Page 32 of The Beast's Broken Beauty

My throat constricts at those four words, heat prickling across my skin like wildfire. I've always hated how my body betrays me around Antonio, like there's some pre-programmed response my mind can't override, like my body remembers him even when I wish it would forget. The memory of his breath mingling with mine, his eyes locking with mine before his mouth claimed the most intimate part of me...

I bite my lower lip hard enough to taste copper, forcing myself back to reality. "Not on your life," I want to say, but the words stick in my throat.

Franco must notice something in my expression, probably the flush creeping up my neck, because he adds, almost gently, "Dean will be there too."

I nod, grateful for the implied assurance that I won't be alone with Antonio. That I'll have a buffer against whatever this is that keeps pulling us back into each other's orbits despite the hatred and pain between us.

"Can I come too?" Elena chirps, bouncing on her toes.

Signora Martha shakes her head immediately. "Oh, but we have to make some tiramisu for dessert. Isabella loves it."

"You do?" Elena's eyes widen with renewed interest.

"I definitely do," I confirm, thankful for Signora Martha's intervention. The last thing I need is a three-year-old audience for whatever power play Antonio has planned. It's bad enough I can still taste him on my tongue, that I woke up this morning with my hand between my legs, chasing the ghost of his touch.

God. I'm pathetic.

"Okay. Then we'll make the best one." Elena skips ahead toward the kitchen door, momentarily free from her sadness.

Signora Martha gives me a knowing look and whispers something in rapid Italian that I don't catch, probably something about being strong or standing my ground. She's been more ally than jailer these past days, though I still can't quite let myself trust her fully.

Franco's mouth quirks into a rare smile. "She said to keep your head high and that he knows what he could lose."

I almost laugh at that. "I guess Signora Martha and I will have to agree to disagree, but I'll keep my head high," I mutter, not adding that Antonio has neither clue, desire, nor will to hold onto me. You can't lose what you never valued in the first place. That's just wishful thinking on my part. More evidence of the dangerous, dying hope I can't seem to extinguish.

I stand, automatically trying to tame my rebellious curls into a ponytail, but they're too wild this morning—cancer's parting gift, growing back with a vengeance and a mind of their own. My fingers smooth down my black sweatpants as if appearing presentable matters after everything that's happened between us.

Once I realize what I'm doing, I stop abruptly and clench my hands into fists. I'm straightening myself up for the same man who locked me away for three months, who told me I killed his mother, who made me come undone with his mouth before calling me a viper. The same man I held a shard against, whose blood I almost spilled.

I square my shoulders like I used to before stepping on stage. No, it's worse than stage fright. It's like facing the oncologist after a suspicious scan, that feeling of your life hanging in the balance of someone else's judgment.

This shouldn't matter. He shouldn't matter. Not after all he's done.

But my body betrays me again with another rush of butterflies. My heart, too. That stubborn, cancer-surviving, wildly irregularorgan that still skips beats it can't afford to lose whenever he's near.

I've cried enough tears over a man who can't see past his own scars to recognize he could be both the Beast and so much more.

A man who refuses to realize I'm not the enemy he's determined to destroy.

Chapter seventeen

Isabella

Myfeetresonateagainstthe wooden floor as I enter Antonio's imposing office, wishing Cerberus was by my side, at least then I'd have something to do with my hands. I can't decide whether to clasp them behind my back or just let them hang, and I'm overthinking every movement like it's my first time on stage.

Look natural, Bella. As if your former stepbrother's tongue wasn't driving you wild just last night. Totally cool. Just fine.

My gaze meets his and there's a dangerous cocktail of hunger, hurt, and heat swimming in those midnight eyes. For a heartbeat, my pulse does that stupid flutter-skip thing that would have nurses running. I keep my chin lifted like I learned to do during treatments, a dancer's posture, a survivor's defiance, but I know he can see my racing pulse. He probably even hears it. Franco definitely does.

I imagine myself standing in the wings before stepping onto stage: the lights, the anticipation, the smell of old wood and rosin. Nervous butterflies would invade my chest then too, my mouth always desert-dry no matter how much water I drank. Just like now, only there's no music about to rescue me, no choreography to lose myself in.

Well, I managed to be the best damn Sleeping Beauty the academy ever had even with my nerves going ballistic. Surely I can pretend my body isn't aching for him and my heart isn't shredded from all the wounds he's inflicted.

Maybe I can blame my flushed face on being outside, even if the Mediterranean air was chilly today. It's not fair that this man has a pure magnetism that draws me in despite everything. I want out of his gravitational pull and yet, my very core clenches remembering him between my thighs, looking up with that same wild need in his eyes.

That image needs to be surgically removed from my memory.Pronto.

"You wanted to see me?" Thank god my voice doesn't betray the hurricane raging inside me.

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