Chapter 7 Lia
LIA
Ilie on my side, facing the pale-colored wall, my fingers curled into the sheets as I struggle to anchor myself to the few happy memories I have of my short life.
I think about my mother, before she fell sick, how life was so simple.
We were barely able to afford three square meals, but we were happy, and that was all that mattered.
Back then, when the air didn’t feel like it was strangling me, when I didn’t pray for death, names like Romano and Moretti were distant—tales of powerful, wealthy men I would never get to cross. And I was fine with it.
Now, I’ve lived under their roof since I was eighteen. Tortured, humiliated, and hurt by them just for the fun of it.
A hot tear escapes my eye, sinking into the flat pillow beneath my head. My fingers claw at the bedsheet as I struggle to keep my tears at bay, struggle to forget them.
To forget him.
But it’s impossible, especially since his voice keeps echoing in my head. His actions shouldn’t sting like they do. I shouldn’t still feel the burn of his words from dinner, like they’ve tattooed themselves onto my skin.
Kneel.
That one word broke something in me. I’ve prided myself in the knowledge that the Romanos hadn’t taken everything away from me. They took my father, my freedom, and my happiness. But I still had my pride, my dignity. It was a small, insignificant thing. But it was still something.
When he told me to kneel before him, in the presence of his entire family and his future in-laws, he took away the last thing I had left.
I squeeze my eyes painfully shut.
God, I hate him. I hate that I let him humiliate me. I hate that I stayed on my knees while they laughed. I hate that I still feel the coldness of the wine he spilled on purpose against my hands. I hate that I can still remember the way he looked down at me, like I was dirt under his shoes.
But most of all, I hate that a part of me still wants to know why he did it. What was he trying to prove? That I am beneath them?
My chest aches. It’s a dull, lingering kind of pain, one that might never go away.
I freeze when I hear a knock on my door. One sharp, deliberate tap. Then another. I sit up.
It’s not Allegra coming to ask me for something. Her knocks are always quick and timid, like she’s apologizing for needing anything. And it’s definitely not any other one of the maids. They don’t come here this late.
I already know who it is before I hear his voice.
“Lia.”
My whole body tenses. I grit my teeth and stare at the door, willing him to disappear. My heartbeat roars in my ears.
I don’t answer. I need him to go to hell.
There’s a long pause, and I almost think he’s gone until the door handle turns.
“Don’t you dare—” I shoot up from the bed, the blanket falling from my legs. “Get out.”
He enters anyway, shutting the door behind him like he owns the room, like he doesn’t even care if he’s wanted here or not.
He is still in his dinner clothes, his jacket open and his tie slightly loosened. His jaw is tight, and his eyes—god, his eyes—are not filled with hate like before.
They look tired. Tortured. Like he’s been losing a fight inside his own head.
“You didn’t answer. I thought something was wrong.”
“Oh, how thoughtful,” I bite out. “Should I get on my knees to thank you?”
That halts him on his steps. For a split second, I see his face shift. It’s subtle, but I notice it. Guilt, maybe. Or shame. He hides it quickly behind that neutral, cold mask he always wears and crosses the room.
“Stop moving,” I hiss. “Turn around and leave.”
He keeps moving slowly toward me, like he’s being careful not to hurt me.
Too bad he already did.
“I wanted to check on you.”
I let out an incredulous laugh. “You want to check on me? After you treated me like a circus animal in front of your whole damn family? Are you kidding me right now?”
“I didn’t—”
“You didn’t what? Mean it? You’re too smart to play dumb, Francesco. You knew exactly what you were doing.”
His jaw tenses.
“I didn’t mean for it to go that far,” he says quietly. “I got… carried away.”
“Wow. So humiliating me was a moment you lost control? Poor you. You enjoyed torturing me so much that you got carried away.”
My body begins to tremble as my anger and humiliation return in full force.
“You’re a monster,” I spit. “I’ve always known, but you reminded me tonight.”
A broken look takes over his face. He doesn’t have the right to look that way.
“Rosalia…”
I shut my eyes tightly and take a step back. He doesn’t have the right to call my name, not after he called me by my name for the first time earlier just for the sake of humiliating me.
“Why are you here?” I ask, opening my eyes to look at him.
“I couldn’t stay away.”
“Then go back to your fiancée,” I hiss. “Let her soothe your conscience.”
“I—”
“What do you really want? The real reason.”
For the first time since I met him, he seems to struggle with his words. “I don’t know. I just… needed to see you.”
His voice sounds so sincere, it almost makes me laugh. Of course he did. Needed to see how ruined I was. Couldn’t let me lick my wounds in peace.
“Well, you’ve seen me. Now leave.”
“It’s not… Fuck!” He runs a frustrated hand through his hair, looking at the ceiling. After a few beats, he looks at me, his eyes glazed over. “You think this is easy for me?”
“Hurting me? Publicly humiliating me? Yeah, I do.”
He clenches his jaw and takes a step closer. I take one back.
“I can’t stop thinking about you. I have a fucking fiancée, and I can’t stop thinking about you!”
His confession punches the breath out of me. He sounds so broken and tortured, I almost feel bad for him.
“That’s a choice,” I say flatly.
His eyes flash. “You think I chose this? You think I want to want you?”
His face is flushed, his eyes darker than usual. It reminds me of that night, except the difference is, I know he’s not drunk.
“You chose to come here, to ‘see me,’ when you could have just stayed with your fiancée,” I spit out, the words bitter on my lips. “Just like you chose to do what you did tonight.”
“I have no excuse for my actions, but I’m not a free man.” His eyes are bloodshot, like he’s bleeding. “Far from it.”
“Neither am I. Guess whose fault that is?”
He sucks in a breath, clenches his jaw, and sighs. Then he starts walking toward me again.
“You’re acting like you’re so perfect, like you haven’t hurt me too,” he says lowly, dangerously.
I keep moving back until I hit the wall behind me.
“But you were in my brother’s room earlier this evening.”
The accusation in his tone makes me bristle.
“Oh. That’s why you called me a whore—because your brother is nice to me.
” I take a threatening step toward him, furious and fearless now.
“Because he treats me like a human being and doesn’t look at me like I’m filthy.
Somehow that’s my fault? I’m the problem?
” My voice shakes in the end, giving away the pain I feel.
“I’m sorry.”
Silence stretches between us at his words. I never expected him to apologize. Now he has, and I don’t know what to feel about it.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Rosalia.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?”
I don’t have an answer. How can I tell him that hearing my name from his lips makes me weak? Because when he says my name, it makes me feel like I belong to him.
“You’ve won,” I whisper. “You humiliated me, broke me. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Something cracks in his expression. His voice drops as he takes another step closer until he’s standing directly in front of me. Until I can feel the heat emanating from his body.
“Is that really what you think of me?”
I shake my head to get rid of any emotion I feel toward him. He reaches out to touch me.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he says softly, pulling a strand of hair behind my ear.
“You already did.”
“Let me make it up to you.”
A shaky breath escapes my lips as his hands slide down to my waist.
“Don’t,” I say in a whisper. “You don’t get to touch me like that.”
“I shouldn’t have done it,” he says even more softly now. “Any of it.”
His eyes flicker to my mouth, and I hate the way it makes wet heat pool at the bottom of my stomach.
“No,” I say, gripping his wrists and pushing his hands off me. “I’m not some game you pick up when you’re bored. You don’t get to humiliate me one minute and touch me the next.”
“I know,” he says. “I know I’m cruel, evil, and heartless. I’m a monster.” He leans down until his breath ghosts my face. “But I’m not a liar, and I’m telling you the truth right now when I say that I haven’t stopped thinking about you. Not once. Not in the past two years.”
Silence.
I hate how much that sentence hits me. I hate how my heart skips at his words, how it makes me feel hopeful, like something can ever exist between us.
But I mostly hate much I wanted him to say it.
“You don’t get to say things like that,” I whisper.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s cruel and unfair to your fiancée.”
He clenches his jaw. “I never said I wasn’t cruel. And I never forgot that night,” he says. “For the first time, you looked at me like you didn’t hate me.”
Something in his face twists, and it makes my heart bleed. I should tell him to get out. I should slam the door behind him. But I don’t. He won’t listen anyway.
He’s still standing close, even though he’s not touching me anymore. My skin buzzes, and I realize I want him to touch me. When his hand comes up to rest against the wall behind me, I raise my head to look into his eyes.
“Tell me you weren’t thinking about me too,” he says, caging me between his body and the wall. “Tell me you don’t feel anything between us, and I’ll leave.”
I open my mouth.
But no sound comes out.
His hand brushes the side of my face—slow, reverent, almost shaking.
“Tell me you want me to leave,” he whispers. “Lie to me. Just once. So I can walk away.”
When I speak again, my voice comes out in a shaky whisper. “I don’t want you to leave.”
And then his mouth crashes into mine like he’s been holding back for years. He kisses me like he’s starving. Like I’m the only thing keeping him alive.
I melt completely against him and let him kiss me, devour me. Unravel me.
He grabs my waist again, pushing me up against the wall and pressing his body flush to mine.
I melt into him as his greedy hands, so desperately, shake with restraint.
My hand reaches out to slide over the hard lines of his chest. I want to trace and caress every inch of him, let my fingers memorize what my pride won’t let me ask for. But I stop at his heart, where I feel it pounding under my palm, wild and erratic, like mine.
His tongue swipes into my mouth, and I moan into his. He lets out a guttural groan, and I feel his hardness pressing against my stomach. His hand snakes beneath my nightgown, skimming up my bare thigh. His fingers ghost over my inner leg, pausing just where I start to ache the most.
A whimper escapes me.
Then he growls—deep and raw—and lifts me in one swift motion. My legs wrap around his waist, his body solid between mine and the wall. I can feel everything. The heat. The need. The danger.
Too fast. Too reckless. Not safe.
But I don’t stop him.
His hand slides between my legs, fingers grazing the soaked fabric of my panties.
He groans again, louder this time. “Fuck, Lia…”
Then he crushes me harder into the wall, like he wants to fuse us together, like letting go would kill him. His thigh slides between mine, and I grind against it shamelessly, lost in the friction, in the desperate rhythm of our bodies.
His hands grip my hips like he’s holding on for dear life. His mouth trails down my neck, his tongue dragging over my collarbone before he bites, just hard enough to make my knees buckle if I weren’t already in his arms.
“I’ve imagined this,” he rasps between kisses. “Over and over. Every goddamn night. And none of it—none of it—comes close to this.”
I’m breathless. Dizzy. Drunk on him.
Drenched in want.
But somewhere deep inside me—fragile, trembling—a voice whispers.
Stop.
Not now. Not like this.
Not when I still don’t know if I’m just another thing he’ll leave broken in the morning.
With the little willpower left in me, I push at his chest, breaking the kiss. I’m breathless. Trembling from the desire and withdrawal. He stops, and I almost kiss him again at the look of pure desire on his flushed face.
“Don’t kiss me if you’re going to pretend I don’t exist tomorrow.”
He says nothing. Just stares at me.
And that silence—his silence—tells me everything.
His eyes are darker now, almost pitch black. He knows I’m right.
When he backs away, I feel my heart splitting into two. Then he’s gone, and I’m left alone again, lips tingling, the last piece of my heart I was clinging onto gone with him.