Chapter Fifteen
Valentina
Present day
“H ow easily you forgot a man who had his mouth on your clit and his fingers in your pussy, cara,” Matteo continues, his voice nothing more than a sultry purr. “Is that something that happens so regularly you found it hard to remember me?”
I’m staring up at him from between his taut arms, my hand covering my mouth in shock as vignettes of that night flicker through my eyes.
It was him .
He’s the stranger. The Phantom.
The one that I don’t allow myself to think about.
Two significant events happened that night, one because of the other. The stranger—Matteo—turned my head, distracted me, poisoned me with his mouth, his hands, his body, until I’d completely forgotten Adriana. She was kidnapped during that window and eventually murdered.
Because of me.
Because I was selfish and I put what I wanted above her.
Pressure constricts my lungs, trapping the air in my chest. It feels like someone just dropped an anvil on my sternum.
Matteo watches every emotion play out on my face, his hand dropping to clasp my waist. The warmth of his skin against my suddenly cold body sends a shiver through me.
“Finally you recognize me.” I don’t miss the faint note of relief in his voice. Bending his head, he runs his nose up the open line of my throat, demanding, “Tell me why you didn’t come to me that night.”
I barely hear him. I’m not here. My body may be beneath him, but I’m a year and a half into the past.
Adriana didn’t even want to go out that night.
I made her.
And then I left her.
Selfish. Selfish. Selfish.
The minute I hadn’t been able to find her, every thought of the Phantom had disappeared, as had the memory of his mouth and hands on my body. But it was only temporary, a biological byproduct of my activated fight or flight. When those memories and feelings started to come back, I did my best to suffocate them, to no avail.
I don’t deserve happiness, much less to allow myself to experience even one iota of a positive emotion when it comes to him. If I hadn’t met him, Adriana would likely still be alive.
The guilt, which had been suppressed beneath other, unexpectedly stronger, emotions these past couple of weeks comes roaring back to life with a vengeance.
I can’t fail Adriana a second time.
Surprise gives me the upper hand when I shove at Matteo’s chest. I see a flash of confusion in his eyes through the tears gathering in mine before he rolls off me. I’m on my feet and running for the exit before he can say anything. He reaches for my ankle but I’m too fast—his fingers graze my skin then close around nothing but air. He calls my name in that deep voice of his, but I don’t acknowledge it.
Amidst the emotional turmoil, a realization hits me.
Matteo was with me that night.
He couldn’t have been involved in Adri’s kidnapping.
An unnamed part of me could almost weep with relief.
Another, more sensible part, questions his current presence in London. He told me that night that he lived in Rome, that he was going back the following day.
So what is he still doing here? What is he doing in the Famiglia , working at Firenze , and living in the city?
Was it all a lie?