Chapter 24 #2
She takes a sip, sets it down and crosses her ankles under the table and I feel her shift, the tiniest adjustment of her hips, and my jaw tightens because that was not her trying to move away from me.
Salvatore says something about guest lists.
I push the fabric aside.
Isabella makes a sound — barely a sound, half a breath, swallowed so fast that nobody in this room catches it except me. I keep it, filing it away next to every other sound she's ever made for me — and her nails find my wrist, digging into it while she trembles against them.
There you are.
"Vittorio," Salvatore says, "your thoughts on the seating arrangements?"
Vittorio turns to answer his father.
I keep going.
Isabella's free hand flattens on the table.
Her knuckles are white. I watch her breathe through it, this woman who survived things that would have broken most people, who sits in rooms full of dangerous men without flinching, who smiles at the man she's being handed off to like it costs her nothing, I watch her use every bit of that control to stay perfectly composed while I take her apart quietly under the table and something ugly and possessive moves through my chest because she is extraordinary and she is choosing to waste it on him.
My teeth grind against each other at the thought of Vittorio near her.
Her leg shifts again.
She's close. I can feel it in the tension running through her whole body, in the death grip she has on my wrist, in the way she's stopped pretending to follow the conversation and is simply staring at a fixed point on the wall with polite blankness painted over something that is very much not polite.
I slow down.
She inhales sharply through her nose.
I slow down more.
"Would you excuse me?" Her voice is perfect. Not a crack in it. How she manages it I will never know. She pushes her chair back and sets her napkin on the table and doesn't look at me. "Just a moment."
"Of course," Matteo says.
Luca watches her go with a slight frown and then returns his attention to the planner.
She walks out.
I watch her go. Then I look down at the table and count to sixty in my head because if I follow her immediately every person in this room will know exactly what I'm doing and Salvatore already knows too much.
Sixty seconds.
"Excuse me," I say. "Call I need to take."
Matteo's eyes find mine. The look he gives me could strip the paint off walls. I hold it without blinking, stand, and walk out.
She's not in the hallway.
I follow the corridor left and push open the door to the bathroom at the end and she's there, back against the vanity, arms crossed, her chest still rising and falling too fast, her composure back.
The lock clicks behind me.
The room is small. Marble floors, dim lighting, the distant muffled sound of the meeting continuing without us. Isabella watches me cross toward her and doesn't move, chin level, jaw set, doing that thing she does where she makes herself look untouchable right up until the moment she isn't.
"You have lost your mind," she says.
"Maybe." I stop in front of her, close enough that she has to look up to hold my eyes. "You didn't move my hand."
"I—"
"Not once. For twenty minutes. You sat there and let Vittorio touch your shoulder and you held my hand and you didn't move it once." I lean in, bracing one hand on the vanity beside her hip, and drop my voice. "So don't stand there and act like you didn't want this."
"What I want," she says carefully, "and what I can have are two different—"
I kiss her.
My mouth comes down on hers with everything I've been sitting on for the last twenty minutes and she makes a sound against my lips that is the single most gratifying thing I've heard in recent memory, her hands come up and grab the front of my shirt and she kisses me back like she's furious about it, like she resents how much she wants this, like she's been counting down the seconds since she walked out of that room.
I pull back just far enough to look at her face.
Her lipstick is ruined. Her eyes are dark. She's still gripping my shirt.
"In five days," I say quietly, "you're going to stand at an altar and make promises to him.
You've decided that. You've chosen it." My hand finds her hip, her waist, the hem of her dress.
"So I need you to remember this. Every time he touches you.
Every time you have to smile at him. Every time you lie in his bed and think about what you gave up.
" My mouth finds the line of her jaw, her throat, the place beneath her ear that makes her breathing go ragged.
"I need you to remember exactly what that choice cost you. "
"That's cruel," she breathes.
"Yes," I agree.
I pull her underwear down her legs and she steps out of it without being asked.
I put it in my pocket and watch the look on her face when I do — that flash of something that is equal parts scandalized and desperately turned on — and then I hike her leg up around my hip and pin her against the vanity and look her in the eye.
"Tell me to stop."
She grabs the back of my neck and pulls my mouth down to hers instead.
I push inside her in one slow, deliberate stroke and swallow the sound she makes.
She's still tight around me, still adjusting, and I don't move, I just stay there, buried to the hilt, my forehead dropping to hers, both of us breathing and I feel her everywhere, feel every place we're connected, and the word mine moves through me like something breaking loose from its foundations.
Fuck. Fuck, this woman will be the death of me.
"Look at me," I say.
Her eyes open.
God, those eyes.
"Remember this," I say, and I start to move.
I don't go easy on her. That's not what this is. This is not tender, not gentle and when she gasps and her head falls back I bring it back up with a hand in her hair because I need her eyes on me, need her here, need her to understand with her whole body what she's choosing to walk away from.
She understands.
I can feel it in the way she moves with me, in the way her nails carve lines down my back through my shirt, in the sounds she's swallowing against my shoulder because we are thirty feet from her future father-in-law and she cannot make a sound and the effort of staying quiet is making her shake.
I feel her come apart, the full-body shudder she can't control, the way she buries her face in my neck and bites down to stay silent, the desperate clench of her around me and I follow her over the edge with my jaw locked shut and my face pressed against her hair and something in my chest cracking open that I don't have a name for.
We don't move for a long moment.
Her breathing slows. My grip on her loosens by degrees. The sounds of the house come back in, the planner's voice somewhere distant, the ordinary movement of staff, the world that doesn't know what just happened in this bathroom continuing to turn without us.
Isabella lifts her head.
She looks wrecked. She holds her hand out without a word, not looking away from me.
I reach into my pocket.
I hold her underwear for just a second. Her eyes narrow fractionally.
I give it back.
She steps into it. Smooths her dress with steady hands.
Turns to the mirror and repairs her lipstick and fixes her hair with the methodical efficiency of a woman who has been composing herself in mirrors her whole life and does it so well that by the time she turns back around she looks like nothing happened.
Only I know better. Only I can see the slight color in her face, the bruise forming at her throat where I was careless, the way she doesn't quite meet my eyes.
"This doesn't change anything," she says.
The words land like they always do. Like she's saying them to herself as much as me.
"I know," I say.
She walks out.
I run cold water over my hands and stare at myself in the mirror for a moment and then I walk back out too.
I take my seat. Pour coffee. She's already in hers, hands folded in her lap, face composed.
Her fingers find mine under the table the moment I sit.
I let her.
I glance up and Salvatore is watching us. Not obviously, not in a way anyone else would notice, but I see it in the way his eyes flick down to the table and back up, in the small shift of his expression that suggests he's seeing something interesting and filing it away for future use.
Fuck. I hope I’m wrong.
I don't let go of her hand though.
The meeting continues for another hour, going through guest lists and seating arrangements and timing and security protocols, and through all of it Isabella's hand stays locked with mine under the table, our grip the only thing keeping me from standing up and putting my fist through Vittorio's face.
When it finally ends, when the planner closes her folder and thanks everyone for their time, Vittorio stands and pulls Isabella's chair out for her and offers his hand and I watch her take it because she has no choice.
They walk out together and I sit at the table and watch them go and feel something in my chest crack clean through.
Matteo stands and claps me on the shoulder. "Let's go home."
I stand and follow him out and get in the car and drive back to the compound with my jaw so tight it aches.
Rafael finds me in the garage an hour later.
I'm under one of the cars doing maintenance that doesn't need doing, using the work to keep my hands busy.
"We need to talk," he says.
I slide out from under the car and look up at him. "About?"
"Don't play stupid. It doesn't suit you.
" He leans against the workbench and crosses his arms. "Whatever is going on between you and Isabella, it's obvious.
To me. Probably to Salvatore based on the way he was watching you both at that meeting.
And Matteo is a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them. "
I sit up and reach for a rag to wipe the grease off my hands. "Your point?"
"My point is you need to tell him before this gets worse."
"There's nothing to tell."
"That's a lie and we both know it." He tilts his head slightly. "I've known you for fifteen years, Enzo. I know what you look like when you're holding something back and I know what you look like when you're about to do something catastrophically stupid. Right now, you look like both."
I toss the rag aside and stand. "I'm handling it."
"Are you? Because from where I'm standing it looks like you're watching the woman you're in love with get engaged to someone else and doing nothing about it."
The words land like a punch.
"I'm not in love with her." Right? This is just sex, right?
Rafael laughs, short and sharp. "Right. Sure. That's why you looked like you wanted to kill Vittorio every time he touched her. That's why you were holding her hand under the table for an hour. That's why you look like you haven't slept in days."
He saw me holding her hand. Shit!
I don't answer because there's nothing to say that isn't an admission.
"Tell Matteo," Rafael says, and his voice goes serious. "Before someone else tells him. Before this situation explodes in a way none of us can control. He deserves to know the truth."
"I know he does."
"Then why haven't you told him?"
"Because Isabella—" I stop. "She's determined to go through with this wedding. She thinks the family needs the alliance. And she's probably right."
"So change her mind."
"I'm fucking trying, man."
"Try harder." Rafael pushes off the workbench. "You have five days, Enzo. Five days before she marries someone else and this becomes permanent. Whatever you're going to do, you need to do it now."
He walks out and leaves me standing in the garage with grease on my hands and five days on the clock and the particular kind of desperation that comes from knowing you're running out of time and options.
I need to tell Matteo.
I know I need to tell Matteo.
But first I need to make Isabella understand that marrying Vittorio is not the only option, that there are other ways to secure the alliance, that sacrificing herself for duty is not the noble thing she thinks it is.
I have five days.
I go inside and find her in the library with a book she's not reading, just holding open on her lap while she stares at nothing.
She looks up when I enter and something in her expression shifts when she sees my face.
"What happened?"
"Rafael knows," I say. "Salvatore suspects. Matteo is going to figure it out, if he hasn't already. This is unsustainable."
She sets the book aside and stands. "What do you want me to do about it?"
"Change your mind. Tell Matteo you're not going through with the wedding. Let me talk to him. Let me find another way."
"There is no other way."
"You don't know that."
"Yes, I do." Her voice is firm. "I heard him, Enzo. I heard him say it. Without the De Luca alliance we can't handle the O'Rourkes. People will die. I'll not be responsible for that."
"So you're just going to let Vittorio touch you for the rest of your life." The words come out harsh and raw. "You're going to let him put his hands on you every night and pretend it doesn't make you sick."
Her face goes pale. "That's not fair."
"None of this is fair." I take a step toward her. "You're asking me to watch you marry someone else. You're asking me to stand there while he makes you his wife. You're asking me to live with that. Nothing about this is fair."
"I know." Her voice breaks slightly. "I know it's not fair. But it's what has to happen."
I stare at her and I feel something snap inside me, some last thread of control finally giving way under the weight of everything.
"Five days," I say quietly. "You have five days to change your mind. After that, I'm telling Matteo everything whether you like it or not."
I leave before she can respond.
I go to my room and close the door and stand in the middle of the floor with my hands curled into fists and my breathing ragged and uncontrolled.
Five days.
I can change her mind in five days.
I have to.