The drive felt endless.
Eloise didn't know how long they'd been on the road—twenty minutes, an hour, a lifetime—but her sense of time had dissolved somewhere between the panic and the suffocating silence inside the SUV. The men never spoke. Not to her. Not to one another. Their presence was oppressive, disciplined, military.
When the car finally slowed, her breath caught.
Eloise had never seen a mansion like this.
Even in magazines, even in movies, even in the whole meticulously curated charade of William's inherited world—nothing touched the silent, breathtaking intimidation of the estate the men marched her into. This was wealth that didn't advertise; it simply was. The very air seemed to possess a different molecular structure.
The gates alone were monstrous: wrought-iron twisted like black, predatory vines, taller than the surrounding old-growth trees, and guarded by men who didn't bother hiding their long, silenced weapons. These guards were stone-faced, stationary, built from muscle and absolute loyalty.
Inside, the driveway curved through gardens manicured so perfectly it felt unnatural, too symmetrical to be alive. Snow-white lilies, hydrangeas and red roses lined the path, their petals luminous in the afternoon light, nodding gently as though bowing to the black SUV that carried her captive.
The mansion itself was less a house and more a cathedral of wealth.
Not warm wealth, the kind of money that buys comfort and cozy tradition—but cold wealth. The kind of money that buys influence, silence, and obedience.
Walls of pale, almost white stone rose in clean, brutalist lines, the architecture a sophisticated blend of modern minimalism and old European arrogance. It was a fortress disguised as a mansion. Every immense window gleamed like polished ice under the afternoon sun. Every angle was sharp, confident, and utterly merciless. The house did not invite; it dominated.
Her heart pounded—a frantic, hollow drum in her chest—as the rear doors of the SUV opened and the men, efficiently and without a word, ushered her out, their hands hovering near her, ensuring she made no sudden movements. And lead her toward the imposing entrance.
The moment she stepped inside, the foyer swallowed her whole.
It was immense. Marble, the color of untouched snow shot through with veins of silver, stretched beneath her bare feet—she had lost her shoes in the struggle.
Vaulted ceilings soared upward, reaching into a pale, echoing sky dotted with immense, glittering crystal chandeliers that looked like frozen galaxies. To her left, a silent, angular fountain spilled water so clear it looked invisible, creating the softest hush in the vast space.
The air itself was an assault. Expensive air, certainly—scented faintly with sweet citrus, winter ozone, and money. But beneath those notes was something sharper, colder, and distinctly predatory.
She shivered violently.
Not entirely from fear, though that was a persistent, gnawing thing.
From the temperature.
The mansion felt like it was kept at a deliberate, punishing cold—a temperature that scraped down her spine and instantly raised goosebumps under her thin shirt and skirt.
Two of the men, the scarred one and the fourth guy who carried her purse, stepped past her, positioning themselves precisely on either side of the foyer like highly polished statues. Leo—the one who had carried her—gave her a slight, non-aggressive nudge forward. Marcos stayed behind her, blocking the exit and sealing her fate with his silent presence.
Eloise swallowed hard, arms folded tightly across her chest as though she could protect herself from the ice seeping into her bones. She focused on the marble, tracing the silver veins, desperately searching for a flicker of humanity, a flaw in the perfect, terrifying symmetry.
Then—
A voice drifted down from the upper reaches of the mansion, clear and cutting through the vaulted space.
Smooth. Deep. Whiskey-aged and resonant. Beautiful. Accented—unplaceable, rich, ancient, and new all at once. The sound of a voice that was accustomed to dictating the terms of the world.
"Good job, boys."
The four formidable men bowed instantly, heads lowered in profound, unquestioning respect—a gesture they never once showed Eloise.
Eloise lifted her gaze toward the grand, sweeping staircase—a spiral of pale stone and dark wood—and her breath crashed to a halt, seizing in her throat.
A man descended.
He did not walk. He did not stomp or stride. He glided, moving with such effortless grace that it seemed the marble steps bent their shape to accommodate him, as if the very ground respected him too much to offer any resistance.
Luciano Solis De La Vega.
She knew the name because Marcos, had told her just before the car door closed.
He was—
God.
No, that wasn't the right word. Gods were supposed to be moral, even if cruel.
He was the cruel, beautiful thing gods feared becoming. He was the consequence of absolute power.
He was devastatingly tall, sculpted like marble stolen from a neoclassical museum, his frame lean yet powerful beneath a perfectly tailored charcoal waistcoat and black dress shirt that fit him with obscene, demanding precision.
His hair—dear God, his hair—was a startling platinum-blonde, not cheaply bleached or artificial, but naturally pale, luminous like winter sunlight. Soft waves brushed the collar of his coat, catching the chandelier's brilliant glow and scattering it around him like frost.
His eyes stole the rest of her breath and held it captive.
They were an icy blue-gray. Glacial. Arctic. Unblinking. And yet, somehow, they were still warm—but in the predatory, terrifying way a roaring fire is warm, right before it consumes you entirely.
His lips—she noticed them with a kind of horrified awareness—were full, shaped in a way that suggested he rarely needed to raise his voice to command total obedience.
A naturally cruel mouth softened by an unexpected, almost heartbreaking beauty. The kind of mouth designed for forbidden sins whispered against throats, and impossible promises murmured against hearts.
He carried something in his arms.
White. Small. Alive.
An arctic fox.
The animal's fur was so intensely white it nearly glowed, thick and pristine like freshly fallen, untouched snow. Its eyes were silver, intelligent, and frighteningly calm—a perfect, silent mirror of its master's demeanor.
It rested nestled in the crook of Luciano's arms like true royalty, one delicate paw draped over his wrist, its massive, elegant tail curled perfectly around his elbow.
A living omen of cold, precise danger.
Eloise exhaled shakily, a visible puff of air in the cold foyer.
She had heard of wealthy men with lions, tigers, wolves, or rare birds as symbols of power—but never a fox. And not one so… impossibly pristine, so perfectly tailored to his own cold aesthetic.
Then, like a spark catching dry kindling, a devastating memory snapped awake inside her mind.
She knew that voice.
She had heard it days ago.
At the restaurant.
Right after she spat those venomous, furious vows at William.
A voice hidden in the dark corner of the room, watching the entire spectacle, unfazed, amused.
A voice that had applauded her defiance.
Her mouth parted, the terrible realization breaking across her face like a tidal wave of cold water.
"It was you," she whispered, her heart thundering a frantic, loud rhythm against her ribs. "You were there. You were watching."
Luciano smiled slowly.
A devastating, unhurried curve of his perfect lips that felt like an eclipse—swallowing her entire world in a single, mesmerizing expression. It was a smile that promised both utter ruin and sublime pleasure.
The fox blinked, its silver eyes unmoving.
The men in the foyer bowed again, shifting slightly to acknowledge their boss had descended.
Luciano reached the last step and stopped directly in front of her, closing the last few feet of space.
His presence wrapped around her like cold, expensive smoke. He smelled faintly of the citrus that permeated the air, spiced with something dark and utterly masculine, perhaps dark coffee tobacco.
Then he spoke, his voice soft, rich, and terrifyingly close:
"Then welcome home, dear fiancée."
The words struck her harder than any physical blow. Eloise's heart didn't just drop; it disintegrated.
"What?" she breathed, shaking her head. "Excuse me—what—what did you just call me?"
Luciano tilted his head slightly, studying her with an expression too gentle to be comforting and too sharp to be safe. It was the look of a scientist observing a fascinating subject.
"Fiancée," he repeated, as if testing how the word sounded wrapped around her profound shock. "Such a lovely word, isn't it? Rolls off the tongue beautifully, especially when applied to you."
The arctic fox made a soft chuffing sound, a low, breathy noise that sounded unnervingly close to laughter.
Eloise shook her head violently, taking a shaky half-step back, only to meet the wall of Marcos behind her. "No—no, this is insane. I'm not your fiancée. I don't even know you. This is kidnapping."
"Oh, but I know you," Luciano replied smoothly, his words wrapping around her fear like expensive velvet. "Very well, in fact. Better than William ever did."
His eyes dragged over her—not with crude lust, not rudely, but with meticulous, cold assessment. Measuring. Cataloging. Marking every defensive instinct and every tremor of vulnerability.
It was worse than lust. Much, much worse.
It was ownership.
"You're Eloise Winters," he recited. "The girl who sets fire to places that disappoint her. The girl with a spine sharp enough to cut men twice her size when cornered." He smiled, a genuine, thrilling sliver of amusement entering his arctic eyes. "I admire that fiery temper, pequeña Paloma."
Her pulse pounded in her ears, her mind struggling to reconcile this elegant devil with the man who had ordered her capture.
"You're crazy," she whispered, the most damning thing she could think of.
"Undoubtedly," he agreed lightly, dismissing the mental diagnosis with a shrug of one sculpted shoulder. "But that isn't the issue at hand, is it?"
He stepped closer, closing the distance completely.
Too close.
Close enough for her to smell the clean, expensive scent of his cologne, close enough to see the faint stubble along his aristocratic jawline, the way the fox's white fur brushed against the dark, fitted fabric of his vest. The cold indifference in his eyes made William's absolute worst moods look like a petulant toddler's tantrum.
"You burned down my estate. That estate was designated to fetch me exactly 30 million dollars in a private sale this week."
Her stomach plummeted. Thirty million. Her annual salary wouldn't cover the cleaning fee.
His. Not William's. The men hadn't lied. She had burned the wrong man's house. The house of this man.
The room tilted slightly, the crystal lights blurring. She felt dizzy, sick with the magnitude of her accidental crime.
Luciano reached out with one hand—not quite touching her, just letting his long, elegant fingers hover in the air near her jawline, close enough that she could feel the displacement of the air.
"But instead of punishing you for the destruction of 30 million in assets," he murmured, his voice dropping to a dangerous, intimate register, "I intend to reward you."
Eloise's breath stuttered. The word reward felt like the biggest, most terrifying lie ever conceived.
The fox lifted its white head from his arm, silver eyes fixed on her with unnerving intelligence.
"For what?" she whispered, barely able to form the question. "Why would you reward a criminal?"
Luciano's expression softened into something hauntingly, dangerously beautiful—a smile that never quite reached the arctic cold of his eyes.
"For freeing me," he breathed. "For giving me the perfect excuse to break a contract I had no desire to keep."