She would know him.
Starting now.
Chapter 10
Rose planned to argue about the sleeping arrangements. She did. But after twenty-four hours of stress, her body just kind of…gave out. She let Dante guide her back into the bedroom, brushed her teeth, and then collapsed onto the ridiculously comfortable mattress wearing only a tank top and underwear. The last thing she registered was Dante pulling the covers up higher around her shoulders.
She woke up to sunlight streaming through the windows and the faint sound of eighties’ rock. Rose sat up and shoved her hair back from her face. She’d meant to use the night to make another escape attempt or at least try to turn the tables, but…
Exhaustion would get the best of anyone in this scenario. That’s all it was. Frankly, she should be proud she lasted as long as she had without collapsing. Better to focus on that rather than the missed opportunities. She hauled herself out of bed and into the bathroom. She used the toilet and spent entirely too long brushing her teeth. Stalling. That’s what she was doing. Fucking stalling.
She used mouthwash and then stared at her reflection in the mirror. Gone was the perfectly put-together woman she’d curated for most of her life. Her hair was wild, she didn’t have a speck of makeup on her face, and there were faint circles beneath her eyes.
Getting out of here was her top priority. It had to be her top priority. She didn’t know what time it was or what time zone they were even in, but shit had most definitely hit the fan back in New York. Lorelei could only stall for so long. She needed to be there, helping to put out fires. That was fact.
It was also fact that she had no way to get out of this house. The glass was reinforced, and the door had a security panel that she couldn’t pry off, and didn’t know the passcode to. It was eight fucking digits, too, which meant there were tens of thousands of code possibilities; it would take her years to find the right one.
And that was just the first step.
Once she got out of this cabin, she had to figure out a way back to civilization. She had no true gauge for telling how close they were, and even with a road to follow, there was no guarantee she’d even reach the nearest city or town safely. No, the odds were not in Rose’s favor. No matter from which angle she looked at the situation, the fact remained that she was well and truly at Dante’s mercy.
If he was to be believed, he wanted to marry her.
Rose snorted. Yeah, like she was going to fall for that. She’d believed his feelings for her once before, and she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Whatever Dante’s goals, he might want her, but marrying her couldn’t possibly be the end game.
If it was…
That meant he was telling the truth about their farce of a relationship being at least as real to him as it was to her.
She pressed her hand to her chest. No. She couldn’t believe it. It didn’t make any fucking sense. Better to play out the scenarios and get the hell out of here. She and Dante had no future. Even if her foolish heart won, and she came down with a spontaneous case of Stockholm syndrome—which she was pretty sure didn’t even exist—her family would put an end to that the moment she arrived back in the city with her new husband. She’d be a widow before the day was out.
Honestly, that was probably the easiest solution. Bend instead of fighting. Let him win her over however he intended to and fast-track this process to getting back to civilization. It would be a different kind of battle of wills, but surely she could prevail… Couldn’t she?
Unless she was just twisting herself into knots in an excuse to take what she wanted from this man. She wasn’t a bad daughter, a horrible heir, if she had to seduce Dante to get free.
She shook her head. “Honesty, Rose.” Honestly, she had no way out. From her little tour of the cabin yesterday after getting dressed, there were no exits or windows that she could climb out of. The odds were stacked against her, and with time of the essence, she’d have to use every tool available. That was the truth.
But not the full truth.
The uncomfortable fact remained that while she might have thought herself in love with Jackson Smith, she’d never desired him with the ferocity she desired Dante. Things had been comfortable with Jackson. Nice. Sweet. Safe. A counter to the rest of her life, a selfish little vacation for only her every time she went to his apartment.
There was no separating Dante from her world. He was in it up to his eyeballs. She didn’t have to pretend right now, and even if he was the enemy, that truth attracted her. He wasn’t expecting her to be above reproach or be thinking of anyone but herself. Not her family, not her people. She couldn’t help being drawn to that. She didn’t have to pretend with him. Not anymore. He didn’t want her because she was Rose Romanov, heir to the Romanov empire in New York.
He only wanted her.
She followed the sound of music to the other side of the kitchen and a door she hadn’t seen last night because it was cleverly tucked into a little nook in the wall. It had been left cracked open, and she used a single finger to press it open farther. Inside was a home gym, but like everything else in this “rustic” cabin, it was the height of luxury. There was a treadmill and rowing machine tucked in the far corner and a selection of free weights set up, complete with rack and bench.
Dante was on his back on the bench, shirtless and sweaty, pressing up a truly impressive amount of weight stacked on either side of the bar. He was relatively vulnerable like this, or at least she’d assume that if she didn’t know better. No matter what he said about their theoretical future, Dante wasn’t going to let her hurt him just to make her happy. He wanted her, but he wanted her in a specific way and at a specific time. No matter how he pretended to react when she threatened him, she knew men like him.
He might not lay a finger on her, but he would use every other tool in his arsenal against her. If somehow her family found this cabin, he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt them if they tried to take her from him.
She couldn’t keep playing things so harshly. Doing so put the people she loved in danger, either from the Capparelli family or from Dante himself. Rose couldn’t live with either option. Better to play along and make him think he was winning her over in some twisted version of Beauty and the Beast. The sooner he dropped his guard, the sooner she could do what needed to be done in order to free herself. And if she got what she wanted out of it in the process, too?
Well, she was only human.
No reason to think too hard about it. She was better suited to action, after all. Rose took a slow breath, squared her shoulders, and walked into the gym. Dante didn’t notice her until she was nearly beside him, and his only reaction was to raise his brows. The steady ascent and descent of the weight never changed.
Not even when she straddled him.
He did tense, though. Even that small response was enough to boost her confidence. She could do this. Rose had planned and executed raids and a number of shady operations over the years. She might not have had to play the undercover role—not when everyone in the NYC underworld knew her on sight—but surely she could pull this off.
“Have you eaten?” He didn’t even sound out of breath.
She shrugged. “I’m not hungry.”
Finally, a response from him. He stopped with the weight halfway to his chest. “You don’t take care of yourself.” The way he said it. As if he actually had her health and well-being in mind at any point of the time they’d known each other.