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He takes a step closer to me. “Let’s get something straight here, wife.” Another step. “You did choose this, you told me so yourself.” I gulp as he takes a third step. “You told me your dad promised to spare your mom if you agreed, which you did. That’s a choice, baby. Choices don’t only exist when the options are palatable or even easy.”

When he takes another step toward me, I mirror him by taking one backward. It’s not until two moves later, as I feel the cold and unyielding wall at my back, that I realize I’ve cornered myself.

Domenico wears an infuriating smirk as he places his hand on the wall beside my head and leans in. He’s so close I feel his hot breath fan across my skin.

“Let’s suspend reality and say you didn’t have a choice.” His voice is rough. “It changes nothing, baby. You’re in it now. You’re my wife. And I will never, ever pretend this world is something it isn’t just to make you more comfortable.”

“Then where does that leave room for me?” My voice cracks. “Where do I fit in a life where you control everything? Where the only choice I get is whether to obey quietly or make a scene?”

“You fit wherever you fucking well please.” His hand drops from the wall. “But you don’t get to leave.”

The words hang between us. Heavy. Final.

“Maybe I will.” It’s out before I can think about it. A lie. A threat born of anger and exhaustion, and the desperate need to feel like I have options. “Maybe I’ll just walk out that door and never come back.”

As soon as the words leave me, I know I shouldn’t have said them. The anger surrounding Domenico doesn’t disappear. It crystallizes, hardening into something colder and more dangerous than anything I’ve seen from him before. His eyes go flat. His mouth sets in a line that could cut glass.

“No.” The word is quiet. “You’re not leaving, Kira. You’re mine, and you have been mine since the moment I stood in that church and took what belonged to me. You’re mine until death decides otherwise, and even then, death doesn’t get a say in my marriage.”

The possessiveness in it should make me recoil. Should make me furious… and it does. Without thinking, I raise my hand and slap Domenico as hard as I can.

The slap lands with a crack that echoes off the penthouse walls. My palm connects with his cheek with enough force to snap his head to the side, and the sound of it—sharp, definitive, unmistakable—kills every other sound in the room.

For one heartbeat, nothing moves.

Then Domenico turns back to face me, slowly, and the red mark on his cheek is already rising, four distinct finger-shapes blazing against his skin. His eyes are wide. Not with anger. With something I can’t name.

“Oh my God!” My hand flies to my mouth. Horror floods through me, ice-cold and immediate. “Domenico, I’m so sorry. I didn’t… I would never…”

His hand shoots out and catches my wrist. “Do it again.”

The words don’t make sense. I stare at him, my heart hammering against my ribs, my palm still stinging from the impact. “What?”

“Do it again.” His voice is rough. Commanding. His eyes hold mine, unblinking. “Hit me, Kira.”

“No.” I try to pull my wrist free. He doesn’t let go. “No, I’m not going to… let me go, Domenico. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Hit. Me.” His fingers tighten around my wrist. “You’re fucking furious. So hit me. Right here.” He tilts his head, presenting the other cheek with a cold, deliberate challenge. “Unless you’d rather keep shouting.”

Something breaks. Something deep and hot and raw, something that’s been building since the wedding, since the hospital, since the moment I realized my life belonged to someone else and I had no say in the matter.

My free hand connects with his cheek. Harder this time.

“Again,” Domenico demands as he releases my wrist.

I hit him. Open-handed, across the chest this time, the sound duller but the force behind it just as vicious. My palm burns. My wrist aches. I don’t care.

“Again.”

Another strike. Another. My hand is curling into a fist now, and the blows land against his chest, against his shoulders, anywhere I can reach, and he doesn’t block them. Doesn’t defend himself. Just stands there, solid as a fucking wall, and lets me hit him.

The tears come without warning. One second I’m swinging, the next I’m sobbing, great heaving sobs that tear out of my chest like they’ve been waiting for permission. My fists keep landing, but there’s no force behind them anymore, just the desperate, useless pounding of someone who has nowhere else to put the rage.

“Stop making decisions for me,” I choke out between hits. “Stop leaving without telling me. Stop treating me like I’m too fragile to handle the truth. Stop…” My voice breaks. “Stop making me feel like I don’t matter.”

Domenico’s chest rises and falls under my fists, steady and unyielding, and the only sound in the penthouse is the thud of my hands against him and the ragged, broken noise of me coming apart.

I hit him until my arms are too tired to lift. Until my fists uncurl and my hands flatten against his chest, gripping his shirt instead of striking it. And through it all, he stands there. Taking every blow. Not moving an inch.