Chapter 22
GIANNA
I didn’t expect Matteo to just walk off, leaving with me with his sister and her biker friends right after introducing us. But that’s what he did.
She’s still holding my hand, looking into my eyes like she wants to read my mind or something. Or like she wants answers that she’s not sure I would give her willingly.
She’s so pretty. Beautiful really. Long brown hair, big brown eyes, lips that are the dream of every woman looking for help from plastic surgeons and curves in all the right places. Even in ripped black jeans and an oversized T-shirt she looks like a queen.
“Come on, let’s get a drink,” she says. “I’m so glad to meet you.”
She takes my hand and practically pulls me through the door Matteo had just disappeared through. It’s a lot cooler inside, a lot darker, but it’s filled with so many people all staring at us that I think I’d prefer to just stand out in the parking lot alone.
She leads me to a sofa in the corner and asks what I’d like to drink. I almost say a vodka, neat. But then remember I don’t need to be drunk to function anymore. And that I might be pregnant.
“I’ll just have a soda or something,” I say, and she smiles widely and leaves.
Luckily, she’s back before the looks I’ve been getting grow hot enough to scorch.
She sits down next to me, handing me a wonderfully cool bottle and a glass. I resist the urge to rub it on my temples. But by now, the rest of the people in here have stopped glaring at me so openly. Maybe Nico and Francesco standing just behind the sofa had something to do with that.
Though at least Nico isn’t paying me much attention. One of the pretty ladies by the bar, wearing only a pair of distressed jean short shorts and a pink bikini top is exchanging very lustful looks with him.
“I don’t know what my brother has told you about me, but I’m so glad to finally see him with someone,” Isabella says. “And happy. It’s good to see him happy.”
I take a sip of my soda straight from the bottle. She looks so earnest, her words so full of actual feeling that my throat suddenly turned as dry as a desert. She clearly knows nothing about why and how I came to be here.
“He has been in a very dark place for a long time, hasn’t he?” I say and drink some more.
“Because of me,” she says, darkness falling over her face. Not unlike the darkness that follows him always too.
“It’s not my place to make that judgement,” I tell her. “But you wanted to be free, and I can understand that. My father would never have let me leave with a man I chose. He’d have done everything and anything to stop me too.”
She runs her hand thought her thick hair and nods. “But you probably wouldn’t have let it come to that, right?”
I have no idea where Matteo disappeared to, but I look at a door at the back of the bar, because I’m sure he’s somewhere beyond it.
“Honestly, I probably would have.”
I fell in love with Matteo on the night he first saved my life, and that love just grew and grew, and would continue to grow even after I gave myself to him. I was sure.
“But we’ll never know now,” I add and drink some more. “But tell me more about this place. It looks so much different than the world we come from, and that gorgeous house you grew up in.”
A sadness washes over her eyes, but then she smiles. “You’re staying at the house? I haven’t been back there in ages. And when I still lived there, I couldn’t wait to get away.”
She makes a gesture with her arms to encompass the whole of the room we’re in.
“And this might not be a palace, and maybe even not the first place I’d choose as my home.
But I’m free here and Blade is here, and I can finally live the fairytale I dreamed about while I was still trapped in that palace that was my family home. ”
Her happiness and contentment are palpable in the air around her and beaming out through her smile. Will I ever get there? Will I ever feel this free?
“I guess that’s something I can understand,” I say after taking another sip of my soda. “I used to dream of being free, while I still lived with my parents in New York. A golden cage, I used to call it. But I don’t know if this here is any better.”
I take another sip of my soda and avoid her eyes. I shouldn’t tell her about the full circumstances of how I ended up with Matteo. My loyalty is still to him, it has to be, because I don’t actually have anyone else.
She is nodding knowingly when I glance at her again, her eyes hard. “I know a little about what happened in New York. You’re not with my brother of your own free will, are you?”
The night we spent together at the beach flashes before my eyes in vivid color and in perfect realism.
It was the last night of my old life, and I thought it was also the first night of my new life.
It’s just that the new life I got was not at all what I pictured it would be.
But it is the life I imagined, wished for, craved. Only it’s a very twisted version of it.
“Do you need help?” she asks quietly for only me to hear.
I glance at Nico and Francesco automatically, but they’re both making eyes at the pretty women in here and didn’t hear a thing.
She lays her hand on mine and squeezes. “We can protect you.”
I lay my own hand over hers, not surprised to find that her skin is as hot as Matteo’s. The look in her eyes reminds me of him too. Fierce, relentless, even ruthless. But also gentle somehow. “No one can protect me. Not from myself. Because I do love your brother, despite everything.”
I haven’t said this out loud yet. Wasn’t planning on doing it now. But that weight pressing down on my chest just shed a few more pounds when I did.
“It makes me the worst sort of traitor to my family, but it is what it is,” I say. “And he has tried to protect me and mine as much as he can.”
Another knowing look alights in her eyes as she nods. “I know all about betraying your family. And if it weren’t for my choices, we wouldn’t be sitting here today, there’d be no war to fight—”
“But you’d be married to a man you didn’t love,” I interject. “And a very bad man at that, from what I hear.”
She shrugs. “But everyone else would still be alive.”
“Not my family,” I say. “They’d all be dead, and my sisters and I would probably be married off to some very bad men too. Matteo prevented that. And if you’d done what your family wanted you to do, he’d never have been there to do it.”
That’s another thing that’s been kicking around in my head, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. Matteo’s been saying it since before we left New York, but I’ve rejected it outright. Even though it’s actually the truth. But does saying it mean I accept it?
She sighs. “This is a very heavy conversation. But the way our families work… we, daughters, and the women in general, are not much more than the pretty paintings and such adorning our houses. There for the men to do with as they please. Go where they tell us to do. And do what they want us to do.”
“I know.”
I wish I had something more to add, but there really is nothing. She nailed it.
“So my offer stands,” she says. “If you want out, you can come here. We’ll protect you.”
The words echo in my ears as I see Matteo come in through the door behind the bar. His eyes fix on me immediately, as bright as the noonday sun, like always. I feel the warmth of his gaze deep in my belly, another confirmation of my suspicions that I’m carrying his child.
And even if I wasn’t, it’s not him I need protection from. It’s my feelings for him. And those will clearly never die, no matter the beating they take. My resistance to him is also waning, slowly but surely. Is that another sign that I’m pregnant?
“Thank you,” I say, squeeze her hand again and stand up. “But I think I’ll be fine. Actually, I’m sure.”
She stands up too and together we wait for Matteo to reach us.
“Did you two have a nice chat?” he asks, a little harshly, a little wistfully, as though he wishes we had.
Isabella nods and she’s looking at him in just the same way. A little harshly, a little wistfully. The rift between them is still very wide.
“I’d like to see you again,” I tell her with a smile then look at Matteo pointedly. “Soon.”
He shrugs and nods. “You’re welcome at home anytime, Sis.”
Blade and Rogue have also joined us.
“This is her home now,” Blade says pointedly and Matteo shrugs again.
“The invitation stands either way,” he says and offers me his hand. “We need to get going now.”
I accept his hand, and he holds mine very tightly, possessively, desperately even. Like he’s afraid he’ll lose me.
And that’ll never happen. I know that now. We’re tied together in a way that nothing can break apart. What I don’t know is whether that’s a good thing or not.