Chapter 7 - Silk and Armor
By three o'clock the following afternoon, the guest suite had been transformed into what looked like the backstage area of Paris Fashion Week.
Racks of breathtaking evening gowns lined the walls—velvet, duchess satin, shimmering metallic silks in shades of emerald, midnight blue, and crimson. Three stylists, two makeup artists, and a jeweler flanked by two armed couriers fluttered around the room like nervous birds.
They had all been briefed by Luca. No one asked about the heavy white fiberglass splint encasing my right forearm and two middle fingers. Instead, the head stylist, an impeccably dressed French woman named Vivienne, treated the injury as an architectural challenge.
“We do not hide it,” Vivienne declared, inspecting my arm with a critical eye while I sat in front of the vanity mirror in an ivory silk robe. “If you try to conceal a cast under a sleeve, it looks awkward. Bulky. Apologetic. Non. We make it deliberate. We make it an accessory of power.”
She snapped her fingers, and an assistant brought forward a long, single evening glove made of sheer black Italian lace, interwoven with delicate matte-black bugle beads. With painstaking care, Vivienne slid the glove over my splint, smoothing the exquisite dark lace until the medical fiberglass was transformed into a dramatic, armor-like sleeve that extended from my fingertips to halfway up my bicep.
It looked gothic, elegant, and unmistakably fierce.
Next came the gown.
Vivienne selected a dress of heavy, midnight-blue silk velvet. It was a masterpiece of minimalist design—an asymmetrical neckline that left my uninjured left shoulder bare while sweeping across the right in a tailored fold that complemented the dark lace glove. The bodice clung to my waist before cascading into a dramatic column skirt with a daring, taste-filled slit up the side that allowed for easy movement.
When the makeup artist finished with my hair, sweeping my dark chestnut locks into an intricate, loose chignon that highlighted my neck and collarbones, I looked at myself in the full-length mirror.
I didn't recognize the woman staring back.
My cheekbones, usually pale and drawn from stress, were sculpted and glowing. My hazel eyes, emphasized with smoky charcoal shadow, looked wide, fierce, and entirely unfamiliar. I didn't look like an orphaned nursing student or an underpaid nanny.
I looked like a woman who could burn an empire to the ground and warm her hands by the fire.
A knock sounded at the double doors.
The stylists and assistants immediately gathered their garment bags and cleared out through the side entrance, bowing slightly as Luca entered the room.
The breath left my lungs.
Luca wore a bespoke black tuxedo that fit his broad shoulders and narrow waist with lethal precision. His crisp white dress shirt made his tanned skin and dark hair stand out in sharp relief. He looked impossibly handsome, commanding, and radiating a dark, coiled energy that made the entire room feel smaller the second he stepped inside.
He stopped ten paces away. His eyes swept over me—from the dark chignon, down the midnight velvet clinging to my curves, to the black lace armor covering my injured hand, and finally back up to my face.
For five long seconds, he didn't speak.
The silence between us was so thick, so heavily charged with unsaid desires and electric tension, that my knees felt weak.
“Vivienne outdid herself,” Luca finally said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that vibrated through the floorboards.
“I feel like an imposter,” I admitted, my voice barely above a whisper. “Everyone in that room will know I don't belong.”
Luca walked toward me. Every step was measured, confident, predatory. He didn't stop until he was standing directly in front of me, his physical presence blotting out the rest of the world.
He reached into his breast pocket and produced a velvet box. He popped the latch with his thumb.
Inside lay a necklace.
It wasn't a delicate string of pearls or a polite diamond solitaire. It was a river of graduated, pear-cut Colombian emeralds, linked by platinum bands encrusted with black diamonds. It looked ancient, heavy, and worth more than the entire block of apartments where I had grown up.
“The Moretti family heirloom,” Luca murmured, taking the heavy necklace from the velvet cushion. “My great-grandfather commissioned it in Milan in 1920. It has only ever been worn by three women. The wives of the men who run this family.”
My heart stopped. “Luca, no. I can’t wear this. People will think—”
“Let them think,” he interrupted, stepping behind me.
His warm hands brushed my bare shoulder as he swept my hair aside. A violent shiver rippled down my spine at the contact. The cold platinum and heavy emeralds settled against my collarbones, resting heavy and cold against my skin until the ambient heat of my body warmed the stones.
He fastened the clasp at the back of my neck. His fingers lingered against my skin for one agonizing, breathless moment before his hands rested lightly on my bare shoulders.
In the mirror, our eyes met.
He stood behind me, dark, towering, and uncompromising, his hands on my skin. I stood before him, draped in velvet, emeralds, and lace armor.
“You belong anywhere I place you, Emma,” Luca whispered near my ear, his breath stirring the loose tendrils of hair at my temple. “Tonight, you are not a nanny. You are not a victim. You are my equal.”
He stepped back and offered me his left arm, bent at the elbow.
I took a deep, steadying breath, raised my chin, and slipped my uninjured left hand through the crook of his arm.
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“Let’s go,” I said.
***
