Chapter Ten
Ella
An hour later, Tiero and I are sitting on the balcony of my room, drinks and nibbles laid out on the table between us.
I’m still not a hundred percent, but the ibuprofen, a bath, and some food have helped.
I feel strangely detached from this entire situation. It’s unnerving.
Shouldn’t I be angry? Furious, even?
But there’s only numbness.
It’s as if my emotional side has shut down and left me on autopilot. Maybe that’s the only way my mind knows how to cope right now.
Without beating around the bush, I ask, “Why did you kidnap me, Gualtiero?”
He takes a sip of his coffee, studying me intently.
Then, as if he has reached a decision, he answers without hesitation.
“Because I can’t and won’t let you go.”
I raise an eyebrow.
Then he says something I never saw coming.
“I love you, Ella.”
What?
I blink several times.
He loves me?
Well, he has a strange way of showing it.
I stand and walk to the balcony railing, gripping it so tightly my knuckles turn white.
Turning back to him, I force the words through clenched teeth.
“You love me?”
A humorless laugh escapes me as I shake my head.
“No, Tiero, you don’t love me.” I stare at him. “You don’t kidnap someone you love. You don’t drug someone you love. And you most certainly don’t put someone you love through hell.”
My voice rises despite my efforts to keep it steady.
“Do you have any idea how terrified I was? Not knowing who took me, where I was, or what was going to happen to me?”
Gualtiero flinches, only briefly, before schooling his features back into the emotionless mask he shows the world.
“It’s unfortunate it turned out this way, but it couldn’t be helped,” he says, offering the explanation as if it should suffice.
In my book, it is wildly inadequate.
“You’ve only known me for a few days. How can you possibly love me?”
I deliberately ignore the fact that I’ve fallen in love with him too.
That is something he will never hear from me. Not after this.
He steps toward me, takes my hand, and guides me back to the chair.
The simple touch sends a ripple through me. My body remembers him far better than my mind would like.
He sits me down but does not let go of my hands. Instead, he crouches in front of me, just as he did the afternoon we first met.
The memory lands with unsettling clarity.
“Remember you once asked me what the greatest lesson was that I learned from my father?” he asks quietly, his eyes searching mine.
How could I forget?
Every conversation we shared during those early days has stayed with me. But that one in particular had sent my pulse racing.
I nod slowly. “It was during the walk after our first dinner. Just before the spider bite.”
Just before he tried to kiss me and I panicked.
“Yes,” he says. “And I told you the greatest lesson my father gave me was the love he had for my mother. And how he taught me to wait for my One.”
Just like back then, heat creeps into my face.
My heart gives a small, traitorous leap even as my mind screams at me to resist the pull between us.
Despite everything that has happened, our chemistry is still there, humming beneath the surface, dangerously alive.
“There is only one girl meant for me,” Tiero continues. “I never had an image of her in my mind. But I always knew how it would feel when I finally found her.”
He pauses, studying me as though measuring how much I can bear to hear.
“I’ve been with many women, Ella. More than I care to admit. You called me out on that too, remember?”
The corner of my mouth threatens to lift, and I bite my lip to stop it.
Yes, I remember that conversation. The way he danced around my question when I asked whether he slept around. The amused glint in his eyes when he refused to give me a straight answer.
“I’ve never felt what I knew I would feel when I finally met her,” he says quietly.
His gaze locks with mine. It’s intense and unwavering.
The air between us thickens.
“Until you.”
My heart jumps painfully in my chest. I hate myself for the way it reacts.
“The moment I first looked into your eyes,” he continues, his voice low, “I knew.”
A tremor runs through me.
“You are it for me.”
For a moment, I cannot speak.
This shouldn’t be a revelation. So why does it take me by surprise?
Looking back, he showered me with attention and gifts from the beginning. He took me to his island, a place no one else gets to go, and showed me a warm, caring side that I’m certain very few people get to see.
And he’s right. He spoke about his One early on. He never hid how strongly he believed in that idea.
He was trying to tell me.
But I assumed it was just another line men like him use to seduce women.
My eyes search his, trying to find even the smallest crack in what he is saying.
There is none.
I am it for him.
The thought is both intoxicating and terrifying.
The truth is, I can feel it in the way he looks at me, as if the rest of the world simply doesn’t exist.
For one dangerous moment, my heart lifts.
The connection between us surges, that same force I felt the first time our eyes met.
Powerful. Unavoidable. As if some invisible current is pulling us together, whether I want it or not.
It erases everything else.
The fear. The anger. Even the betrayal.
Like always with him so close, the world narrows until there is only him and me.
No, narrows isn’t right. It expands.
Like something detonating inside my chest, blowing apart every wall I built to protect myself from him.
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head, forcing myself to break free from the spell he casts over me. Because none of this changes what he did.
None of it makes this right.
His actions have shattered the trust we built over those few intense days. Whatever fragile bond had started to form between us lies in ruins.
To now declare his love after putting me through sheer terror…
How could any relationship possibly survive that?
Correction. Relationship is too generous a word.
What we had was a vacation fling.
A few intoxicating days in Sicily that blurred the line between fantasy and reality.
I open my eyes again to find Gualtiero still right in front of me.
Too close.
The way he looms there, crouched between my knees, makes the chair feel suddenly confining. As if the air itself has grown heavy around me.
I want to stand. No, I need to stand. To put distance between us before the pull of him becomes impossible to resist.
But his gaze pins me in place.
Dark. Intent. Unyielding.
It feels like being caught in a current that drags me under no matter how hard I try to fight it.
Then the scent of his aftershave reaches me. Warm. Clean. Infuriatingly familiar.
My stomach flutters before I can stop it.
Dammit.
Why does he always have to smell so ridiculously good?
He needs to step back.
Because standing this close to him stirs up far too many memories.
Too many feelings.
And I am trying very, very hard not to feel any of them.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” I ask, trying to ignore the dangerous warmth that has slipped back into my bloodstream. “Now it just sounds like a convenient justification for what you did.”
“I asked you to stay,” he says quietly. “Twice.”
His eyes hold mine, unwavering.
“You said no. Worse than that, you insisted on believing this was nothing more than a fling.”
“Well, maybe if you had actually told me how you felt, my answer might have been different.”
His expression sharpens.
“Would it?” he asks. “Tell me the truth.”
The question hangs between us, heavy and uncomfortable.
I let out a long breath. Honestly? I don’t know.
Part of me had wanted to say yes when he asked me to stay. But even then I felt our lives were too different to ever truly fit together.
I wasn’t wrong about that, was I?
In fact, haven’t I felt out of my depth with him from the very beginning?
“It’s a moot point now,” I say, sidestepping his question. “You didn’t tell me, and we’ll never know what my answer would have been.”
I shake my head, frustration building again.
“Instead you stole me from my life like I’m some sort of possession.”
My voice hardens.
“You keep saying I’m yours, but I don’t belong to you, Gualtiero. I don’t belong to anyone.”
For a moment he simply studies me.
Then he shakes his head.
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
His voice is calm. Certain. Terrifying.
“You do belong to me.”