Chapter Thirty-Nine
Matteo
T here’s a loud, piercing ringing in my ears.
Valentina just told him she loves him.
“I'm sorry,” she claims. “Matteo—”
She just told him she fucking loves him.
“You really are sleeping with him,” I whisper, confirming what I suspected, but never wanted to believe. Bile burns in my gut, the words alone nearly enough to make me sick.
The entire world is collapsing around me.
This must be the end of days. If it isn’t, then this is worse .
“W-what?” she stammers, looking genuinely confused.
Valentina flinches when I slam my palm down next to her head. “Don’t fucking play with me right now or I’ll make you regret the day you ever met me,” I vow angrily.
She recoils, hurt flashing in her eyes. How dare she when it’s my chest that’s been violently ravaged, my heart that’s been reduced to nothing more than a defunct appendage?
My gaze roves over her face, searching for signs of what I’ve somehow missed all along—the conniving, backstabbing Valentina who betrayed me in a way I never saw coming.
The phone rings again, loudly announcing her lover's desperate attempts at reaching her. Every ring makes me progressively more nauseous.
“It’s not what you think,” she chokes, clawing at my hand.
“Not what I think? You’ve been fucking him the entire time you’ve been fucking me.” The words spew venomously from my lips. “I didn’t realize your bed was so crowded—I’m not sure how you’ve found the time to keep us both satisfied, I certainly have had no complaints. You really are a pro at this.” Blind jealousy barrels through me like a runaway train, making me both careless and vicious. For the first time since we met, I want to hurt her. I want to hurt her as badly as she’s just hurt me. Her heart should be on the ground, murdered and bleeding like mine is. “Tell me, do you clean yourself up between us or are there times where I’ve been inside you right after he has?” I demand spitefully.
I expect Valentina to punch the cruel words right out of my mouth. Surprisingly, she doesn’t flinch. She only looks at me imploringly, her hands clinging to the one I have locked around her throat.
“That’s not true—”
I roar, slamming my fist down on the wall again and making her jump.
“That’s how you want to play this?” I seethe, swaying slightly. “After everything we’ve been through? You really want to pretend I didn’t see what I saw last night? That I didn’t just hear what I heard?”
“I…” she shakes her head wordlessly. Her mouth opens but no sound comes out.
“Fine.” I laugh humorlessly again. “Fine. I’ll be the one to say your lover’s name since you’re too much of a fucking coward to do it. Thiago da Silva.”
Her eyes grow to a size that would be comical if there was a chance in hell that I’d ever laugh or experience joy again. The current wasteland that is my chest cavity makes any emotion except anger and despair impossible. There’s been a continuous wailing inside me since last night.
In the background, the phone rings once more.
“No longer denying it now, are you?” My windpipe is so dry, I can’t even attempt a sarcastic scoff. “I’m assuming he ordered you to get close to me, to seduce me into telling you everything and exposing my most closely held weaknesses so you could use them against me.” I stumble and Valentina places both hands on my abdomen to stabilize me but I shove them away. “It’s a fucking brilliant plan, even I can admit that now that I’ve had twelve hours to process it.”
Last night, Enzo dragged me out of the ballroom against my will, much to the bewilderment of the Tellier women. It didn’t matter how vehemently I threatened to shoot him, he wouldn’t let me go after Valentina and cause a scene.
Not in that room, not in front of that audience.
He’d been right and I’d punched the hell out of him for it anyway. Enzo took it without a word, then dug up a bottle of bourbon and poured me drink after drink until it was empty.
Surprisingly, the alcohol does nothing to muddy my memories or muddle my thoughts. I can relive every frame of her hugging him, can replay every second of her telling him she loves him.
The alcohol also does nothing to calm the painful throbbing in my chest. I’m not sure what it does except make me want to confess that her betrayal hurts more than anything else ever has.
Pain stabs at my throat like a pack of razor blades and radiates down through my chest.
“Tell me, what exactly was your assignment, Valentina? Were you just supposed to fuck me or was breaking my heart always part of the plan?” I release her neck and cage her against the wall. “Or did you just decide to go for a little extra credit once you realized how easily I fell into your trap?” I grab a glass flask from my jacket pocket and take a swig, wiping the excess liquid from my mouth with the back of my hand and throwing my arms out to the sides. “Because I did, didn’t I? I ignored every red flag. I let you walk me into your trap like a lamb to the slaughter without doing anything to defend myself, not even when you warned me I should.” That memory does make me laugh. It’s an ugly noise that sounds closer to a hacked sob than a chuckle. I fall into her, rasping the next words emotionally against the shell of her ear. “Did the two of you laugh about that when you were together?”
“ Stop ,” she tries again, reaching to take the flask from me, her eyes full of concern. An animalistic growl rips from me and I shove her hand away, taking another swig instead.
“The part I don’t understand is how he can stand to know you’re with me.” Another drink. The fire in my throat matches the one wrecking destruction in my chest. “Touching me, kissing me, confiding in me. Spending the night with me. Being intimate with me in every possible way, even if you were only doing it for him.” Another gulp briefly numbs the heartbreak. My thumb brushes yearningly over her lips. “Doesn’t it drive him out of his mind to have to share you? Because it would drive me crazy.” I spin and hurl the flask at the wall with raw, explosive force. It smashes into it and shatters, liquid spraying everywhere. “It fucking is .”
Valentina’s hands fly to her mouth in shock.
“It’s all I’ve thought about since yesterday, the fact that you’re his and he willingly chooses to share you.” I dig my palms into my eyes to soothe away the sting. “I could never,” I whisper, dragging my hands through my hair next, yanking tormentedly at the strands, repeating hoarsely, “I could never .”
The thick misery is clear in my voice, choking every syllable that squeezes past my lips.
A tightness starts in my chest and creeps slowly upwards, making it hard to breathe. I lean over and rest my head on my forearm, trapping Valentina beneath me.
“Was any of it real?” I demand in a guttural whisper. My eyes burn. “I’m the one who’s been holding you at night. I’m the one who’s spent every waking hour exploring every inch of your body.” Each word comes out sharp and desperate. “I’m the one who’s been wiping the fucking tears off your cheeks, so tell me, was it all fake? Every special fucking moment? Every memory?” My voice cracks. “This isn’t what I meant when I asked you if you were going to ruin my life.”
“Matteo,” she begs, running her palms up to my chest. They leave a once comfortable, now treacherous, warmth behind them as a reminder of their passage. “Thiago’s not—”
Hearing her start to take that tone of voice in his defense kills me. There’s a fucking ache throbbing in my chest, a pounding fist of devastation that’s breaking me from the inside. I’m in this deeper than I realized. I don’t know exactly when I gave her the power to hurt me like this, but it feels as fatal as I predicted it would.
“Don’t try to fucking defend him.”
“You’ve got this all wrong! Please, let me speak.”
“What have I gotten wrong, cara ?” I demand scornfully. “Because they just found my father’s mutilated body this morning. The morning after you very publicly threw yourself into da Silva’s arms, the morning I just overheard you telling him you love him, and he’s the one responsible for his murder.”
She gasps, having the grace to at least pretend to be surprised by the news.
An awful realization suddenly clicks into place.
That she’s the missing piece. The real reason he kidnapped and murdered my father.
She’s what makes this personal for da Silva.
He’s waging war for her .
“My brother is dead, Valentina, and now so is my father,” I declare, speaking inches from her face as she shakes in my hold. “I assume the next name on your hit list is mine. Were you going to do it yourself?” I inquire, the words barely more than a whisper. “Were you going to be the one to kill me?”
I don’t give her a chance to answer, dragging her with me back towards the drawers instead. Smoke still slinks slowly off the candle she blew out when she realized I was here. Why she bothered with such an act of protectiveness in my defense while simultaneously betraying me, I don’t know.
Maybe that’s how deeply she believes her own act, her own lies. They certainly fooled me.
“Now’s your chance. I won’t stop you. In fact...” I find a ten inch knife in the second drawer and shove it into her hand. “Here.”
She doesn’t take it. Her palm stays flat and she stares wide-eyed in horror at the blade instead.
“ Here ,” I hiss, shoving it more firmly, then forcefully closing her fingers around the handle. “Use it, Leni.”
She flinches at the nickname.
I grab her, my fingers bruising over hers, and force her hand up between us until the blade digs into my chest. She tries to open her fist but my hold makes that impossible.
Valentina’s eyes swim with an ocean of tears. Two steps forward or one small flick of her wrist and I’ll be skewered on the tip of her kitchen knife.
“What are you waiting for?” I take a step towards her. She cries out a startled warning and attempts to pull the knife away, but I keep my hand firmly where it is. A knife to the heart is more merciful than waiting for the venom seeping slowly towards it to kill me. “Go ahead and finish what you started.”
Valentina shakes her head so forcefully, twin tears fly off her face. Her entire body is trembling.
“I’ve never seen you be anything other than confident with a blade in your hand, so why are you hesitating?” I bring her wrist up, pushing the tip into my neck now as I simultaneously squeeze hers. “Would you prefer to slit my throat instead?”
We stare at each other, our gazes tangling past the knife between us. She’s crying, devastation etched on her features, and a quick glimpse in the reflective surface of the microwave tells me I look the same.
The raw emotions transform my face into a mask of visceral hurt. The skin around my eyes is pulled tight, creased painfully at the corners, my pupils reflecting the brokenness inside me now.
I look the way I feel.
Shattered beyond repair.
“Kiss me first,” I plead, my chest caving in on itself. My eyes go blurry. “My final wish remains unchanged—I still want to die with the taste of you on my lips, even knowing everything.” I press our joint hands forward until the tip of the blade punctures my skin. Blood starts trickling unhurriedly down the column of my neck. “But you love him, Valentina,” I whisper brokenly. “So, please…just kill me when you’re done.”
Valentina rips her hand out of mine with a distressed scream. I close my eyes and prepare for the final blow.
Part of me always suspected she might somehow be responsible for my death one day—I told her so the night we met, after all—I just never imagined her hand would actually be wielding the weapon that did it.
I hear her arm swing to the left and expect to feel a violent slash across my abdomen. Instead, the sound that follows is that of the knife colliding with the wall.
“No,” she shouts, angry despite her tears. Her chest rises and falls, her nostrils flare. “ No .”
My eyes fly open in time to see the metallic blade drop to the floor with a loud clang.
“I could never hurt you, Matteo,” she starts.
“Too fucking late for that.” I laugh, bitterness dripping from every word as I stare at the fallen knife. “Your lover is going to be disappointed you didn’t kill me.” My gaze cuts back to hers, my body accepting the stabbing pain that happens when I lay eyes on her now. My fist goes to her neck and squeezes cruelly. “Tell me, does he know that your throat is still sore from when I fucked it raw two days ago?” I ask crudely. “Does he know that when he undresses you, he’s going to find my bruises on your tits, my hand prints on your ass?”
The visual of them together makes me lightheaded with rage. I shove away from Valentina with a roar, spin and punch blindly. My fist goes through the plaster and buries itself deep into the skeleton of the wall.
It’s not enough. It’s not enough pain to even begin to quiet the howling inside me.
Behind me, Valentina gasps.
“Matteo,” she cries in concern, saying my name for what feels like the hundredth time in ten minutes. Each one has a unique intonation that rips me apart.
I rip my fist out of the wall, staring down at my bleeding, mangled knuckles without feeling any pain except the one in my heart. Valentina grabs my shoulders from behind and tries to turn me to her. I shrug her violently off.
“Don’t fucking touch me.”
My head is pounding, the alcohol sending contradictory messages to my neural pathways, begging them to tell my mouth to say she can touch me whenever she wants.
“Enough,” I hear her order, firm notes of anger injected into her voice. “You’re wrong abou — ”
“Don’t you fucking dare .” I whirl on her. “I’m not—”
“You are!” she interjects, going toe to toe with me until our faces are inches from each other’s.
We both breathe heavily, laboriously, angrily, until her eyes drop to the trail of blood on my neck and falter.
“You’re wrong. Thiago didn’t kill your father for me,” she murmurs. I jerk away from her but her hands come to my shoulders and keep me rooted with superhuman strength. “ Stop . You have to listen to me. Please. Please , Matteo! I can’t stand seeing you in pain over this when I haven’t touched anyone else. I promise you I haven’t, Phantom. Please let me explain.”
“You have thirty seconds to convince me I was wrong about everything. And you better have the mother of all excuses if you want to explain what I saw and heard in a way that doesn’t lead back to you fucking betraying me,” I hiss.
She looks away, throat bobbing so wildly it looks painful. “I did betray you, Matteo, and I don’t expect you to ever forgive me for what I’ve done,” she admits tearfully.
My eyes close and pain lances through me. I run an exhausted hand over my face.
Valentina rises onto her toes and kisses me.
Fuck . Fuck . I let her.
Of course I let her.
She doesn’t linger, she barely even touches me. She simply presses her lips against mine, closes her eyes to savor it, then drops her heels slowly back down to the ground.
Panic tangles in my chest because it feels like a last kiss. It feels like she’s telling me goodbye.
The howling grows exponentially louder.
Why is it that even knowing the depth of her perfidy, I still find the thought of never seeing her again unbearable? I take a step towards her because, even after everything, I can’t face letting her go.
“You’re wrong about Thiago and I.”
“Valentina—” It’s my turn to say her name and hers to interrupt me.
“Thiago didn’t kill your father for me, Matteo,” she announces. “He killed him for Adriana.”
“V—” I stop. “Adriana? What does she have to do with any of this? Why would Thiago care about her?”
She doesn’t answer my question. Instead, she looks up into my eyes and murmurs, “I didn’t tell him I loved him.”
“Don't do that.” I shake my head, taking a warning step towards her and crowding her again. “I heard you. I fucking heard you say it.”
She meets my eyes squarely on, not withering beneath my scorching gaze. “You heard me tell a man who identified himself as “da Silva” that I love him. You assumed it was Thiago, but it wasn’t. It was someone else. Tomás da Silva.”
Confusion furrows my brow. Tomás da Silva is Thiago’s father and the founder of the Colombian cartel. He still lives over there, leaving his son to run their European expansion.
“So I should be happy you told another man you love him?”
“You should be happy I told my Pap á I love him,” she clarifies. “Tomás da Silva is my father.”
Further words die on my tongue. Her father?
My head spins. That doesn’t make any fucking sense.
“You told me your father was dead.”
“My biological father is dead, yes, but I told you Adriana brought me home. I was adopted, I didn’t grow up alone on the streets. I had a family.”
“How am I supposed to know that?” I demand, my hands fisting in frustration. “I have to forcefully extract every detail about your life from you.”
“That’s because I didn’t want you asking too many questions! How was I supposed to answer them when I was keeping my identity a secret from you? I was afraid one answer would accidentally reveal who I was.”
I pace back and forth, letting out an aggravated snarl. Realization makes me come to an abrupt halt before her.
“If you were adopted into that family, that means—”
“My name was Mendoza when I was born, but it’s been Valentina da Silva since I was four years old. Thiago isn’t my lover.” She shudders in disgust at that. “He’s my brother.”
I blink. The anger drains abruptly out of me.
“Your brother?”
“Yes. My older, very overbearing, oftentimes controlling, mostly awesome, brother .”
I scrub a suddenly weary hand down my face. “What the fuck…” I mutter.
So she’s a cartel princess.
That explains why she was treated with such deference last night. It also explains why she can fight, why she’s been comfortable around the Famiglia and its dangers from the start, and why she’s not afraid of blood and gore.
“So the brother you spoke about from your stories when you were younger, the one who started the mono rumor, the one you beat up in a pillow fight…that was Thiago motherfucking da Silva?”
“Yes.”
The relief hearing that he’s not her lover, that she doesn’t love him, at least not in that way, is so monumental that my knees almost give out.
“Why would he send his own sister to infiltrate Firenze after what happened to Adriana?”
Valentina shakes her head again. “He wouldn’t and he didn’t. Yesterday was the first time we've seen each other in months. We’ve barely even texted since the day I walked through that alley door, save for his attempts at…bossing me around.”
“None of what’s been happening is technically a coincidence,” she continues. “Both of our actions have been driven by the same objective—getting justice for Adriana—but he has no idea what I’ve been up to since that Saturday in the alley.” She pushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear and explains, “Before you and I met again, I spent almost every day of those eighteen months changing everything about myself. Learning to defend myself, training to fight, and joining the cartel so that if I was ever put in a situation similar to the one that happened the night of Carnivale , I could do it differently this time. I was driven by bloodlust, by a need for revenge. Other than my remaining family, that’s the only thing that was keeping me alive.”
“Then my brother got engaged, and subsequently distracted, by his runaway fiancée, now turned bride. I’m sure you’ve heard.” I have, the entire Underworld is aware of the lengths he went to for his wife. “I saw my opportunity when he left London and I took it. I’d learned that a Leone high up in the hierarchy was responsible so I made your family my targets.” Bleeding eyes meet mine, urging me to understand. “I’m sorry I lied, but I’m not sorry for doing it. I can’t apologize for that, because it turned out to be true. Your brother, well, he either murdered my sister or he sold her into sex trafficking. We can talk about that development later—or I-I…I can send you a text about it if you never want to see me again—and your father must have known about it if my brother decided to kill him and start a war with you in the process.”
Valentina pauses, her chest rising and falling. The words tumbled out of her so quickly that she’s out of breath.
“Impulsiveness and stubbornness drove me to Firenze , that’s it. I wasn’t sent there by anyone. No one knows about us, that we’ve been…together. When my family learns what I’ve been up to, they’re probably going to lock me away for the rest of my life to ‘protect’ me,” she adds with air quotes and an eye roll. “I lied about who I am and I betrayed you, but I always told you the truth about one thing.” She closes the distance between us and reaches up. Gently, she wipes the blood off my neck with her sleeve. She sniffles, her eyes fragile and glassy as she stares at the punctured skin. “You’re the last man I kissed, the last one I touched, and the only one I want. Now you know everything. I’m so sor—”
“Valentina is your real name,” I interject.
She blinks at me, surprised that that’s the first thing I choose to say after her confession. “Yes.”
“When I asked you back then, you said it wasn’t, but it was. You told me your real name,” I continue. “Why?”
She blows out a heavy breath and twists her hands together. “Because, to answer your question, no.” Her words hang in the air like unfinished sheet music as she glances back up at me. “None of it was fake between us. It was all real. Every single moment, every conversation, every touch. Every part of you and me. All of it. I was meant to hate you, to destroy you. I wasn’t supposed to like you. And you , you weren’t supposed to stubbornly thwart every attempt I made at pushing you away.” A tremulous smile grows tentatively on her lips, caught somewhere between relief and sadness. “I made mistake after mistake where you were concerned and it unraveled everything. But I haven’t regretted a single one except betraying you.”
“Your brother didn’t send you to Firenze ?” I clarify.
She shakes her head viciously, leaving little doubt as to the veracity of her answer. “No.”
“He didn’t ask you to spy on me specifically?”
“No, you…It became obvious pretty quickly to me that you had nothing to do with Adri’s disappearance.”
“Thiago doesn’t even know where you are? That you work at Firenze ? That he almost fucking died today because I thought he was your boyfriend and not your brother?”
“No!” she exclaims.
I nod, humming thoughtfully.
“So how exactly have you betrayed me?”
Valentina blinks at me in confusion. “What do you mean? I lied to y—”
“I already knew that.”
“I-I spied on your brother.”
“Knew that too.”
She blows out a heavy breath. “I don’t know the Italians’ stance on adoption, but the Mendoza name means nothing to me. I’m a da Silva, Matteo. Tomás is my father. Thiago, my brother. Adriana, my sister. That cartel is my family .”
“Have you fucked anyone else since we kissed?”
She rips in a shocked, angry breath and recoils. “No. Dios mío , did you not listen to a word I just said?”
“If you didn’t cheat on me, Leni—”
“Of course I fucking didn’t. I would never —”
I take a deep breath, my chest settling at the bottom of a slow exhale as calm washes over me for the first time since I walked into her apartment. I’ll apologize to her for the things I said as soon as she’s naked beneath me.
“—then I’m failing to see how anything else you’ve confessed amounts to you betraying me.”
She gapes at me. “The Colombians and Italians have killed each other since Thiago established us her—”
“That doesn’t concern us,” I interject.
“We war over shipments and territor—”
“That’s business.”
“I killed your brother and now my brother has killed your father—”
“I wanted them dead.”
“ Stop interrupting me,” she snaps, losing her temper.
“Come up with a legitimate answer and I will.”
“The cartel and the Famiglia are sworn enem—”
“You won’t, by the way,” I continue as if she doesn’t speak. “Find a legitimate answer, I mean. There’s only one way you could actually betray me and you just told me you didn’t do it.”
“Matteo…”
“What do you think I learned tonight that would make me see you differently? I already knew you had lied, that you weren’t being honest about everything, that you had secrets.” I clasp her face and pull her into me, murmuring, “If anything, I learned that you’ve been showing me the real you for far longer than I thought. You could have trusted me with the truth of who you are a long time ago. I’ve accepted everything else you’ve told me, why would this be any different?” My breath comes in uneven bursts, short and ragged, then long and winded. “But I understand why you didn’t, so I want to make one thing very clear—I don’t give a fuck what you are to them. To your brother, to your father, to the whole fucking cartel. You can keep listing names and reasons, I won’t care . I only care what you are to me and what I am to you. Nobody and nothing else matters. That’s it.”
Valentina keeps her fists clenched at her sides as if she’s trying to hold herself back. Her eyes are uncertain, vulnerable.
“And what am I to you?”
“Everything,” I reply instantly.
She whimpers softly and shakes her head.
“I was ready to die ten minutes ago when I thought you were in love with Thiago, so yes, everything .” My hands tighten on her face, full of a desperate kind of tenderness. “Your last name is da Silva, so what? Why should that matter?”
“It’ll never work.”
I kiss her gently. “I’ll make it work.”
With my father officially dead, I need my agreement with Emiliano Marchesani more than ever. That looming alliance is the only thing keeping civil war at bay.
I can’t bring myself to think about that, not when it means I’ll have to let her go.
“Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” I ask, my tone insistent. I look into her eyes squarely.
She doesn’t flinch away from my gaze. “No.”
I kiss her again, this time as if the world depends on it. My lips move over hers with urgency, with the clawing need that’s been thrashing through me since last night, communicating every once hidden desire.
When I pull away, we’re both breathing heavily.
“Nothing at all? I know everything?” Valentina nods. “So from today onwards, we’re telling each other the complete truth? No more hiding behind lies?”
“Yes,” she agrees and I visibly see the weight lifting off her chest. She looks lighter, like she can breathe again.
“Then I’ll find a way to make it work, cara .”