Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Alessia
I make it to the room before my knees give out.
The door closes behind me and I lean against it because my legs are trembling so badly I have to grip the doorframe to stay upright.
I can still feel where he touched me, where his fingers pushed inside, the wet evidence of what he did soaking through my underwear and making my skin feel hot and sticky.
The worst part is I let him. Even after watching Romeo's finger separate from his hand.
And that terrifies me more than the blood Romeo left on the floor.
But it's his parting words from yesterday that cut deepest, echoing in my mind like a curse: What happened between us... it doesn't change anything. You're still my prisoner. This is still war.
After he'd been inside me. After he'd claimed my virginity with reverent hands and whispered praise. After I'd given him something I can never get back—he'd looked at me like I was nothing. Like our intimacy was just another transaction in his ledger of control.
The memory makes rage burn hotter than shame in my chest.
I push off the door and cross to the washstand. My hands shake when I try to pour water from the pitcher. The glass chatters against porcelain and water sloshes over the rim, splashing my wrist. I set it down before I drop it.
In the mirror above the washstand, I barely recognize myself. My cheeks are flushed. I look like exactly what I am—a woman who just came undone for a man who is a monster.
My stomach turns. I grip the edge of the washstand until my knuckles go white, breathing through my nose until the nausea passes.
Romeo lost his finger because of me. Because in this house, I'm not a person—I'm a possession that needs protecting, marking, claiming in front of witnesses so no one forgets who I belong to.
I start pacing. I can't help it—there's too much energy trapped under my skin, too much anger and shame. I walk from the window to the door to the bed to the window. Ten steps each direction. My body won't settle, won't let me sit still long enough to think clearly.
Every time I close my eyes, I see the blade coming down. Hear the wet crunch of steel through bone. See blood spraying in bright arcs across marble. Romeo's scream still echoes in my ears.
But underneath that memory, threading through it like poison, is the feeling of Matteo's fingers inside me. The way my body clenched around him. The sound I made when I came, echoing off the same walls that had just carried Romeo's screaming. God, how much I wanted him to claim me fully!
I pour water again. My hands are steadier this time but when I bring the glass to my lips, I can barely swallow. The water sits heavy in my stomach.
Hours pass like this. I try to read one of the books Isabella lent me, but the words blur together until they're meaningless.
I sit on the edge of the bed, then stand, then pace again.
My body vibrates with too much of everything—too much anger, too much guilt, too much unspent energy that doesn't know where to go.
The door swings open without warning and Isabella strides in and shuts it firmly behind her. I’m surprised that she didn’t knock or ask permission but I’m happy to see her all the same.
Her eyes sweep over me once, taking in my disheveled appearance, my pacing, the way I'm hugging my arms around myself. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
A hollow laugh escapes before I can stop it. "More like the devil."
Her mouth twists into something that might be a smile under different circumstances. "Same thing in this house."
I sink onto the edge of the bed, pulling my knees up to my chest. I feel exposed even though I'm fully dressed, like she can see everything that happened in that hallway written on my skin. "He made Romeo cut off his own finger because of me."
Isabella's expression doesn't soften the way I expect. If anything, it sharpens, goes harder around the edges. "Then Romeo was lucky it was only a finger."
I stare at her. "Lucky? Isabella, he's maimed. He'll never—"
"He's alive." She folds her arms across her chest, voice clipped and steady.
"You don't understand what it means to cross Matteo.
He's not just my brother. He's Il Diavolo, Alessia, a Don.
You should know best that he needs to be like that.
Men like Emilio Moretti would destroy him—would destroy all of us—if he showed weakness today or any day. "
The name stops my breath in my chest. "Emilio?"
Isabella's gaze flickers. Just for a second, but I catch it—hesitation, like she's said something she didn't mean to reveal.
She doesn't answer.
"Tell me." I set my feet on the floor, lean forward. "Isabella, tell me what you meant."
“It’s nothing. You know how the men in this world behave. He can’t show weakness.”
“No,” I cut her. “You meant something specific. Why did you say “today or any day?”
"God, my brother will kill me,” she glances toward the door before lowering her voice. “Matteo's gone to meet with him."
The words hit like a fist to my sternum and my lungs forget how to work. "He's what?"
"He didn't want you to know." Something softer enters her expression now, almost like regret. "He told me it wasn't your concern. I..." She trails off, shaking her head. "I shouldn't have said anything."
Not my concern. The rage that floods through me is so sudden and sharp it makes my vision tunnel. My body, my fake pregnancy, my life being used as leverage—and he thinks I don't deserve to know he's walking into a meeting with the man who would see me dead the second he learns the truth?
My hands fist in the bedsheets. "He's insane."
"He's Matteo." Isabella's words come out sharp, but there's something else woven through them—loyalty, affection, fear all tangled together.
Her jaw tightens and I can see it in the set of her shoulders, the way her arms pull tighter across her chest. She's terrified for him.
"And if Emilio wants to meet, it's not peace he's after. It's leverage."
My throat closes. "Leverage like me."
Isabella doesn't confirm it, but the silence stretches between us, answer enough.
I press my fists to my temples, wanting to scream but the sound won't come. Instead, my voice comes out as a whisper. "What if he doesn't come back?"
For once, Isabella doesn't answer quickly. Her arms loosen at her sides. Her eyes soften, lose some of that hard edge. But she doesn't offer me comfort. She doesn't lie and tell me everything will be fine.
She just lets the question hang there between us like smoke, thick and choking.