Chapter 22 Matteo
MATTEO
Irealize, as we all head to the study as if we're going to negotiate some business transaction, that the conversation about to take place should have happened a long time ago.
Santos takes the armchair nearest the door.
He drops into it with the contained energy of a man who has been running on something uncomfortable all morning and has found sitting down marginally preferable to pacing.
He is rolling the watch on his wrist, which is what Santos does when something has gotten past the charm and he is feeling it properly.
He wants this done. So do I. Jennifer is thirty meters away and neither of us is built for sitting still when she is not well.
Being alphas and billionaires does not make us immune to that.
If anything it makes it worse, because we have resources to fix most things and this is not something resources can fix, which neither of us has any patience for.
Tomas settles by the window. Pad open. Glasses on. To make sure that we're all on the same page, he's probably taking notes or recording this session so if she ever comes back, we have proof of what transpired today.
Chiara sits on the sofa across from all of us.
Spine straight, hands folded, her tulip scent reaching me across the room in a way that used to arouse me.
Now, nothing. She's dressed as if she's a bride at her wedding, in a long flowing white dress, as if she wants us to think about what could have been, with her hair pinned up.
She speaks first, which I expected. Chiara has always led.
"I was afraid," she says. "For the first two years, I stopped treating this like an arrangement and became someone who was fully in it.
I loved all three of you." She pauses, takes the pause deliberately, holds it.
"Not the same way. Differently. Enough that it frightened me, because I couldn't tell if any of you were in it with me. "
Tomas leans back in his chair. His hand goes to his glasses, adjusting lenses that do not need adjusting. He is absorbing something he didn't fully prepare for.
Chiara admitting that she was wrong. I didn't think it was possible for me either, but people change, especially when they are in love.
Shit, is this what is happening with Jennifer? Love.
"Instead of asking," he says, quiet and measured, "you decided."
"Yes," she says.
Santos stops rolling the watch.
"I looked around," Chiara continues, "and all I could see was the three of you.
A unit. Complete before I ever arrived." Her eyes move between us, direct and unhurried.
"And me? I was there when it suited you.
When one of you needed to knot. When you wanted warmth in the house.
When it was convenient to have someone loving you.
" Her voice stays even throughout, which is what makes it land harder than it would if she were angry.
"I was never fought for. Never claimed in any way that mattered.
Never given the attention I should have been able to expect.
I was an addition. A convenience dressed up as something more. "
Santos sits forward in the armchair.
"You should have said that then," he says.
"As far as I'm concerned, we never promised you anything," I say.
"Yeah, but we have emotions. I do. Just because we agreed to something doesn't mean my feelings didn't change after a while. I'd hoped yours would too," she says.
I keep my hands flat on the desk and say nothing yet because some things said quickly become things you cannot take back. My jaw is tight. She is not wrong about what she just said. But there is another part of this conversation that has not happened yet and I intend to have it.
Tomas takes his glasses off.
He looks at them, turns them over once in his hands, puts them back on. Then he shakes his head, slowly.
"She is not wrong," he says. His voice is low and carries the specific quality it has when he has arrived at something uncomfortable and is saying it plainly because that is what Tomas does.
"We built something that felt secure and then mistook the walls for strength.
" He looks at Chiara. "There was room for you.
We behaved as though there wasn't, because we had an arrangement. "
Chiara looks at him, and she's surprised by his response. Tomas says things once when he is ready, and the fact she wasn't expecting it means that after all the time we spent together, she didn't know us at all.
I push back from the desk.
Not standing. I lean back in the chair and look at her.
"It doesn't mean what you did was right," I say.
Chiara meets my gaze. She does not flinch from it, which I have always respected about her.
"You left," I say. "Without a real conversation.
You made a decision about what we felt without asking us what we felt, which is the same failure you are attributing to us, and then you walked out and went to another pack and we spent three years.
" I stop. Start again, because the next part needs to be accurate.
"Not only did you run off with another pack.
You sold our secrets. Our business dealings, to make money with your new pack.
You betrayed us after we opened our home to you.
" My voice stays level as I think about the anger and pain I put in a box a long time ago.
"You humiliated us, Chiara. On social media, making up stories about us.
Coming to board meetings and walking in half naked, claiming we locked you in a kennel.
We tolerated a lot more than any alpha would. "
"Matteo," Tomas says.
"No," I say. "She came here for honesty. We are going to give her honesty."
Chiara has not moved. She is looking at me with the expression I remember from every argument we had that mattered, not angry, something older and more considered than anger.
She is processing. She is reaching her conclusions before she responds, which was always her way and which I have always, even at the end, respected.
"You are right," she says. "About my part in it."
Is that all she has to say? No apology, just that I'm right.
Santos stands up from the armchair. He crosses to the window and stands with his back to the room for a moment, looking at the rain, and then he turns around and drops the performance entirely.
No warmth deployed. No charm calibrated.
Just him, standing in the gray light of the study with the rain at his back.
"Cazzo," he says, quietly. To the room, to himself, to the specific weight of what he is feeling.
"Chiara. You have no excuse for your behavior.
You were out of line." He looks at her. "I was angry when you left.
The truth is I was angry because I cared and caring had made me stupid, and I wondered if we had driven you to that.
This is part of the reason I never wanted another omega.
I thought we did that to omegas." He shakes his head. "That is not something I am proud of."
Tomas nods once.
Chiara stands.
She walks to the window, past Santos, and stands looking out at the rain-dark garden for a moment. Just standing. The rain runs down the glass. The island is gray and close and honest about it.
Then she turns back.
"I chose men who were available. Present.
Uncomplicated. I told myself that was what I needed.
That it was the healthy choice." A pause.
"It was pleasant. Nothing hurt." Her eyes move across all three of us.
"Nothing mattered, either. No fear. No risk.
Nothing that kept me awake or made me feel anything below the surface.
I had been mistaking the absence of pain for contentment for years before I understood the difference. "
"Or more likely when you ran out of their money and the pack moved on too," Tomas says. I know he looked her up. Santos and I closed that chapter long ago.
"The important thing is that I'm here now," she says. She takes a breath and holds it for a moment before she lets it go. "I am here because I know now we were all cowards in different directions and I would like to see what happens if we are not."
I look at Santos. Then at Tomas. The particular exchange that does not require words, fifteen years of it, the three of us reaching the same conclusion at the same speed.
I fold my hands on the desk.
"Chiara," I say.
She waits.
"No apology," I say, and I cannot hold back the anger any longer. "Not a single one."
"Look, it's great that you're here," Tomas says, "but we've moved on."
"What, with that fat omega!" Chiara snarls.
There it is. That instability. We never created it. It was always there.
"She can't satisfy you the way I can!"
Then she starts to peel off the dress, her tulip scent no longer pleasant but overwhelming.
"I can give you babies and everything."
"Don't talk about Jennifer that way," I say. "She's more of a woman than you will ever be. Get out of here, Chiara. The sight of you disgusts me."
Santos comes to stand beside me. He puts his hand on my shoulder for one moment, brief and solid, then drops it, and we stand together looking at the room the way we have stood together since we were seventeen years old, without needing to explain anything.
And just like that the security team opens the door on cue, after I gave them the signal. The idea of wanting anything with her again makes me sick. There's an omega I treated like I didn't care, and she's the only one we want to be with. That's if she'll have us.
We exchange looks while a hysterical, naked Chiara is being escorted out, confirming that we all have the same thing on our minds.
Jennifer.