Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ididn't sleep.
I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and felt her hand in mine, felt her body under my fingers from hours ago, felt every second of the last week playing on a loop through my head until the sky started going grey outside the window.
Then I got up and went to the gym in the basement and hit things until my knuckles split.
It didn't help.
I'm standing under the shower now letting the water run cold and trying to find something resembling control before I have to go downstairs and sit across from her at breakfast and pretend last night didn't happen, pretend I didn't make her come on my fingers and then throw her out of my room, pretend I'm not planning approximately fifteen different ways to make her change her mind about this wedding.
The water does nothing.
I get out and get dressed and go downstairs because hiding isn't an option and delaying won't make this easier.
The dining room is already full when I walk in.
Isabella is sitting between Alessia and Matteo, her hair pulled back, her face composed.
Luca is at the far end, across from Dante, which means he's back from wherever the hell Matteo sent him three weeks ago — some business in Milan that turned into business in Zurich that turned into radio silence for a fortnight.
He looks annoyingly well-rested for a man who's been moving across time zones.
She doesn't look at me when I enter, which is probably for the best because I don't trust my face.
I take the seat next to Dante and pour coffee.
"You look terrible," Dante says, without looking up from his phone.
"Good morning to you too."
"I'm serious. Did you sleep at all?"
"Drop it."
Luca looks up from his plate and takes one look at me. "Who is she?"
"There's no she."
"There's always a she when you look like that." He grins.
"Luca." Matteo's voice, flat and final, from the other end of the table.
"I'm just saying—"
"I know what you're saying. Quit acting like a child."
Dante snorts quietly into his coffee. I kick him under the table. He doesn't react, which means he felt it and doesn't care.
Luca opens his mouth again. Isabella, without looking up from her own plate, says mildly, "Don't."
He closes it.
"Thank you," Matteo says.
"She's been doing that the whole morning," Luca tells me, jerking his chin toward Isabella. "The one-word shut-downs. Terrifying."
"You're welcome to eat in the kitchen," Isabella says.
Luca laughs, the genuine kind, surprised out of him and for a moment it almost feels like a normal morning. Like we're just men who like each other eating breakfast, and not men who are running out of time on a problem that doesn't have a clean solution.
Then Matteo puts down his phone.
His gaze moves to Isabella, slow and deliberate, and I know before he speaks that the morning is over.
"Why did you go to Enzo's room last night, Isabella?"
The entire table goes still.
Isabella's coffee cup stops halfway to her mouth.
I stop breathing entirely.
Shit.
Matteo's face is open and curious, nothing suspicious in it, nothing accusatory, just genuine question asked casually over breakfast, and somehow that makes it worse.
"His wound," Isabella says, and her voice comes out smooth, even and completely convincing. "From the fight at the cabin. I wanted to make sure it was healing properly."
Matteo nods, accepting this without question. "Is it?"
"Yes," I say, because I need to contribute something to this lie. "It's fine."
"Good." He goes back to his phone like the question is already forgotten, and across from me Isabella finally lifts her coffee to her lips and drinks and doesn't look at me.
"There are cameras in the hallway now," Matteo adds casually. "Security upgrade. Rafael suggested it after the O'Rourke situation. Everywhere except the bedrooms. Privacy concerns." He glances up. "Just so you're aware."
"Understood," I say.
The guilt sits in my chest like something with weight.
The rest of breakfast passes in relative silence. I eat without tasting anything and count the minutes until I can leave this table and find somewhere I can break something without witnesses.
The meeting is scheduled for two in the afternoon at a private estate Salvatore owns forty minutes outside the city.
I drive Isabella there because Matteo assigned me as her guard and because sitting in a car with her for forty minutes is its own particular kind of torture that I'm apparently committed to enduring.
She sits in the passenger seat and looks out the window and doesn't speak for the first twenty minutes.
Then she says, quietly: "About last night."
"Don't."
"I need to say this."
"You really don't."
"I'm sorry." The words come out soft and honest. "For asking you to do this. For putting you in this position. It's not fair to you."
My hands tighten on the wheel hard enough that my knuckles go white.
"You're right," I say flatly. "It's not fair, not only to me, but to you as well. Yet you asked anyway and I said yes and now we're both going to live with it. I will never force you to do anything you don’t want to."
She's quiet for a moment. "You can still change your mind. You can still say no."
I look at her briefly before returning my eyes to the road. "Can you?"
She doesn't answer and we don't speak for the rest of the drive.
The estate is exactly what I expected from Salvatore De Luca, all old money and careful presentation, a house that's been in the family for generations and looks like it.
Vittorio's car is already in the driveway when we pull up.
I kill the engine and sit there for a moment, and Isabella sits beside me and neither of us moves toward the door.
"Ready?" I ask.
"No," she says honestly. "But it doesn't matter."
We go inside.
The meeting room is set up like a small conference space, a long table with chairs arranged formally, a woman in professional attire standing at one end with a laptop and a stack of folders that I assume contains every detail of how this wedding is going to destroy me.
Matteo is already seated with Salvatore at the head of the table, both of them looking at something on Salvatore's phone. Vittorio is standing by the window and turns when we enter. His face darkens in a way that makes my jaw tighten.
"Isabella," he says, and crosses to her immediately, and I watch him put his hand on her lower back in a gesture that's casual and possessive and makes me want to break every finger of his.
She stiffens under his touch but doesn't pull away.
I take the seat beside Isabella before Vittorio can, dropping into the chair with enough casual ease that it doesn't look deliberate. It is completely deliberate.
Vittorio's jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. He takes the seat on her other side anyway, his hand going immediately to the back of her chair, his body angled toward her in that way he has that broadcasts mine to every person in the room.
I let him have it.
Rafael is two seats down looking like he'd rather be anywhere else, Dante and Luca are across from me, Luca with his phone face down on the table like he's physically restraining himself from checking it.
The wedding planner starts talking.
I stop listening after the first thirty seconds because if I pay attention to the details of this wedding, to the flowers and the music and the specific timeline of how Isabella becomes Vittorio's wife, I'm going to do something that will get everyone in this room killed.
Instead, I slide my hand under the table and rest it on Isabella's thigh.
I feel the exact moment she registers it, the almost imperceptible straightening of her spine, the way her hands still in her lap, the careful breath she takes through her nose.
I leave my hand there and do nothing. Just let her feel it. Let her sit with the weight of it while the planner talks about Saturday's timeline.
Vittorio leans in and says something low to Isabella and she turns to him with a polite smile and I watch her do it and I drag my thumb slowly up the inside of her thigh.
Her smile doesn't falter. But her hand drops to her lap and her fingers close around my wrist and squeeze, a warning, or a plea, I genuinely cannot tell which, and I turn my hand over under her grip and press my palm flat against the warmth of her inner thigh and watch her swallow.
The planner flips to a new section of her folder.
"Everything is on schedule. The wedding will take place in five days," she says brightly." We've confirmed the venue, the catering, the florals, and the security details. "
Five days.
The number sits in my chest like a countdown timer.
"Security will need to be thorough," Salvatore says, and his voice pulls me back into the conversation. "Given recent events with the O'Rourkes, I want additional measures in place."
"Agreed," Matteo says. "Enzo will coordinate with your head of security. We'll have overlapping coverage."
Salvatore nods and then his eyes move to me with an expression I can't immediately read, something assessing and patient. "Your reputation precedes you, Bianchi. Matteo speaks highly of your capabilities."
Across the table, Rafael's mouth twitches. Dante doesn't react at all, which somehow feels worse.
"Thank you," I say, because I can't think of anything else to say.
I move higher.
Isabella's grip on my wrist tightens to the point of pain. I let her have it. I keep moving and she keeps squeezing and neither of us looks at the other.
Across the table Matteo is making notes on something, Salvatore is asking about security positioning and Vittorio is nodding with that easy confidence of a man who has never once in his life considered that something he wanted might not materialize.
I get to exactly where I want to be and stop.
Just pressure. Just heat. Just my hand and the thin fabric between us and the knowledge, which I am choosing to let ruin me, that she's not moving my hand.
Isabella reaches for her water glass.
Her fingers are not entirely steady.