Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Matteo finds me in the library the next morning.
I'm sitting in the window seat with a book I've been staring at for twenty minutes without reading a single word, watching the grounds through the glass and thinking about the dressing room and the air vent and the unpleasant feeling when Vittorio touched my hair.
Tomorrow I'm supposed to marry him and every cell in my body is screaming that it is wrong, that I can't do it, that there has to be another way.
But there isn't.
Is there?
"Isabella."
I look up and Matteo is standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets and an expression on his face that I've learned to recognize as him working up to saying something I'm not going to like.
"Can we talk?" he asks.
"Of course." I close the book and set it aside. "What's wrong?"
He comes in and sits in the chair across from me, and for a moment he just looks at me the way he used to when we were kids, and he was trying to figure out how to tell me something difficult.
"I want to offer you the option of switching guards," he says finally.
The words don't make sense immediately.
"What?"
"Enzo. I can assign someone else to you if you'd prefer.
I know things between you two have been—" He pauses, choosing his words.
"Tense. You're always at each other's throats.
The hostility is obvious. And I should have asked sooner if you wanted someone else, someone who doesn't make you visibly uncomfortable. "
My heart is doing something complicated in my chest.
He thinks we hate each other.
He's seen the tension and the careful distance and the way we avoid looking at each other in rooms full of people and he's interpreted it as animosity instead of what it actually is.
"No," I say immediately.
He blinks. "No?"
"I don't want a different guard. Enzo is fine. He's—" I scramble for words. "We've gotten better. After spending so much time together at the cabin and everything. We're not as hostile as we used to be."
"Isabella—"
"I mean it, Matteo. He's good at his job. He keeps me safe. I trust him." Every word is true even if the reasons aren't what my brother thinks they are. "I don't want anyone else."
He looks at me for a long moment, searching my face for something.
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Because if he's making you uncomfortable in any way, if he's said something or done something that's crossing a line—"
"He hasn't." I hold his gaze. "I promise. Enzo has been nothing but professional. I don't want a different guard."
He nods slowly, accepting this even though I can see he's not entirely convinced. "Okay. If you're sure."
"I'm sure."
He stands and I think he's going to leave but he pauses at the door and turns back.
"Isabella. Tomorrow—" He stops. "If you need anything. If you want to talk about anything before—" Another pause. "I'm here. You know that, right?"
Something in my throat gets tight.
"I know."
He nods once more and leaves, and I sit in the window seat with my closed book and my racing heart, and I think about the fact that my brother just gave me an out, just offered to remove Enzo from my life, and I refused without even consulting him first.
Because the thought of not having him near me, of having someone else standing guard, of going through tomorrow without him is unbearable in ways I don't know how to articulate.
I stand up and start pacing again when the door opens again.
Enzo.
He steps inside and closes the door and locks it and the look on his face makes me stop moving entirely.
"You refused," he says.
"You heard that?"
"I was in the hallway. I heard all of it." He takes a step toward me. "You defended me to your brother. You told him you didn't want anyone else."
"I don't."
"Why?"
The question hangs between us and I could lie, could give him something easy and surface level, could pretend this is still just about security.
But I'm tired of lying.
"Because I can't do this without you," I say quietly. "Any of it. I can't get through tomorrow without knowing you're there. I can't—" My voice cracks. "I can't imagine my life without you in it."
He crosses the room in three strides and his hands cup my face and he's looking at me with an intensity that makes it hard to breathe.
"Then don't marry him," he says. "Don't get up tomorrow and put on that dress and walk down that aisle. Just don't do it, Isabella. Choose something different. Choose me."
"I can't—"
"You can. You're choosing not to. There's a difference.
" His thumbs brush my cheekbones. "I will help with the O'Rourkes.
I will make sure nothing happens to your family, to our family.
I will find another way to secure the alliance, or I will burn the De Lucas to the ground if that's what it takes.
But you have to choose this. You have to choose us. "
Tears are running down my face before I can stop them.
"What if something goes wrong? What if people die because I was selfish?"
"What if people die anyway? What if you sacrifice yourself and it doesn't matter?
What if you marry Vittorio and the O'Rourkes still come and all you've done is destroy your own happiness for nothing?
" He leans his forehead against mine. "I love you.
I'm in love with you. I have been for years.
And I can't watch you marry someone else tomorrow. I can't do it, Isabella. I'll break."
The words hit me like something physical.
"Y-You love me?"
“Fuck it, fuck it down to Hell. Yes."
"Since when?"
"Since you were eighteen years old and told me you loved me on a porch and I was too much of a coward to say it back.
" His voice is rough and raw. "I loved you then and I love you now and I know for sure that I will love you for the rest of my life, whether you marry me or marry him.
That doesn't change. But I'm asking you to choose the version where we get to be together. Please, Isabella."
I pull his mouth to mine and kiss him with everything I have, with four years of wanting and weeks of desperation and the knowledge that this is it, this is the moment where everything changes.
"I love you," I say against his lips. "I love you so much it scares me."
He tells me to follow him quietly.
"Where are we going?"
"Bathroom. Second floor. Blind spot in the security system." His voice is tight and controlled and barely holding on. "I need you. Right now. I can't wait. I’ll go first."
He pushes through the door and locks it behind us and sets me on the counter and his hands are already working at my clothes.
"We should talk about this," I manage. "We should make a plan before—"
"Later." He pulls my shirt over my head. "We'll plan later. Right now I need to be inside you."
I help him with my jeans and he strips them off along with my underwear and then his hands are between my legs and I'm already wet, already ready, already desperate for him.
"I need to hear you say it," he says against my neck. "I need to hear you say you're choosing this. That you're not getting married tomorrow. That you're mine."
"I'm yours." The words come out broken and honest. "I'm not marrying Vittorio. I'm choosing you. I choose you, Enzo. Always."
He enters me in one hard thrust and we both gasp at the contact, at the feeling of being completely joined, and he doesn't move for a moment, just holds there, his forehead pressed to mine, his breathing ragged.
"Say it again," he demands.
"I love you. I choose you. I'm yours."
He starts to move and it's different from every other time, more desperate, more raw, like he's trying to consume me, like he's trying to make sure I can never take these words back.
"I love you," he says roughly, his hips driving into me with a rhythm that's making it impossible to think. "I love you so fucking much it's destroying me. Every day I watch you and I want you and I can't have you and it's killing me."
"You have me." My fingers dig into his shoulders. "You have me now. You have all of me."
His hand slides into my hair and pulls my head back and his mouth finds my throat, kissing and biting and marking me in ways that will show tomorrow, in ways that will make it impossible to pretend this didn't happen.
"Tomorrow morning we tell Matteo," he says between thrusts. "We tell him everything. We deal with the consequences. But you're not marrying Vittorio. You're staying with me."
"Yes." The word comes out on a moan. "Yes, okay, yes—"
He reaches between us and finds my clit and the added pressure sends me spiraling, my orgasm building fast and overwhelming.
"Come for me," he says. "Come on Princess."
Following his command, I shatter completely and name on my lips and he follows immediately, his rhythm breaking, his grip tightening, a groan tearing from his throat that sounds like relief and possession and four years of wanting finally being answered.
We stay like that for a long moment, foreheads pressed together, both trying to catch our breath, and I can feel tears on my face that might be mine or his or both.
"I love you," I whisper.
"I love you too." He kisses me softly. "We're going to figure this out. Together."
"Promise?"
"I promise. Whatever happens with Matteo, whatever fallout there is with the De Lucas, we handle it together. You're not alone in this anymore."
I hold onto him and let myself believe it, let myself imagine a future where I don't marry Vittorio, where I get to wake up next to Enzo every morning, where love is the thing that matters instead of duty.
His phone rings.
He ignores it.
It rings again.
"Answer it," I say quietly.
He pulls back and checks the screen and his expression shifts immediately into something dark.
"It's Rafael."
He answers. "What?"
I watch his face as he listens, watch it go from concerned to furious in the space of seconds.
"When?" A pause. "How many casualties?" Another pause. "I'm on my way."
He hangs up and looks at me and I can see him already shifting gears, already moving from this moment into whatever crisis is unfolding.
"There was an attack," he says. "One of our fabrication plants on the east side. The O'Rourkes hit it an hour ago. Rafael needs me to go there now with him to assess damage and coordinate response."
My stomach drops.
"How bad?"
"Bad enough that I need to go." He cups my face. "I'll be back as soon as I can. A few hours at most. And then we go to Matteo together and we tell him everything. Okay?"
"Okay."
He kisses me once more, hard and possessive, and then he's helping me down from the counter and we're both getting dressed quickly and I'm watching him transform back into Enzo the enforcer, Enzo the strategist, Enzo who can compartmentalize anything.
I miss my Enzo already.
"Stay inside the house," he says as he checks his gun. "Don't go anywhere without other guards around. I'll have Rafael send extra security to the compound."
"I'll be fine."
"Isabella." He stops and looks at me directly. "Promise me you'll be careful. Promise me you won't do anything stupid while I'm gone."
"I promise."
He nods and kisses my forehead and then he's gone, the door closing behind him, and I'm alone in the bathroom with swollen lips and marks on my neck and the knowledge that everything is about to change.
I look at myself in the mirror.
Tomorrow was supposed to be my wedding day.
But tomorrow I'm going to tell my brother that I'm in love with his best friend and I'm not going through with the marriage that's supposed to save our family from the O'Rourkes.
Tomorrow everything falls apart or everything comes together.
And for the first time in weeks, I feel like I can breathe.