The stylist positioned Chloe's cashmere robe to suggest morning intimacy, not warmth. The photographer arranged croissants Luca would never eat. On the penthouse terrace, Chloe felt like a mannequin in a diorama titled "Domestic Bliss."
Luca stood behind her chair, hands on her shoulders as the camera clicked. His touch was warm, solid, and utterly impersonal. "Perfect, Chloe! Look up at him like he just whispered something romantic," the photographer called.
She tilted her head back. In the golden morning light, she saw what she'd missed before: faint shadows beneath his ice-blue eyes, a tiny, pale scar through his left eyebrow. His gaze dropped to her mouth. For one suspended second, his fingers tightened on her shoulders—a possessive reflex he couldn't control.
Then he was Luca Rossi again: detached, controlled.
"We have it," the photographer announced.
Luca's hands vanished. He picked up his phone, already scrolling. "The photos run in Milano Oggi tomorrow. You have a fitting Thursday for the charity gala."
"Another costume?"
"It's the most important event of the season." He finally met her eyes. "You'll wear a Laurent design."
The words hit like a physical shock. "What?"
"Good optics. The Rossi fortune supporting the Laurent legacy. A story of unity." He said it like he was balancing a ledger. "You have three days. Create something worthy of the spotlight."
It was a test. A cruel, brilliant test. He was dangling her passion before her like a carrot, but only to serve his narrative. Yet, the thought of designing again—of seeing her work on that stage—sent a forbidden thrill through her. It was a thread of her real self in this tapestry of lies.
"I need my studio. My tools."
"A car will take you this afternoon. Two hours."
Her family's atelier in Brera was a sanctuary frozen in happier times. Sunlight streamed through leaded windows, illuminating dust motes dancing over scarred worktables and sketches pinned haphazardly to corkboard. The air smelled of beeswax, metal, and the lingering ghost of her grandmother's perfume.
For two hours, the world narrowed to the rhythm of creation. She sketched feverishly. Not a gown—a piece of armor. A cuff bracelet in white gold, bold and architectural. At its center, she drew a raw, uncut aquamarine—a stone the exact stormy blue of Luca's eyes, but in its natural, unpolished state. A piece that was strong, beautiful, and defiantly real. Her silent rebellion.
Her phone buzzed. An unknown number: Car outside. -LR
Returning to the penthouse felt like descending into a silent, pressurized ocean. She found Luca not in his office, but in the living room, a tumbler of amber liquid in hand. He was staring at a small, framed photograph on the bookshelf—one she'd never noticed. It showed a younger Luca, maybe sixteen, with a smiling woman who shared his eyes, standing before a modest stone house in the Tuscan hills, not a glass tower.
He didn't hear her approach. In that unguarded moment, his face was stripped bare. The ruthless CEO was gone, replaced by a man carrying a grief so heavy it curved his spine. He looked achingly lonely.
She must have made a sound. He turned, and the transformation was instantaneous. The vulnerability vanished behind a wall of frost. He placed the photograph face down.
"Did you get what you needed?" His voice was rougher than usual.
"Yes. I'm designing a bracelet. For the gala."
"Good." He took a long drink. "My mother," he said abruptly, gesturing with his glass. "She died ten years ago. A car accident on the Amalfi coast."
The unexpected confession hung in the air. This wasn't in the script. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." The words were sharp, a blade meant to cut the sentiment. "Sentiment is a liability." He set down the glass. "At the gala, you'll meet the Rossi Foundation board. Be gracious. Mention how my compassion inspired your design."
The word 'compassion' on his lips sounded foreign. She thought of the raw pain she'd just glimpsed. "Is that why you do it? The charities? Because of her?"
His eyes turned to glacial chips. "I do it because it's expected. Everything is about expectations, Chloe. Remember that."
He walked toward his office, then paused, hand on the doorframe. Without turning, he said, "Isabella Moretti will be there. She will try to provoke you. Do not engage. She's a shark who smells blood in the water."
"What blood?"
Finally, he looked over his shoulder, his expression unreadable. "The blood of anyone who gets too close."
The door shut softly.
For two days, she worked in a corner of the living room, Luca's silent presence a constant, charged pressure. He took calls, typed on his laptop, but she often felt the weight of his gaze on her hands as they shaped the metal. He never commented.
The night before the gala, as she was buffing the aquamarine to a soft, inner glow, he spoke.
"It's not what I expected."
Her heart stuttered. "It's not ornate enough. I can add pavé diamonds along the—"
"It's not frivolous," he interrupted. He stood and walked over, looking down at the bracelet. His proximity made the air feel thin. "It has… intention. The stone. It's uncut."
"Yes. It's stronger that way. More honest."
A heavy silence stretched between them. He reached out, not for the bracelet, but to take her hand. He turned it over, examining her fingers—calloused from tools, stained with ink and graphite. A creator's hands. His thumb brushed slowly across a small, pale burn scar on her index finger. The touch was shockingly, devastatingly gentle.
"You really love this, don't you?" he asked, his voice a low vibration that seemed to travel from his touch straight to her core.
"It's who I am," she whispered, the truth laid bare.
For a long moment, he just held her hand, studying the scar as if it were a sacred text. The air grew thick, humming with a current that had nothing to do with their contract. She could see the rapid pulse at the base of his throat, betraying the calm of his exterior.
Then, as if electrocuted by his own tenderness, he dropped her hand and stepped back, his face hardening into its familiar mask. "Finish it. We leave at seven. Don't be late."
He retreated to his room, leaving her alone with the thunder of her own heartbeat and the phantom warmth of his touch branding her skin.
That night, sleep was impossible. She replayed the moment—the tenderness in his touch, the naked pain in his eyes when he looked at his mother's photo. The Luca Rossi the world saw was an impenetrable fortress of ice and calculation.
But she had just felt a crack splinter through the battlements.
And in that crack, she had felt something far more dangerous than pity: a magnetic, terrifying pull toward the wounded man hidden behind the billionaire. An attraction that was no longer just part of the act.
He had warned her that everything was a transaction. But as she lay in the dark, Chloe understood the true peril of their deal.
The most dangerous lie wasn't the one they told the world.
It was the one she was starting to tell herself: that this could ever be just pretend.