Catherine’s POV
I hadn’t expected him to ask for that.
He didn’t look like a man who’d ever needed to ask anyone for anything.
Men like him took what they wanted; the world rearranged itself around them and called it luck.
And yet here he was, saying the word out loud like it cost him nothing.
Marry me.
Simple as ordering coffee.
God help me, it was tempting.
Some cold, calculating part of my brain lit up like a switchboard.
A husband on paper.
A wall between me and Elena, between me and Marco, between me and every man she’d try to auction me to next.
No more strangers with wandering hands.
No more twenty-thousand-dollar price tags stapled to my back.
Objectively, it was a very good idea.
But then I looked at him.
Really looked.
The stillness in him unsettled me.
He sat like the room belonged to him, like the silence did too.
And it did.
The whole restaurant had gone quiet the second Ricci’s arm snapped, and it had stayed that way, waiters frozen against the walls, no one daring to so much as clear a glass.
This man hadn’t raised his voice once.
He hadn’t needed to.
Everything about him whispered a kind of danger you didn’t walk toward.
You walked away.
Fast.
I steadied myself.
“That’s a generous offer,” I said, standing, gripping my bag until my knuckles went white.
“But no.
I’m sorry.”
He didn’t argue.
Didn’t so much as blink.He just raised one eyebrow at me, and I hated the way it landed in my chest.
It was infuriatingly attractive, that look.
The dark eyes, the sharp line of his jaw, the faint pull at the corner of his mouth that wasn’t quite a smirk but wanted to be.
He looked like trouble I’d regret.
He looked like the kind of man you saw once and thought about for a week.
Then He reached into his jacket, set a matte-black card on the table, and slid it toward me with a single finger.
“In case you change your mind,” he said.
I reached for it because it felt ruder not to.
My fingertips brushed his as I took it, and something jolted up my arm, sharp and electric, like I’d stuck my hand in a socket.
Heat crawled up my neck.
He noticed.
Of course he noticed.
That maddening not-quite-smirk deepened by a fraction, and I turned and walked out on legs that didn’t feel like mine.
The whole cab ride home my heart wouldn’t slow down, and I couldn’t tell how much of it was fear and how much was that stupid spark still buzzing in my fingers.
He won’t come after me for saying no, right?
Men like that didn’t like the word no.
I told myself I’d never see him again and tried to believe it.
Then I walked in the front door, and Elena was already screaming.
“Catherine!
Mr.
Ricci called me.
You turned him down, and then you had some gangster break his arm?”
“He does not look like a gangster,” I said.
Though privately, yeah.
He looked exactly like the Mafia.
“And are we not going to talk about the part where you sold me for twenty thousand dollars?
That old, fat pervert put his hands all over me.”
“So he’s a little older!
Older men are gentle, they know how to take care of a woman.
A little heavy means he’s well-off.
And so what if he likes to look?
What man doesn’t?” She jabbed a finger at me, chest rising.
“Don’t you dare take my kindness for granted.
I’m your mother.
Would I ever hurt you?”
I laughed, cold.
“If he’s such a catch, marry Isabella off to him.
I’ll pass on the blessing.”
“Don’t be disgusting!
Your sister is young, she’s still in school!”
“Funny.
She was too young for that, but not too young to sleep with Marco.
And you were the one grilling him about when he’d put a ring on her.”
Her mouth snapped shut for exactly one second.
“Enough.
Stop changing the subject.” She pulled herself back together, smoothing her blouse.
“You’re twenty-seven, Catherine.
You keep acting like this, throwing away good matches, breaking men’s arms, and no decent man with money will ever want you.
Then where will you be?”
“Who said I wanted a rich man?” The words tore out of me before I could stop them.
“Rich men are garbage.
I have two hands.” I held them up.
“I can feed myself just fine.”
Marco with his little startup and his borrowed dreams.
Ricci with his buildings and his wandering hands.
Two men, one lesson, carved into me in the space of a single day.
“You’re going on another date,” Elena said, like I hadn’t spoken at all.
“Tomorrow.
I’ve already arranged it.”
“No.”
Right on cue, Isabella drifted into the doorway.
Eyes wet, chin trembling, the picture of a wounded little bird.
She’d always been able to summon tears the way other people summoned a cough.
“You won’t go because you’re still hung up on Marco, aren’t you?” she said softly.
“You can’t stand seeing me happy.”
I rolled my eyes so hard it actually hurt.
“Sweetie, the only thing I’m hung up on is how fast you two deserve each other.
Truly.
It’s a match made in heaven.”
She let out a sob, theatrical and perfectly timed, and threw herself into Elena’s arms.
Elena wrapped a hand around her shoulder and glared at me over the top of her head, the way she’d glared at me a thousand times before.
The look that said, why can’t you just make this easier.
“You show up tomorrow,” Elena said, low and cold now, “or you can pack your things and get out of my house.”
There it was.
The card she always kept in her back pocket.
This isn’t your house.
You should be grateful you have one at all.
Once, that threat would have gutted me.
Once, I would have apologized, folded, smoothed everything over, done whatever it took to stay the good daughter.
“Fine,” I said.
“Whatever you want.”
But I’d already decided.
I climbed the stairs, shut my door, and sat on the edge of my bed in the dark.
I turned that black card over and over between my fingers.
No name.
No number printed on it.
Just a single line of embossed digits and a weight to the thing that felt more like metal than paper.
My heart was pounding again.
Only this time it wasn’t fear.
I picked up my phone and dialed.
He answered on the second ring.
A beat of silence first, like he already knew who it was before he heard me.
Then that low, unhurried voice.
“Catherine.”
I took a breath and held it a second longer than I needed to.
“That thing you said today.” My voice came out steadier than I felt.
“Is it still on the table?”