a curl behind her ear. She said nothing. Then she followed Enzo into the lion’s den.
The study door clicked shut. Enzo wasn’t at the desk. He was by the window, backlit by the harbor lights. “Perfect,” he murmured. “That hesitation was a masterstroke. He’s already constructing a prison to rescue you from.”
He crossed the room and pulled her to him, his kiss hard and demanding. It was a reward. His hands groped her, not with tenderness, but with a celebratory roughness. He bit her lower lip, then soothed it with his tongue. “Now,” he breathed against her mouth, his fingers digging into the flesh of her ass. “We give him something to hear.”
He turned her around, bending her over the heavy oak desk. Pens scattered. He lifted her skirt, tore her underwear aside with a brutal rip of fabric. He was already unfastening his trousers. He spit into his palm, slicked himself, and drove into her from behind without another second’s pause.
The thrust was brutal, a sharp, deep impalement that knocked the air from her lungs. He set a fast, punishing rhythm, each slam jolting her body against the hard wood. This was fucking as punctuation. A period at the end of their performed sentence.
“You think he’s listening?” Enzo grunted, his hand fisting in her hair, pulling her head back. “You think he’s out there, hearing me wreck this sweet cunt?”
He pounded into her, the wet, slapping sounds obscenely loud in the paneled room. He fucked her with a ruthless, focused intensity, his hips pistoning, his balls slapping against her skin. She gasped, her fingers scrambling on the polished desktop. The sensation was a violent counterpoint to the slow worship on the Dubai sofa. This was pure, raw reassertion.
“Come on, baby,” he snarled, his voice ragged. “Make noise for him. Let him hear how I make you come when I’m pissed off. Let him wonder if you’re crying.”
He shoved a hand around her hip, his fingers finding her clit, rubbing rough, tight circles. The dual assault—the deep, driving penetration and the harsh friction on her sensitive nerve—coiled a spring in her gut. It wasn’t the sweet, slow build. It was a firework, lit and abandoned. Her climax hit her like a shockwave, a silent, seizing convulsion that clamped viciously around his cock.
“Fuck yes,” he hissed, feeling her muscles milk him. With three final, jarring thrusts, he came, a hot, pulsing release that flooded her insides. He held himself there, buried to the hilt, panting against her back.
They stayed like that for a minute, connected by sweat and spend. Then he pulled out, the cold air a shock on her wet skin. He tucked himself away, his breathing already steadying. He looked down at her, sprawled and disheveled over his desk. He smoothed her skirt down with a strange, almost paternal gesture.
“Go to your room,” he said, his voice now devoid of all heat. “Look shaken. If he asks, you tell him we argued over the wording of the refusal letter. Nothing more.”
Alma straightened, her legs unsteady. Enzo steadied her silently and he pressed a sweet soft kiss to her lips and a whispered “I love you” against her forehead, she smiled shyly and whispered “I love you too” before she walked to the door, her movements stiff. She paused, her hand on the knob, and took a deliberate, shaky breath. She pulled the door open.
She pulled the door open.
The hallway was empty, cool and shadowed, but the air itself felt charged, as if a storm had just passed through and left the pressure permanently altered. Alma’s legs carried her on a numb, mechanical march toward the guest wing, the phantom ache between her thighs a stark receipt for the performance. She could still smell Enzo’s cologne and their sex on her skin, a pungent blend beneath the clean linen of her clothes.
A figure detached itself from the deep shadows beside a large potted olive tree.
Sergio.
He stood there, having clearly been waiting, his arms crossed over his chest. The diffuse light from a sconce caught the sharp angle of his jaw, clenched tight. His eyes, dark and unblinking, tracked her every movement like a targeting system. He didn’t speak as she approached, but his presence was a wall.
“Sergio,” she said, her voice carefully neutral, a servant’s tone. She tried to walk past.
He moved, just enough to block her path. “What was that?” he asked. His voice was low, a gravelly whisper that vibrated with a fury he was holding in check by sheer will.
“A discussion. About Singapore.” She kept her gaze lowered, focusing on the geometric pattern of the marble floor.
“I heard the discussion.” The words were clipped, sharp. “Through a closed door. It didn’t sound like logistics.”
Alma allowed a sigh, a practiced sound of weary frustration. “He wasn’t happy with my draft. You know how he gets.”
“I know how he gets?” Sergio took a step closer. The scent of him—clean sweat, expensive soap—cut through the other smells on her. “I know he’s my manager. I know he closes deals in back rooms. I don’t know what sounds he makes when he’s not happy with a draft.”
Her head snapped up then, defiance flashing in her eyes on instinct before she quenched it. “It’s not your concern.”
“The hell it isn’t.” He reached out, his fingers closing around her wrist. His grip was firm, not painful, but inescapable. “He had some girl on that yacht. For the sheikh. Now he’s in there, and you come out looking like you’ve been… processed.” His eyes searched hers, desperate for a denial she couldn’t give. “Did he touch you?”
The question hung there, simple and devastating.
Alma’s mind raced. The plan was to let Sergio suspect, to let him play the protector. But his directness was a pit opening beneath her feet. A lie now would be gaseous and transparent. A truth was impossible. She settled on a fractured version, her voice dropping to a confiding whisper. “He’s under pressure. The sheikh’s demands… they didn’t stop with the contract. Enzo handles it. In his way.”
Sergio’s face paled with a raw, understanding disgust. He released her wrist as if her skin had burned him. “His way.” He said it like a curse. He looked from her to the distant, closed door of the study, then back. A violent resolve hardened his features. “Stay here.”
“Sergio, don’t—”
But he was already moving, a streak of coiled motion down the hall. He didn’t knock. He simply turned the handle and shoved the heavy door open so hard it crashed against the interior wall.
Alma stood frozen, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. She crept forward, stopping just outside the jagged wedge of light spilling from the doorway.
Enzo was seated behind the desk now, papers neatly arrayed before him, the picture of calm industry. He didn’t look up immediately, finishing a notation with deliberate slowness before lifting his gaze. “Sergio. Do we have a problem with the sim schedule?”
“You fucking animal.” Sergio’s voice was trembling with rage. He stood just inside the room, his body a taut line.
Enzo leaned back, steepling his fingers. His eyes were cold chips of obsidian. “Careful.”
“I heard you.” Sergio took a step forward, planting his hands on the desk. “What did you do to her?”
“To whom?” Enzo’s tone was insultingly light. “The ‘girl on the yacht’? A regrettable necessity for a billion-euro partnership. She was compensated. Extravagantly.”
“Not her.” Sergio spat the words. “Alma. In this room. Five minutes ago.”
A slow, reptilian smile touched Enzo’s lips. He glanced meaningfully at the disarray of pens on the desk, the faint, lingering moisture on the dark wood that Alma had missed. Then he looked back at Sergio, his expression one of bored contempt. “You are confusing your responsibilities. You drive the car. You fuck the grid girls. You cash the checks I put in your hand.” He stood now, matching Sergio’s stance, their faces inches apart. “You do not question how I secure those checks. You do not police my methods, or my staff.”
“She is not staff for you to… to use like that!” Sergio’s shout echoed off the bookshelves.
“She is whatever I need her to be!” Enzo’s roar was deeper, final, a sound that carried the weight of fifteen years of absolute authority. “Just as you are! We are in the business of selling illusions, Sergio. Speed. Power. Invincibility. Sometimes the illusion requires a pretty face taking one for the team in a negotiation. Sometimes it requires a driver believing his manager is a monster, so he can play the hero for the distressed damsel.”
Sergio recoiled as if struck. The calculation in Enzo’s words was more violent than any fist. “You’re saying that was for my benefit?”
“I’m saying your fragile, noble sensibilities are a variable I have to manage.” Enzo’s voice dropped back to a conversational calm, which was somehow worse. “You heard a noise. You formed a story. Good. Now you can spend your energy comforting her, shielding her from the big bad wolf. It will keep you focused. It will keep you from asking what really happened in Dubai.”
Sergio was silent for a long moment, his breath coming in harsh gusts. The logic, warped and toxic, was settling over him, its gears clicking into place. He wanted to reject it, to punch through the elegant lies. But the alternative—the full, unvarnished truth of what they had done, of what Alma had willingly become—was a door he couldn’t bring himself to open.
“Stay away from her,” Sergio said finally, the threat sounding hollow even to his own ears.
Enzo gave a soft, dismissive snort. “Or what? You’ll quit? Find another manager? Good luck. Every one of them is me, just with worse suits.” He sat down again, picking up a pen. “The conversation is over. You have a simulator session at dawn. I suggest you sleep off this childish fit.”
Sergio stood there, trembling with impotent fury. He looked at the man who had built his career, who had been a fixed point in his universe, and saw only a stranger in a well-tailored suit, sitting in a room that still smelled of sex. He turned and walked out, his shoulders slumped not in defeat, but in a profound, disorienting confusion.
Alma had retreated into the shadows. Sergio’s eyes found her, full of a tortured, protective anger that was now her cage. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. He just stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time, before turning and disappearing down the hall toward his own wing.
From the study doorway, Enzo’s voice, cool and clear, cut through the silence. “Alma.”
She flinched.
“Come back inside. We’re not finished.”