Chapter 39
Annamaria
What am I doing? This wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
My plan had been to sleep with Matteo, so I could get myself out of his system.
All in the hopes that he would lose interest, push me aside once he’d had enough, and eventually send me back to my family after the war was over.
That was the whole point when I agreed to come on this so-called honeymoon.
I don’t feel like that’s what’s happening, though. I feel like I’m the one who’s being played here, not the other way around. Every soft word from his mouth feels like a trap. And still, I lean in.
The way Matteo was so vulnerable with me last night, the way he stripped himself bare and told me what his stepmother did to him when he was a child, made me look at him in a whole new light.
Matteo’s upbringing explained so much. Explained why he turned out to be the cruel, hard man he is today. However, it was his vulnerability, raw and exposed, that awakened something inside me that I didn’t want to face.
Catching feelings for my captor is the last thing that should be happening right now. I should be fighting for my life and my freedom, yet I keep walking deeper into his snare.
“Shall we go to bed?” he asks, extending his hand for me to take.
I look at it as if it were a grenade, wanting to both run from it at light speed, while also holding it in my hand and cradling it to my bosom. I’m a world of contradiction, and it’s all his fault.
“Actually, I think I’m going for a walk,” I say, standing up from the couch.
Matteo’s brows knit together before pulling his hand back. I can tell he’s disappointed, but he doesn’t say anything to stop me from going. Instead, he grabs his thick, heavy knit cardigan and uses his finger to tell me to spin around.
“It’s cool outside at this hour. Take this. I’ll feel better knowing that you’re warm,” he whispers, his lips at the shell of my ear as he helps me put on his cardigan.
I’m more than warm. I’m a volcano of need and desire, and that’s the problem. All of this is a huge problem.
“Thank you.”
Before I’m able to take a step away, he grabs me by the wrist to keep me in place.
“Should I stay up and wait for you?”
The sparkle in Matteo’s eyes has my core clenching. There’s so much there in his black stare. How could I have ever thought that they were once cold and empty? There is so much life in his eyes, so much promise. So much heat.
“No, that’s okay. We’ve had a long day. You should rest.”
He doesn’t mask his disappointment once again, but he doesn’t argue with me either.
No. He does something far worse. He raises my wrist and presses a gentle kiss to the sensitive skin, lingering just long enough to steal my breath.
It takes an inhuman effort not to close my eyes and lean into it. Lean into him.
This is his trap. His lips. His tongue. His eyes. All his features are perfectly crafted to pull me deeper and deeper into temptation. Into him.
I yank my hand away before he can kiss me anywhere else. Because if he does, the only place I’m going is upstairs to our bedroom. Before I’m tempted to do just that, I spin on my heel and leave the house through the patio, leading to the beach.
Aside from the soft glow of the patio lights, the moon is the only thing illuminating the midnight sky.
I walk toward the water, letting the ocean breeze cool my heated skin.
A cold tremor ripples through me, and I wrap Matteo’s cardigan tighter around my body, feeling instantly safe and protected.
Even out here, I can still feel him with me. His scent. His warmth.
When I catch myself breathing him in, I frown.
“What am I doing?” I whisper, my question swallowed by the crashing waves, the ocean the only witness to my torment.
As the words leave me, another realization settles in. I’m alone. Completely alone on this private beach. I could run. I could use this to my advantage and just run.
If my calculations are right, it’s only a few miles into town.
A twenty-minute walk at best. I’m sure there must be a few places still open at this hour.
Especially since it’s the Fourth of July in a couple of days.
There must be bars, restaurants, and maybe even a few stores and cafes open.
I’m sure I could find someone to lend me a Wi-Fi-enabled phone so I can call my parents.
So I can tell them where I am so they can come and get me.
So why don’t my feet move? Why am I not running?
Memories of the day we spent in town earlier today flash in my mind in answer.
How Matteo held my hand as we walked down the street, looking into shops and eating gelato.
It felt so normal. Like we were a real couple.
A couple in love. He let me buy whatever I wanted.
I ate whatever I was in the mood for. And we talked for hours about music and literature, all our favorite subjects.
I even went to a salon to fix the hack job I did on my hair a few weeks back.
It had been such a glorious day. To end it by running away from him…
No. I can’t do that. I can’t do that to Matteo.
Besides, if I called my parents and told them where I was, they would probably send Stella and Marcello.
And I know my siblings well enough to know how that would end.
They wouldn’t just save me and take me home.
They would come into this house and paint the walls red with Matteo’s blood.
Even if I pleaded and begged for them to spare his life, they would still kill him, if only to erase the threat of him ever trying to kidnap me again.
The thought alone sends an unwelcome chill down my spine.
I don’t want Matteo to die. I might still ache for my family in Chicago, but Matteo…
he can’t die. Yes, I want my freedom back, but not if it costs him his life.
Never at the expense of his life. If that’s the price I’ll have to pay to be free, then I’d rather remain chained to him.
Besides, it wouldn’t be so bad. Spending the rest of my life being loved by him.
For all his faults, Matteo does love me.
There are very few certainties in this life, but that is one I would stake my very life on.
I see Matteo’s love in every glance he gives me and every touch.
In every tender gesture and fleeting smile.
If this is my prison, my hellish future, can I really say I would be unhappy?
That I would not savor every moment of it? Love it, even?
These thoughts burn through my mind as I step back into the house. I shrug off his cardigan, leaving it draped over the couch, and make my way upstairs.
A frown settles on my face as my eyes drift over the now-empty walls.
For a moment, I almost see the frames that used to line them, ghosts of what once hung there.
And when I pass the master suite that Matteo avoided like the plague, my frown only deepens.
I should have realized then that something was wrong.
Though I did sense that something was off when Matteo said he’d never been here, my suspicions rose further when I ventured throughout the house and saw no proof of his or his brothers’ existence, only Carlo Junior’s.
This whole place felt less like a home and more like a shrine to the Donatos’ firstborn.
I’m glad I burned every picture in this house. If it were up to me, I would have burned Carlo Junior’s, too. But Matteo loves him, and I didn’t have the heart to go that far.
Still, I refuse to look at his face, hence why I took his brother’s pictures down along with his diabolical parents’.
No matter how many justifications my husband gives, his older brother could have protected Matteo if he wanted to.
Family protects family. That’s what a real brother would have done.
Carlo Jr. was over a decade older than Matteo and the others.
He wasn’t a child when their mother hurt them.
He knew exactly what was happening. He could have stopped it.
He chose not to. Which means, deep down, he must have believed he was better than them.
There was a time when I hated that Marcello killed Carlo. That time is gone. Now, I would give Marcello my full blessing and have him snap his neck all over again.
My thoughts drift back to the first day I met the Donato brothers. The way Raffaele handled the controller was as if he had never touched a video game before. At the time, I thought he was humoring me, covering for the fact that I didn’t know how to play.
Now I know better. The three youngest Donatos never had a normal childhood. Matteo hinted that Raffaele had been spared the worst of it, but I doubt that means he escaped unscathed. No one does in such a hostile environment. But Raffaele is not my concern. My husband is.
As I crack open the door to our bedroom and find Matteo in bed, asleep, wearing sweats and a T-shirt, my frown settles into something permanent.
Now I understand why he always came to bed covered up.
He didn’t want to scare me. Show me how deep his scars went.
But now that I have, I don’t want him hiding anymore.
Not from me. I want all of him. Every scar.
Every broken piece. I want to touch him and make him see himself the way I do.
Because my husband… is beautiful. His darkness calls to my own, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise.
After brushing my teeth and changing quickly in the bathroom, I slide beneath the cool sheets, turning onto my side to face Matteo.
He lies on his back, one arm draped above his head, eyes closed.
I bite my bottom lip, regretting not coming to bed when he did.
If I had, he would have touched me, made me see stars, and I would have fallen asleep in his arms, just like I have for the past two nights.