Page 159 of Untamed

Guilt burns red hot in my chest as I turn away before she can say anything else. Because if she does, if she looks at me a second longer, I might tell her everything.

And I’m not ready for that.

Not yet.

The silence Jordyn leaves behind is deafening and almost unbearable.

I stand in the doorway long after she’s gone, watching the empty path she took back on the street toward the front entrance of the manor. The morning light stretches across the stone, golden and soft, but it feels cold now. Hollow. Like something vital walked out of me with her.

I close the door, lock it out of habit, and press my back against the wood. My head tips back with a low exhale.

Everything smells like her.

The faint sweetness of her perfume still clings to the air. My bed is a wreck, sheets tangled, pillows scattered, and my T-shirt, the one she wore, is slung over the back of the chair, limp and wrinkled like a memory. I should shower, get dressed, pretend I’m in control of something.

But I don’t move.

Not yet.

Instead, I cross the room and pick up the shirt she wore. It’s warm from the sun filtering through the window, but that’s not what makes my chest clench. It’s the scent.

Her.

It’s soft and fresh and completely fucking wrong, the kind of scent that doesn’t belong in a place like this. In a house built for violence. In a life like mine.

I bring it to my face, just for a second. Just to breathe her in.

And that’s when I know I’ve lost whatever part of myself was left untouched.

She’s mine now.

Not in the way that can be claimed in front of others. Not where my father can see. Not where Luciano can twist it into leverage. But in the way that matters. The kind that lives under skin, between heartbeats, in every breath I take that doesn’t have her in it.

I shower, scrub the night off me, but I still feel her everywhere. I can still feel her mouth on mine. The way she saidmaybe I’ll sneak out laterlike she didn’t even realise how much I needed to hear that.

She has no idea what she’s done to me.

No fucking idea.

The screen freezes for the third time, and I swear I’m a breath away from snapping the laptop in half.

“—projected to recover by the end of next quarter,” the manager from our Milan property is saying, his voice glitching in and out. “Pending adjustments to VIP suite pricing, and if we continue pushing the seasonal packages?—”

I tune him out.

My eyes flick to the side of the screen where her name should be. Not there, of course. Jordyn has nothing to do with this call. She has nothing to do with any of this, my businesses, my empire, the cold, calculated world I built brick by bloody brick.

And yet… she’s all I can think about.

I lean back in my chair, running my thumb over the black band around my wrist, her hair tie, stretched from the last time she wore it. Funny how something so small, so ordinary, could quiet the storm in my chest like nothing else ever has.

“Mr. Russo?” the voice on the screen says. “Should we proceed with the Firenze renovation timeline?”

I glance up. “No. Delay it two weeks. I want the penthouse plans reviewed again before anything moves forward.”

“Yes, sir.”

The manager finishes his financial forecast, and the others start to drop off the call one by one, offering quick goodbyes. I wait until the screen is nearly empty before speaking again.

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