**Stefano's POV**
I didn’t feel like going home.
Milan looked calm and silent from my penthouse window at CityLife. I stood there, telling myself I needed space. I just wanted a little quiet.
But they were lies. All lies.
The truth was, I was running. Running from the way she looked at me in that restroom, her eyes searching mine, the taste of her mouth still on my lips, and the chilling fear that everything was about to change, whether I wanted it or not.
Elena Castellano.
She was never supposed to get under my skin. She was a means to an end.
Elena was the final piece: the daughter of the man who killed my father, the woman I would marry, use, and ruin. That was the plan. That was supposed to be the end of it.
But every time I looked at her, the plan I’d held onto for so long be
