22. Matti
Matti
I spend the next few hours watching Siena sleep, studying the contours of her face, memorizing every detail of her skin, every shadow cast by the soft rise and fall of her breathing. It all feels too precious to look away from.
When she wakes, her lashes fluttering open to find me watching her; she doesn’t tense or pull away. Instead, she melts into me, a quiet purr of contentment escaping her lips.
I press a kiss into her forehead, keeping my lips against her skin for as long as I can. She reaches up, dragging her fingertips lightly over my cheek, sending a shudder through me. I hope she can feel the words I still can’t bring myself to say.
When I finally pull back, she takes my face in both hands, her dark eyes searching mine. I don’t know what she’s looking for, but she seems to find it.
“No more secrets?” she asks.
I nod.
“What do you need to tell me about Liana?” she whispers.
I close my eyes for a long moment, then open them, glancing away from her. What happened with Liana is not anything that I have talked about with anyone, but I promised Siena no more secrets, and if I’m ever going to earn her trust, I have to tell her everything.
Opening my eyes, I take a breath, unsure how to begin. “Liana is the reason I always make you say out loud what you want, kitten. She’s the reason I remind you that you can say ‘no,’ that I would never ask you to do something you don’t want.”
I don’t want to tell her this. I don’t want her to hate me. Steeling myself for her response, I exhale hard and continue.
“I was a kid, twenty years old. Thanksgiving break. Some girls we knew from high school were home. Vin and I took them out to a club, then brought them back to the estate, trying to impress them with his private island. I ended up with Liana. It was just a hook-up, but I was an asshole. I fucked her…the way I fuck.”
Siena blushes, dropping her gaze, then looks back up at me, nodding.
“She seemed into it. She never said ‘no,’ never told me to stop. In fact, the opposite. When we were done, she went to go hang out with everyone, and I passed out in Vin’s room.
A few hours later—” I stop, dragging in a breath before stealing a glance at Siena.
I’ve never been afraid of anything, but her reaction to this? It terrifies me.
She says nothing but threads her fingers through mine and holds my gaze without wavering, her beautiful dark eyes full of compassion. Buoyed by her quiet strength, I continue.
“I woke up around 4 a.m. It was still dark. I went to the kitchen for water. Walked past the study, saw the light on. Went in and—” My throat tightens.
“Aurelio was sitting on the couch, one of his men cleaning up. And Liana—” I swallow hard.
“She was on the floor naked, her eyes open. There was blood everywhere.”
I can’t look at Siena, and she doesn’t move. “She was dead?”
I nod, squinting my eyes shut, steeling myself against the horrific memory. “It was my fault. The paper in Aurelio’s hand was a letter Liana left behind saying I raped her, and she was so ashamed that she couldn’t live with herself.”
Siena curls into my chest and wraps her arms around me. “So you always ask me to verbalize what I want so that you know I’m not secretly feeling violated.”
I nod again, holding her tight. “I never saw it coming. I was in shock. I still am, whenever I think about it, and I think about it every single day. I’ve gone over it in my head thousands of times.
She was asking me to do things, and I did what she wanted.
The only thing I didn’t do was go hang out with everyone with her afterward like she wanted me to.
I don’t know. I mean, she said in her letter it was rape, that she didn’t want it, so if she felt that way, then I was missing something, some kind of cue or sign.
No matter how many times I relive it, I can’t figure out what it was. ”
Swallowing hard, I force myself to meet Siena’s gaze. Relief floods through me as I realize that she isn’t screaming at me, isn’t trying to leave me. She sees me, she sees that I really didn’t know I was hurting Liana.
“It took me over a year to touch anyone again, more than two years to have sex with anyone. And I started making every woman say out loud exactly what she wanted, reminding them that I’d stop if they didn’t like it, asking them repeatedly.
I know for a fact it annoyed the shit out of some women, but there was no way I was taking the risk of that happening again. ”
Siena strokes my chest, snuggles her face into my neck as I tell her everything.
I’ve never done this before, gone into detail like this, even with the people who know about it.
Tommy and Vin always gave me the benefit of the doubt, but they’re my brothers, so I don’t know if that’s just out of loyalty.
And Aurelio has never let me forget it. While that felt like protection at first, it quickly soured into something closer to blackmail.
Siena pulls back just enough to meet my gaze. “Thank you for telling me. It’s a horrible thing to hold by yourself. I don’t have any words that can change what happened or alleviate your pain, but I’m so sorry that you’re hurting.”
I sit up, pulling her onto my lap so she is straddling me, her forearms resting on my chest. I cup her face, pressing a kiss to her forehead, then pause, my mouth inches from hers.
“I know I don’t deserve you, Siena. And I know you deserve a better man. But I’m too selfish to give you up. I did try. When I sent you away, I told myself I wanted you to hate me. I did everything I could to make it happen.” My voice drops to a whisper. “But I couldn’t let you go.”
“The garage…” she says pensively. “What was that about?”
I sigh. “Those weeks without you, I was lost, Siena. Fucking killed me. I stepped out of that elevator and saw you there, and instinct took over. All I knew is that I needed to be inside you immediately.”
“But you wouldn’t kiss me,” she says softly, tracing her finger along my jaw line.
“My brain was fucked up without you, kitten. I knew I couldn’t keep you, so I didn’t kiss you.
Like it would somehow protect me from the heartbreak of letting you walk away again.
” I shudder, remembering her asking me to kiss her.
“When I was in the car, and you asked me to kiss you, I wanted to so badly. But I also needed you to hate me if I was going to keep distance between us. I knew I wouldn’t be strong enough to make you go if you fought me on it and wanted to stay. ”
“That little business with making me get in the car afterward?” she asks “If the plan with that was to make me hate you, it worked.”
“I know. It fucking broke me.”
Her voice is raw, and she drops her gaze to my chest. “You could have just told me, talked to me about it.”
I stroke her cheek with my thumb, refusing to let her look away. “I didn’t think you’d go.”
“I wouldn’t have,” she agrees with a soft smile.
I take a deep breath. Time to put all my cards on the table. “But would you stay?”
Her brows knit. “What do you mean?”
Indicating the penthouse with a sweep of my hand, I keep my eyes on her face. “I need you to stay here with me, Siena. I need you.”
She hesitates. “What about the safety issue? You said—”
I nod. “I did. And that was true. I barely slept the whole time you were gone making sure that you were never in danger. But that only worked until it didn’t. That’s why there were men looking for you last night at the club. And men waiting for you last night at your house.”
Siena pales. “At my…house?”
I squeeze her tightly. “You don’t have to worry. Everything was handled, and I am in the middle of making sure that this never happens again. ”
“You’re in the middle of it…” she says slowly.
“Yes.”
“Which means Aurelio is still a threat?”
“He isn’t a threat to you here. This place is a fortress: security around the clock, fail-safe measures ready to lock off this floor if needed.”
I speak slowly so that she can absorb everything. She looks nervous, overwhelmed, and I want her to feel safe.
“Then why didn’t you keep me here the whole time?”
“It wasn’t good enough to protect you before I met you.
Since I sent you away, I’ve upgraded everything.
I built military-grade steel-reinforced concrete into the floor beneath us.
It has energy-absorbing layers that have been specially designed to withstand the direct impact of a bomb.
I have more men guarding the building and this floor.
And in the worst-case scenario, there’s a helipad on the roof that is only accessible through this penthouse with a helicopter on standby 24-hours a day. ”
“And a pilot?” she asks, her voice squeaking.
“I’m a pilot, but yes, I have a backup pilot to get you out of here if something happens to me.”
She throws her arms around my neck and squeezes, shaking. Rubbing her back, I kiss the top of her head. “It’s okay, kitten. I’m not going anywhere.”