Chapter 3: Dockyard Seduction
The wine tasting was Isabella’s idea. “To feel properly adult,” she’d declared, before proceeding to drink like a college freshman on a budget. It was a breezy, soft evening on the yacht’s aft deck, strings of lights twinkling against the deepening violet sky. Vito presided over the bottles with a quiet expertise, pouring measured amounts of Barolo and Brunello, explaining terroir in a voice that was low and instructive.
Julienne sipped carefully, the wine a dark, tannic ripple on her tongue. She felt hyper-aware. Of the way the deck lights caught the silver at Vito’s temples. Of the vast, empty blackness of the lake around them, swallowing the horizon. Of the fact that Emilio was down in the galley, and the two other crew members were unseen, leaving the deck feeling like a floating, isolated stage.
“This one’s… oaky,” Isabella pronounced, wobbling slightly on her stool. She’d drained every glass. “Like a… a library that’s on fire. A good fire.”
“That is one interpretation,” Vito said, a faint amusement in his eyes. He looked at Julienne over the rim of his glass. “And you, Julienne? What do you taste?”
She forced herself to hold his gaze. The memory of the camera feed, the pixels of her own skin, tightened her throat. “Power,” she said, the word leaving her before she could filter it.
His expression didn’t change, but something ignited in his eyes, a dark, approving spark. “An interesting palate. It is a wine that demands patience. That punishes impulsivity.”
Isabella giggled, missing the current running between them. “You sound like you’re describing a person, Papa.” She reached for the bottle, misjudging the distance. Her elbow knocked her glass. It tipped, a crimson arc splashing across the teak deck before shattering.
“Oh, shit,” Isabella slurred, looking mournfully at the spill.
Vito’s jaw tightened, a fleeting crack in his composure. “Enough,” he said, his voice losing its cultured velvet. It was flat, final. “You are done. Emilio!”
Emilio appeared, silent as a shadow. “Take her inside. Put her in the master stateroom. Let her sleep it off.”
“I’m fiiiine,” Isabella protested, but her body was already listing. Emilio took her arm with a firm gentleness, guiding her off the stool and toward the cabin door. She threw a bleary, apologetic smile at Julienne. “Don’t let him bore you with more dusty wine facts, Jules.”
Then she was gone, swallowed by the yacht’s elegant interior.
The silence that followed was profound. The gentle lap of water against the hull. The distant, lonely cry of a night bird. Julienne stared at the wine stain on the deck, dark as old blood.
“She doesn’t handle her limits,” Vito said. He wasn’t looking at the stain. He was looking at her. “A dangerous trait.”
“She’s just having fun,” Julienne replied, her voice sounding small.
“Fun is a luxury you pay for in advance.” He stood, refilling his own glass but not hers. “Come. The air is better on the dock. Less… spoiled.”
It wasn’t an invitation. It was a command. She followed him down the passerelle onto the wooden dock, its planks worn smooth by time and weather. The night was cooler here, away from the yacht’s sheltered deck. The villa loomed above them, a silhouette against the star-flecked sky, only a few windows glowing. The world felt emptied out.
He walked to the very end of the dock, where the planks gave way to dark water. He didn’t speak. The tension was a live wire between her shoulder blades.
“The wine,” she started, needing to break the quiet. “It was… intense.”
“It is,” he agreed. He took a sip, then set the glass down on a piling. He turned to face her. The moon caught the hard line of his jaw, the hollows of his cheeks. “Unlike my daughter, you have a capacity for intensity. I’ve seen it.”
A speedboat roared somewhere in the distant dark, its engine whine fading into echoes. Julienne’s heart thudded against her ribs.
“Seen it?” she whispered.
His movement was sudden, a predator’s fluid grace. One hand closed around her waist, pulling her against him. The contact was electric, devastating. She could feel the solid, unyielding strength of him, the lean muscle beneath his tailored shirt. His other hand came up, his thumb finding the same spot on her throat it had a week before.
“You think I don’t see you?” His voice was a rough scrape against the night air. “You think I don’t know how you arch into the shower spray every morning? How you let the water run down your neck, over your shoulders. How you touch yourself, here.” His thumb moved, a slow, claiming circle on her pulse point. “You think I don’t watch you taste your coffee on the terrace, looking out at the lake like you want to devour the whole damn view?”
Her breath came in ragged hitches. Shame and a wild, screaming exhilaration warred inside her. He had seen. He had been watching. Not just on a screen. Everywhere.
“The cameras…” she gasped.
“Are just one window,” he finished. His face was inches from hers. His scent—expensive soap, leather, the dark wine—enveloped her. “You walk through my house with that look. That hungry, pretending-not-to-be look. You swim in my pool. You drink my wine. You tempt the current, Julienne.”
The speedboat’s roar returned, closer now, a violent buzz slicing across the lake’s surface.
In one brutal motion, he spun her, shoving her back against a rough wooden piling. The impact knocked the air from her lungs. His body pressed into hers, pinning her. The world reduced to the splintery wood at her back, the heat of him against her front, and the violent noise of the approaching boat.
He lowered his head, his mouth grazing the sensitive skin where her neck met her shoulder. His teeth scraped, not quite biting, a promise of pain. A sound escaped her, half-protest, half-surrender.
The speedboat shot past, a blaze of light and thunderous noise, maybe fifty yards out. Its wake hit the dock a moment later, a sudden, violent lurch that made her stagger against him. He held her steady, immovable.
As the boat’s roar faded into a distant hum, he pulled back just enough to look at her. His eyes were black in the moonlight, unreadable. His breathing was even. Hers was chaotic.
“The lake is dangerous at night,” he murmured, his lips almost touching hers. “People get carried away. They misjudge the depth. The temperature. They go into the water and…” He trailed off, his meaning hanging in the damp air. “But you’re not afraid of deeper water, are you?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He released her so abruptly she swayed. He picked up his wine glass from the piling, took a slow, deliberate sip, and turned to walk back toward the yacht, leaving her trembling against the wood, the taste of power and fear metallic on her tongue.
From the deck, he spoke without turning around, his voice carrying clearly on the still night. “Don’t stay out too long. The rocks are slippery.”
She listened to his footsteps recede, solid and sure on the dock. Her skin burned where he’d touched her. Her mind reeled, a riot of terror and illicit desire. He had seen everything. He knew everything. And he had just made it brutally clear: she was already in the water. And he controlled the current.