The Wrong room
1080 Words
The hotel shimmered in gold and glass like a palace in the clouds. The Belladora was the kind of place where secrets were sold in the velvet shadows of private suites and the scent of power clung to the air like expensive cologne.
Tricia Hart didn’t belong here.
She tugged the hem of her too-short red dress, clutching her tiny purse like a lifeline. Her heels clicked nervously against the marble floor as she stepped out of the elevator onto the 31st floor. She squinted at the card in her hand, smudged with condensation from the club’s drinks. Room 3108, it read in her best friend's rushed handwriting.
"Go up, take a breather," Serena had said. "The VIP suite is empty. You need five minutes alone, girl. You’re pale."
Tricia had only meant to rest. Just ten minutes to breathe and maybe splash some water on her face. But Belladora’s hallways were dim, and her head still swam from the one cocktail she hadn’t meant to drink.
She reached Room 3106.
The door was cracked open.
Maybe Serena had gotten the number wrong.
Tricia hesitated. “Serena?” she whispered, stepping in.
The lights were low, casting long shadows over expensive furniture. She didn’t hear anyone—just the faint hum of jazz from a Bluetooth speaker and the steady rush of the bathroom shower.
Relieved to be alone, she stepped in fully and shut the door behind her. The room smelled of sandalwood and spice, masculine and hypnotic. Her feet ached, her head spun, and the king-sized bed looked like heaven.
Tricia kicked off her heels and let herself fall face-first into the pillows, breathing deep.
Just five minutes.
She didn’t hear the water shut off. Didn’t notice the door open.
Didn’t see the man who stepped out, steam curling off his body like a god carved from shadow and fury.
Christopher Knight was not a man used to being surprised.
The night had gone sideways from the moment he walked into the hidden back room of La Sirena for the Syndicate’s quarterly summit. Someone—probably a rival from the Castelli family—had slipped something into his whiskey.
His body was on fire. Muscles sluggish. Mind cloudy.
He’d left the meeting early, barely holding himself upright, and had his men escort him to the Belladora, one of his own properties. He didn’t remember how he stripped, only that he needed a shower before his mind fractured.
Now, wrapped in a towel and soaked from the neck down, he stared at the figure sprawled across his bed like some sort of erotic hallucination.
A woman.
Young. Curvy. Her dress had hitched dangerously high on her thighs, and her dark lashes fluttered against flushed cheeks.
“Who the f**k are you?” he growled.
Tricia stirred, moaning softly. “Mm… Serena?”
His muscles tightened. “Get up. Now.”
But her eyes didn’t open.
A thousand alarms went off in his mind, but the drug still pulsed in his veins, boiling logic and restraint into nothing. When she rolled onto her back, one strap slipping off her shoulder, exposing delicate skin and the edge of her lace bra—he cracked.
His body moved before his mind did.
And Tricia, half-awake, half-drugged by exhaustion and atmosphere, didn’t know the difference between reality and a dream.
He kissed her. Deep, hard. Her body responded before her voice could form a protest. Heat exploded between them like gasoline to fire.
And everything blurred after that.
---
The Morning After
Sunlight stabbed through the open curtains like a blade.
Tricia groaned, the sheets tangled around her. Her muscles ached in places they hadn’t before, her head pounding with the weight of something—no, everything—wrong.
Her eyes flew open.
The room was unfamiliar. The sheets beneath her soft, silken. And next to her, shirtless and asleep, was the most devastatingly handsome man she’d ever seen.
A man she did not know.
A man she had clearly—
“Oh my God.”
She scrambled out of bed, grabbing the sheet to cover her naked body. Her dress was on the floor. Her panties nowhere in sight.
Christopher stirred, eyes snapping open the way a lion might catch the scent of prey.
And for a moment, they just stared.
“You’re awake,” he said flatly.
“I—I don’t—what happened? Who are you?!”
His expression didn’t change. “You don’t remember?”
“I wasn’t supposed to be here!” she shouted. “I—I went to 3108! This is—this isn’t—”
“This is 3106,” he said coolly, standing with the grace of someone used to control. “And if you didn’t know that, maybe you shouldn’t walk into rooms that don’t belong to you.”
Tricia flushed in shame and panic, heart racing.
“I thought—I thought the room was empty—” she stammered.
He c****d a brow. “That didn’t stop you from climbing into bed with me.”
“I was tired! I didn’t—” She shook her head. “Wait. Are you seriously blaming me?”
“I’m not blaming anyone,” he said, walking to the closet. “But now we have a problem.”
“What problem?!”
He turned slowly, eyes sharp as knives. “You were seen. Entering my room. Leaving my bed.”
Tricia’s blood turned to ice. “So what? It was a mistake!”
“To the press? To my board? To the people who want to see me fall?” He laughed bitterly. “You’re a story now, sweetheart. And I don’t like stories unless I control the ending.”
He reached into a drawer and pulled out something that made her knees go weak.
A diamond ring.
Cold. Heavy. Massive.
Tricia backed up. “W-what is that?”
“Insurance,” he said. “You’re going to marry me.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?!”
“You walked into my room. You climbed into my bed. Now you’re mine. And if you want to survive what comes next, you’ll wear this ring and smile for the cameras.”
She looked at him, truly looked at him for the first time.
And saw the predator behind the man.
“Who the hell are you?” she whispered.
Christopher Knight smiled, slow and deadly.
“No one you should have ever met.”
- Writer
