Chapter 13
MATTEO
A servant? She called me her servant? I’ll fucking show her a servant…
I’ve been fuming since she said it, unable to stand still. But even when I moved, pacing up and down the dark hallway, the rage was crawling just under my skin like a billion fire ants, biting as they went.
“Go home, you’re done,” Rafaelle said eventually, the first thing he’d said to me since this morning, when he introduced me to the women.
I hated getting the command, but didn’t hesitate.
I just got in the elevator and ran out of the building as soon as I cleared it.
Running away from my problems as if I can outrun them.
I didn’t stop until I was well into Central Park, in the darkness, surrounded by tall trees and grass-covered mounds that stood black all around me like ancient graveyards.
I ran until my lungs were burning and my legs were cramping.
I ran until I couldn’t anymore. And still Goldie’s face was front and center before me, her voice crystal clear, the word servant the loudest.
And from it unfolded my future, this one just as bleak and dead-end as the one I just escaped not forty-eight hours ago. In ruin born, by ruin torn. Whoever cursed my family did a very good job.
But I must leave all that behind me.
I won’t be defined by the past anymore. Or cursed. Or a slave to the ruin that’s always breathing down my neck.
And I certainly won’t be anyone’s servant. Least of all Gianna Codelli’s. She will not bring me to my knees.
It will be the other way around.