His favorite Sin

Chapter 2:The Confession

Helena Roux doesn’t flinch when I stand.

Most people do. Most people see the blood on my hands, the name Toussaint carved into the world by violence, and they take a step back.

Helena steps _closer_.

Her black silk dress whispers against her thighs. The blood I smeared on her heel is already drying, a rust-colored crown on ivory satin. She looks down at it, then back at me. No disgust. Just calculation.

“You mark all your business deals like this?” Her voice is honey over a blade.

“Only the ones I plan to keep.”

The rose is still on the floor between us. She doesn’t pick it up. I do. The thorns bite into my palm and I don’t let myself feel it. Pain is useful. Pain means I’m not dreaming.

Because Helena Roux has been in my head for twelve years.

“Your father sent you to negotiate,” I say, rolling the stem between my fingers. “So negotiate.”

She laughs. One short, cold sound. “Papa sent me to _assess_. He doesn’t negotiate with boys who come home bleeding.”

Boy.

I’m twenty-eight. I’ve put men in the ground for less. But from her mouth, it lands different. Like a dare.

I close the distance. This time she _does_ go still, but her chin stays up. Defiant. Pearls tight at her throat. I could snap them with one hand.

“You think I’m a boy?” My thumb brushes her jaw. Barely touching. Her pulse slams against my skin. “Ask New Orleans who runs the Quarter when the sun goes down.”

“I know who runs it,” she says. “I also know who _owns_ it.” She taps one red nail against my chest, right over my heart. “And it isn’t you. Yet.”

There it is. The real game.

Her father owns the docks, the ships, the legitimate face of every dollar that moves through Louisiana. My father owns the shadows. The deal is simple: marriage merges both. Makes the Toussaints clean. Makes the Rouxs untouchable.

Makes her mine.

“Is that why you came alone?” I catch her wrist before she can pull away. The pearls are warm from her skin. “To see if I was worth the last name?”

“Maybe I came to see if you’d kneel again.” Her eyes drop to my mouth. “You looked good on your knees, Matteo”

_Matteo_ My name in her mouth is a sin.

I use my grip on her wrist to tug her forward. She stumbles, just once, and her free hand lands on my chest. To steady herself. To push me away. I don’t know which and I don’t care.

“You want me on my knees?” I lower my head until my lips are at her ear. She smells like that cathedral in New Orleans. Like old incense and secrets. “Marry me, Helena. I’ll spend the rest of my life there.”

She goes rigid.

For the first time tonight, I’ve surprised her.

“Marriage,” she repeats. Like the word tastes foreign. “That’s what this is? You bleed on my shoes and propose?”

“I don’t propose.” I release her wrist, but I don’t step back. “I claim.”

Silence. The grandfather clock in the hall counts it. One. Two. Three.

Then she smiles. Slow. Dangerous. The same smile she wore at sixteen when she lit that candle for her mother and walked out of the church without looking back.

“Then claim me, Matteo Toussaint.” She reaches up, fingers threading into my hair, and _yanks_. Hard enough to sting. Hard enough to make me see stars. “But know this—”

Her lips brush my jaw. Not a kiss. A threat.

“I’m not a debt your father can pay. I’m not a deal you can sign.” Her teeth scrape my skin. “I’m the knife you don’t see coming.”

My hands find her waist. Silk and bone and heat. I could lift her. Could press her into the bookshelves and find out if she tastes like she smells. Could ruin both of us right here.

Instead, I step back.

Because obsession isn’t about taking. It’s about waiting. Until she’s begging for the knife.

“The wedding is in six weeks,” I tell her. My voice is steady. My hands aren’t. “Be ready.”

Helena studies me. Like she’s re-calculating every plan she walked in with. Then she bends, picks up the black rose, and tucks it behind my ear.

“Don’t clean the blood off your hands,” she says, already walking to the door. “I like the reminder.”

She leaves. No goodbye. No look back.

I stay there, rose behind my ear, blood on my hands, and her name in my teeth.

Six weeks.

Forty-two days to make Helena Roux realize:

I’m not the dog her father is leashing his company to.

I’m the leash.

And she’s already wearing it