Page 48 of Valentino

"I did." I force myself to hold his gaze. "I know. You told me to find you if anyone tried to lead me away. I know." I swallow. "But it didn't feel like that. It was work. Just another room. Another buyer."

I've done it a thousand times.

He nods once. He doesn't tell me I should have known.

He doesn't have to.

"She took me down a corridor. To a private room. There were people inside. A few." I force myself to keep going. "And there was a man. He stood when I came in. Took my hand."

My fingers curl into the blanket.

The memory doesn't come back all at once. It's in fragments that scrape against each other. Fluorescent light reflecting off a polished desk. The faint smell of wine. His hand closing around mine and not releasing when courtesy should have ended the gesture.

"Aldo," I say. "Aldo something. Obviously he had a last name, but I can't—it's gone."

The name feels detached from everything else about those horrible moments, floating loose while everything around it remains lodged beneath my skin.

"He was attractive. Effortlessly so. The kind of man who understood exactly how he appeared to other people."

I stare at a wrinkle in the blanket because looking anywhere else feels impossible.

"He talked about the campaign. Not in generalities. He knew details. Conversations I'd had. Problems we'd been dealing with. Things that made it seem like he'd been paying attention."

At the time, it felt flattering. Reassuring. Like meeting someone competent in a room full of strangers. Now every remembered smile feels contaminated by what came after.

"I trusted him almost immediately," I say quietly. "At least, that's what it felt like. Looking back, I don't think trust is the right word. Something in me responded to him almost right away. Before I'd consciously formed an opinion at all."

I swallow.

"I didn't trust him entirely. But I can't honestly say I didn't trust him either.”

Something in what I said makes his expression tighten.

His hand has settled on his thigh. The knuckles are split and swollen, the scabs still fresh.

I look at him, and a question forms that I'm not ready to ask.

"Keep going," he says, his voice steady.

"He talked. God, he talked. About not caring about fashion. About his mother. About money, investments..." I shake my head. "I stopped listening."

I pull at a loose thread on the blanket, understanding the feeling. I feel like I'm unraveling too.

"And then Francesca was gone. There were fewer people in the room." I swallow. "I remember thinking I should leave. That it was time to smile, make an excuse, and go."

The words hang between us. I wait for the memory to continue, for the next piece to fall into place. It doesn't.

Everything after that is blurred at the edges, disconnected fragments that refuse to become a whole.

"The room moved." I hate how even my voice sounds when I say it. Too calm. Too clear. "Not me. The room. The floor went sideways and my legs went out from under me. I sat down hard. Or fell. I don't know. Maybe he caught me, and I remember wrong." I pause, allowing more memories to build. When the next one forms, I want to shove it back down.

"I can still feel his hand on my back." A violent shudder wracks my body, and nausea swims up my throat at the memory. The sensation. "‘You need air, bella.’ I tried to tell him no, but I couldn't get the word out. I couldn't get anything out."

I'm not crying. That feels wrong. Like I should be.

"After that, it's pieces." I press my hand over my eyes. "Lamps. Carpet. The floor against my cheek. Someone rolling me over. A phone flash."

My words die in my throat. I have to stop because if I keep talking for another second, I'm afraid I'll remember too much. The fragments I've been forcing out start colliding with each other, trying to become something whole, and I don't want them to. I don't want to see it clearly.