His favorite Sin

Chapter 3:The First Blood

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Forty-one days.

That’s how long I have left before Elena Roux becomes Helena Toussaint. Before the churches and the contracts make her _mine_ in a way that matters to the world.

She’s been under my skin for forty-one days plus twelve years.

I watch her now through the window of my office, standing in the courtyard below. The Toussaint estate is all sharp edges and old stone, but she makes it look soft. Dangerous. She’s in white today. A sin. She knows I associate her with black — with silk, with roses, with the night I first put my blood on her.

White is a challenge.

She’s on the phone. One hand tucked into the pocket of her trousers, the other holding her cell to her ear. No guards. No father. Just her, and the letter opener she keeps in her clutch, and the two men I have on the roof with rifles. à

She doesn’t know about the rifles.

She does know I’m watching. She tilts her head, just slightly, and her eyes flick up to my window. No wave. No smile. Just that look that says _I see you, Matteo Toussaint. Do something about it.

My phone buzzes. Lorenzo.

*Lorenzo:* We have a problem. Roux’s dock foreman is talking to the feds. Your fiancée’s father wants it handled quiet.

*Me:* Define quiet.

*Lorenzo:* Define dead.

I look back down at Helena. She’s ended her call. Now she’s staring at the fountain. At the statue of a saint with his hands out, palms up. Begging or offering. I can never tell.

Helena reaches into her pocket and pulls out something small. Silver. Her letter opener. She turns it over in her fingers, testing the weight.

Then she looks straight at my window and _smiles_.

It isn’t sweet.

My phone buzzes again.

*Unknown:* _South gate. One hour. Come alone if you want your bride to stay pretty._

I don’t tell Lorenzo. I don’t tell my father. I don’t tell the men on the roof.

I go alone.

Because obsession isn’t logical. It’s a gun with the safety off, pressed to your own temple, and you pull the trigger because she’s on the other side of the bullet.

The south gate is rust and ivy and a hundred years of Toussaint secrets. The dock foreman is there. Marco. Fifty, sweating, with a split lip and a federal agent’s card in his shirt pocket. Next to him are two men I don’t know. Not ours. Not Roux’s.

And in front of them, hands zip-tied, mouth taped, is Helena.

White suit. Now dirty. Pearl choker still tight at her throat. Her eyes find mine over Marco’s shoulder and there’s no fear there. Just fury.

“You’re predictable, Toussaint,” Marco says. He’s shaking. He should be. “We knew you’d come. Knew you couldn’t let the Roux princess get a scratch.”

I don’t look at him. I look at her. At the red mark on her cheek where someone hit her. At the way her wrists are already raw from the zip ties.

“Let her go,” I say. My voice is quiet. It’s always quiet before I kill.

“f**k you,” one of the unknown men spits. “You think—”

I move.

It isn’t fast. It isn’t pretty. It’s practice. It’s twelve years of knowing one day someone would be stupid enough to touch her.

Marco’s throat is first. Then the man who spoke. Then the third, who tries to run.

It takes eleven seconds.

When it’s done, the ivy is darker. The rust is wetter. And Helena is still standing, still watching, still _not afraid_.

I cross to her. Cut the zip ties with the knife from my boot. Peel the tape from her mouth, slow.

She doesn’t thank me. She spits blood onto the ground and looks at the bodies.

“Took you twelve seconds,” she says. “You’re getting slow, Matteo.”

My name. From her. With blood on her lips.

I frame her face with my hands. Both of them red now. Hers, from the tape. Mine, from them.

“Did they touch you?” The words come out wrecked.

“Would it matter if they did?” She tilts her head into my palm. Like a cat. Like a knife. “Would you burn the city down, Matteo Toussaint? For me?”

“Yes.” No hesitation. No lie. “I’d salt the earth.”

She studies me. Then she rises on her toes, and her mouth brushes mine. Not a kiss. A promise. Copper and citrus and _mine_.

“I know,” she whispers.

Then she steps back, over the bodies, and picks up her letter opener from the ground. Must have dropped it when they grabbed her. She wipes it on Marco’s shirt, efficient. Cold.

“Forty-one days,” she says, sliding it back into her pocket. “Better make them count.”

She walks away. No limp. No tears. Just white silk and blood and the back of a queen who was never in danger.

Because Helena Roux isn’t the princess in the tower.

She’s the dragon.

And I’m the madman who locked the door from the inside.

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