Chapter 10
My wife makes every other woman in this room look like they’re playing dress-up.
The realization settles in my gut, satisfying and dangerous.
Four days since I found her on the rooftop in my stolen shirt, rain-soaked and trembling, and I still can't get the image out of my head.
The column of exposed skin from neck right down to the soft downy tangle at the top of her thighs plays through my mind on repeat.
Tonight's gala at the Four Seasons should distract me.
Instead, watching her move through Chicago's elite only sharpens my obsession.
Her emerald gown hugs curves that make my cock twitch every time she shifts. Every man in the room tracks her movement, their wives shooting daggers while pretending to smile. The crystal chandeliers paint her skin gold.
But something's been off since day one. Those calloused hands I noticed on our wedding night.
The way she screamed for someone named Tommy in her nightmares.
How she flinched when the servants at home called her Mrs. Rosetti, like the title didn't fit.
Tonight just confirms what I've been piecing together.
"Caviar?" A server appears with a silver tray, those little black pearls glistening.
My wife's nose wrinkles. "Fish eggs? No thank you."
The mayor's wife, standing beside us, actually gasps. The sound echoes off marble columns, heads turning our way. I slide my arm around my wife's waist, pulling her against me hard enough that she has to catch her breath. "My wife prefers simple descriptions for everything. Keeps us all honest."
The mayor's wife titters nervously, but her eyes narrow with the kind of suspicion that spreads through social circles like wildfire.
Another social misstep to add to the growing list. First the salad fork, starting from the inside instead of outside, like someone who learned table settings from a guess rather than birth.
Then she called the governor's wife by her first name, not realizing the woman demands her title even from friends.
Each mistake confirms what those calluses already told me: whoever this woman is, she's never lived in Frances Hewson's world.
"Oh my God, Frances Hewson!"
We both turn. A blonde in Dior practically bounces toward us, her smile bright enough to blind. But when she comes closer, her brow furrows in confusion.
"Pardon me," the blonde says. "I thought you were someone I went to school with." She walks away with a confused expression.
I turn to examine my wife. She avoids my gaze until I chuck my hand under her chin and lift her head. The silence stretches like a blade being drawn. My wife's hands start that telltale tremor, the one that's been getting worse all evening.
She opens her mouth, closes it, then manages, "I've cut my hair, so she didn't recognize me. Silly thing."
Liar.
"Call her back, then," I challenge. "Call your friend back so you can reminisce about Switzerland."
But she can't. Because she was never there.
The truth clicks into place with the satisfaction of a chambered round.
I guide my trembling wife away from the crowd, through silk drapes into a marble alcove designed for private conversations. Or interrogations.
"Alessandro…"
"Don't." I back her against the cold marble column, caging her with my body. Close enough that her perfume mixes with fear-sweat, creating something that makes my cock harden despite the gravity of the moment. "Your hands are shaking."
"I'm just nervous…"
"Try again, stellina. And this time, don't insult my intelligence.
" My thumb finds her throat, pressing against her racing pulse.
The rhythm pounds against my skin, rabbit-quick with panic.
"I've known something was off about you since our wedding night when I saw those calluses on your palms. Since you screamed in your nightmares.
Since you flinched every time someone called you Frances. "
Her whole body trembles now, pressed between marble and me. Those dark eyes that have been haunting my dreams go wide with terror. Real terror, not the simple nervousness of earlier.
"Please…"
"Please isn't an answer." I press harder against her pulse point, feeling it flutter like a trapped bird. "You're wearing her dress, her diamonds, sleeping in my bed, but you're not Frances Hewson. Who are you?"
A tear escapes, rolling down her cheek. She tries to look away but I catch her chin, forcing her to meet my eyes.
"Every socialite born to this world knows which fork to use," I continue. "But you? You're something else entirely. So I'll ask once more: who the hell are you?"
She tries one more time to salvage this, lips parting with another lie. "I've been away so long…"
My thumb presses harder. "We're past that, little liar. Tell me the truth or I call Marco right now. Let him extract it his way. He'll probably ask Luca to help."
The dam breaks. She sags against the marble, only my hand on her throat keeping her upright, and the words pour out between sobs.
"Emma," she gasps. "My name is Emma Pitt. I was… I am… I was a servant in the Hewson house."
The words hit with the force of a revelation. A servant. I married a fucking servant girl playing dress-up, not even Frances Hewson's friend or cousin, just hired help. If Marco discovers this deception, if the Hewson alliance crumbles, everything I've built to prove myself worthy collapses.
"Frances ran away the night before the wedding," she continues, tears streaming freely now, black mascara cutting tracks down her cheeks.
"Mrs. Hewson found me scrubbing floors and realized I looked enough like her daughter to fool everyone.
She threatened… she said if I didn't do it, if I didn't pretend to be Frances and marry you… "
"Why?" My voice comes out rougher than intended, scraped raw. "Why would you agree to that? So eager for money and silk dresses? For diamonds and elite parties? All to improve your position in the world?"
Even as I say them, the words ring false. This woman, whoever she is, has never delighted in the luxuries around her. She literally fled the building the first time I took her to a boutique.
"I had no choice!" The words explode from her. "She had leverage, something that would destroy someone I love if I refused. So I put on that wedding dress and became Frances Hewson. I've been lying to you every single day, every single moment."
For half a heartbeat, we’re both paralyzed by the ugly clarity in the air. Each syllable hangs between us, sharp as a razor.
The hand I’d used to pin her to the wall falls away, leaving a ghost imprint of her pulse still beating in my palm.
She slides down the column, elegant as a wilting lily, her emerald dress puddling around her knees.
For the first time—the very first time—it hits me that the body trembling in front of me is a person.
Not a pawn. Not a bride. A person, living and raw, every nerve exposed and twitching.
A person who just confessed to obliterating my pride, my plans, my name.
My vision narrows to a single, suffocating point as the fury builds.
My breath comes in short, punishing bursts.
The world outside this alcove shrinks to the two of us: me, standing above her, a fist of rage incarnate; her, shrinking in her borrowed skin, clutching the fabric at her chest like it could hide the truth.
The chandeliers outside cast a thousand gold reflections on the marble, but in here, all the light is sucked into the black hole of my disappointment.
"Someone you love?" I snarl, the words scraping my throat raw.
She doesn’t answer. Or maybe she can’t. Tears coat her face, dissolving her makeup and smudging her into something more honest, more mortal. The illusion is dead. All that’s left is the pathetic little ghost of Emma Pitt.
I want to break her. I want to break down the column, this room, the entire goddamn Four Seasons, and build it again from the blood and bone of my own pain.
My hands curl into fists, fingernails biting half-moons into my skin until I taste the iron of my own blood in my mouth.
I try to imagine what kind of man could inspire such loyalty, such insanity, that a woman would throw away her whole identity just to shield him.
All this for someone else. Someone she fucking loves.
The anger mutates. It becomes something uglier, more personal; a humiliation that burns hotter than hate. I’ve been made a fool of, by a girl too cunning and desperate to ever love me.
"Do you expect me to thank you?" I say, voice cutting with the edge of a razor. "For your loyalty? For your lies?"
She closes her eyes, lets her head thud back against the marble. "No," she whispers. "I expect you to ruin me. Or kill me. I don’t care anymore."
I lean over her, my shadow enveloping her entirely. "I don’t get to decide that," I say, and the words taste bitter and true. "You made this bed. All I ever wanted was a wife who could keep up with me. Instead you gave me a fraud."
She opens her eyes. They glint with a dangerous new resolve—a dare, even now, at the edge of her own destruction. "Maybe you deserved a fraud," she says. "Maybe you should look at why a real Frances would rather run than marry you."
For a long, electric moment, neither of us moves. The tension vibrates between us, an invisible wire pulled to the point of snapping. I find that I want to reach for her throat again. I want to squeeze until the truth and the lies fizz out together, until there’s nothing but silence.
But the universe, in its infinite stupidity, chooses this moment to intervene.
The curtain to the alcove swishes open behind me, and some inebriated fool stumbles in.
"Well, well," the voice says. "Alessandro Rosetti hiding his wife at her first major social event?"
Blair Wollstonecraft materializes from behind the silk drapes, senator's son smile painted on his prep school face.
He blathers on about something banal while my wife gets to her feet, wiping the smeared makeup from her face.
His hand lands on my wife's arm before I can stop him, fingers curling around her bare skin.
"You look upset, Frances," he says, deliberately ignoring me. "Why don't we get you a drink? Or better yet, share a dance while Alessandro's busy with… whatever this is."
Emma… I can't think of her as Frances anymore… flinches at his touch. That small movement, that instinctive recoil from another man's hands, makes something primitive roar to life in my chest.
"Take your hand off my wife." I use the low voice that's made grown men piss themselves.
Blair's smile widens. "Come now, we're all friends here. I'm sure Frances would enjoy…"
I move before the thought completes. My hand wraps around his wrist, applying precise pressure until he releases Emma with a yelp. Then I'm dragging him away from the alcove, through a door, straight into the men's bathroom.
Marble and gold fixtures gleam under harsh lighting as I lock the door behind us. The smell of expensive cologne can't mask the terror-sweat already beading on his forehead.
"What the fuck, Rosetti…"
My fist connects with his stomach, dropping him to his knees on Italian tile. He gasps, trying to catch his breath, making wet choking sounds that echo off the walls. I grab his hand, the one that touched her, and spread his fingers against the marble floor.
"Let me explain something about ownership," I say conversationally, positioning his index finger. "When something belongs to me, it's mine absolutely."
The finger snaps with a sound like a pencil breaking. His scream echoes off marble, high and pathetic.
"That's one." I move to the middle finger, letting him see it coming. "My wife isn't available for drinks, dances, or whatever else your pathetic mind imagined."
Another snap. The bone splits through skin this time, blood speckling the white marble.
"Two." The ring finger next, taking my time. "You don't look at her. You don't speak to her."
The crack is wetter this time. He's sobbing now, snot running down his face.
"Three." I save the pinky for last, letting him anticipate it. "And you absolutely never fucking touch her again."
The final break is almost anticlimactic. Blair Wollstonecraft crumples on the bathroom floor, cradling his ruined hand.
"Next time," I say, stepping over him to wash my hands, watching the pink water swirl down the drain, "I take the whole arm. Then I start on your cock."
When I exit the bathroom, Emma's waiting in the hallway. She must have followed us, must have heard everything through the door: the screams, the sound of bones breaking, my promises of future violence. I expect horror, disgust, fear at witnessing what I really am.
Instead, she looks at me like she's never seen me before. Her pupils are blown wide, chest rising and falling rapidly, and I can smell it: her arousal mixing with her perfume. She's wet from watching me destroy a man for touching her.
"You broke his fingers," she says softly, voice thick with something dark. "For touching me."
"I'd break more than that." I pull her against me, pressing her back against the wall. My cock is hard against her stomach, and I watch her pupils dilate further. "Feel that? That's what defending you does to me. And judging by how your thighs just clenched, you're just as affected."
She doesn't deny it. Can't, when her body tells me everything: the flush spreading down her throat, the way her breath catches, how she unconsciously arches toward me.
I lean down, lips brushing her ear. "Nobody touches you except me, wife. I don't care how much you fucking love them."
Her brow furrows in confusion or annoyance, I don't care which.
Right then and there, I vow to find whoever this Tommy asshole is and acquaint him with the worms. She might never want me, but she'll never ever have him. I'll rip him apart, joint by joint, and put him in the ground, even if she hates me for it forever.