Chapter 18 #3
“You don’t like sitting still,” Yuri said beside me.
“Never did.”
He smirked, hands in his pockets as he walked beside me. “Reminds me of someone else I know.”
“Rafael?”
He tilted his head. “You think you’ve got him figured out already?”
“I don’t think anyone ever really does.”
Yuri chuckled, then glanced down at me. “Fair point.”
I was about to ask him something—anything to keep my thoughts from spiraling—when a voice interrupted us.
“Yuri.”
We both turned.
The man approaching had a quiet presence that didn’t ask for attention but took it anyway.
He was tall, lean but strong, dressed in black tailored slacks and a deep grey dress shirt rolled at the sleeves.
His hair was dark and slightly tousled, a few strands falling across his forehead, and his sharp jaw was shadowed with a clean stubble.
But it was his eyes—gray with a hint of something steel beneath—that held the weight of someone who’d seen too much too young.
“Matteo,” Yuri greeted, reaching out to shake his hand.
“Didn’t expect to see you here.” Matteo’s voice was calm, even charming in that effortless, dangerous way I was growing used to.
His gaze turned to me and he smiled—just a flicker, but there was something oddly familiar in the way he held himself. Like a reflection you don’t realize is yours until you step closer.
“Matteo Silvani,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m part of the Naples hosting committee… unofficially.”
I shook his hand, firm and brief. “Charming title,” I said, watching him.
“Wouldn’t want to oversell it.”
Matteo’s presence was… curious. There was an ease in the way he stood, hands tucked casually into his pockets like this place didn’t impress or intimidate him. Like it wasn’t centuries of blood and secrets carved into stone and chandeliers above our heads.
Yuri leaned slightly toward me, murmuring under his breath, “That’s Lorenzo Silvani’s son.”
Silvani.
That name rang faint, buried somewhere deep in memories I didn’t even know were mine. Still, I nodded slowly, keeping my expression neutral.
Matteo glanced at Yuri with a flicker of a smirk. “Still attached to Romanov’s hip, I see.”
Yuri chuckled. “Better the hip than the neck.”
Matteo’s gaze slid to me. “And you must be the infamous Isabella. Word travels fast through these halls.”
His voice was calm, smooth, with a shadow of mischief threading through the edges—like he knew more than he said but was in no rush to say it. His eyes were a deep, striking gray—not warm, not cold—just unreadable.
I tilted my head slightly. “I’d be flattered if I didn’t know how dangerous rumors could be.”
His smirk deepened. “Then it’s true what they say. You’ve got bite.”
I didn’t smile. I didn’t need to.
Matteo turned his attention back to Yuri for a beat, speaking to him in quiet, clipped Italian. I caught fragments—mostly names and references to routes and movements that meant nothing to anyone outside their world. But I noticed how Yuri’s posture shifted slightly. Sharper. More alert.
They were speaking in code. But the weight behind it was real.
I looked around again, the pulse of the gathering still thrumming beneath my skin.
Conversations hummed all around us—glass clinking, footsteps on marble, velvet voices threading through the air like smoke.
And yet, despite it all, Matteo’s presence created a silence between us.
The kind that didn’t settle. It hovered.
Something about him—his posture, his tone, even the amused flicker in his gaze—felt like a missing page I hadn’t realized was torn out of my story. But I didn’t know why.
And then, just like that, I felt it. The change in the air. I didn’t have to look. I knew he was there.
The subtle pause in Matteo’s words. The way Yuri’s eyes flicked just over my shoulder and then sharpened. It was like the room shifted to acknowledge him.
I turned my head just slightly and there he was—shoulders squared, jaw tight, eyes locked on me. And then, slowly, on Matteo.
He stepped up beside me, close enough that I felt the heat of him against my arm.
Matteo’s expression didn’t change, but I saw the faint lift of one brow. “Romanov.”
“Silvani,” Rafael returned, his voice even but edged in steel.
I didn’t miss the way Rafael’s hand brushed against the small of my back as he came to a stop. Subtle. Deliberate. A silent claim.
And the air around us tightened, just enough to feel.
I didn’t speak. I didn’t have to. Because something in Rafael’s silence said enough for all three of us. And yet, I knew this wasn’t over. Not with Matteo. And definitely not with whatever Rafael had just walked away from.
His fingers barely brushed the small of my back, but it felt like a brand, heat seeping through the thin silk of my dress, grounding me in a way that was as terrifying as it was familiar.
Matteo’s gaze slid over the contact like he noticed it but chose not to react. His expression remained unreadable—cool and composed—but I felt something ripple beneath the surface.
I looked between them, my pulse thrumming beneath my skin. There was a history here, and not just the kind carved in stone or whispered behind locked doors. This was personal.
Matteo shifted his stance, and his eyes returned to mine with something I couldn’t place. “Didn’t expect to see you here,” he said to Rafael. “At least not before the old man arrived.”
Old man?
My mind itched at the phrase, connecting dots that refused to form a picture.
Rafael exhaled, slow and measured. “I like to know who I’m breaking bread with before the wine is poured.”
Matteo gave a low, amused sound. “Still cautious. Or just making sure you don’t miss a chance to see who’s whispering to Viktor these days?”
Yuri said nothing, but I saw the flick of his gaze. A flash of warning. Even the air between them felt sharper now.
Rafael didn’t flinch. “Whispers are only dangerous when no one’s listening. And I always listen.”
Their exchange was calm, civil even. But the tension was in the undertone, in the way each word was measured and placed like pieces on a board.
I felt like I was watching chess with live ammunition.
Still, what struck me most was how familiar they were. This wasn’t the first time they’d stood like this—quiet jabs, veiled truths, an entire history compressed into glances and half-smirks.
They knew each other. Well. But that only made the unease in my gut coil tighter. Because the Matteo I was trying to read—the man who seemed amused and effortless and unreadable—had just shared a past with the man I was supposed to trust with everything, and I knew almost nothing about it.
Matteo cocked his head slightly, gaze sliding back to me. “You always bring your shadows with you, Romanov, or is she something else?”
Something in Rafael shifted, barely, like a current beneath still water. “She’s exactly what she needs to be,” he said, voice low and final.
He didn’t look at me when he said it. But I felt it all the same.
Matteo arched a brow. “Interesting choice of words.”
I stayed still, my expression calm, but my mind was moving fast. Matteo was testing him—or me—or both of us. Poking at whatever this was between Rafael and me, like he was looking for a weakness.
And Rafael? He wasn’t giving him anything. Just calm. Ice. Precision. The kind that scared people more than any outburst could.
“I didn’t expect you to show your face so soon,” Rafael said after a beat, his gaze fixed on Matteo now. “Especially not after Barcelona.”
Barcelona?
The word dropped like a stone in a still pond, and I caught the brief flicker in Matteo’s eyes. A muscle in his jaw twitched.
So, he wasn’t completely unreadable after all.
Matteo gave a noncommittal shrug. “You know how it is. Plans change. People die. The usual.”
Rafael’s silence was heavy. Deliberate. But when he finally spoke, his voice was calm. “Careful, Silvani. You start sounding too much like Viktor, and people might get confused about which side you’re on.”
Matteo smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m not on anyone’s side, Romanov. I prefer to watch the fire and decide later which ashes are worth stepping over.”
I felt my fingers tighten around my clutch, pulse echoing in my ears. This man—Matteo—wasn’t like the others circling this world. He didn’t crave power in the way Viktor did. No, he thrived on the edge of it. Watching. Waiting. Smiling.
Rafael didn’t speak right away. Instead, he turned his head slightly, his profile sharp under the chandelier’s light.
And then, so softly I almost missed it— “You always were good at running late. And playing both ends.”
Matteo’s smile didn’t falter. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Every word was barbed but elegant, their respect buried beneath challenge, past wounds hidden beneath careful phrasing.
And yet… there was something familiar between them.
Not warmth. But recognition. As if they’d once stood side by side with blood on their hands and the same enemy in their sights.
I needed to know more. But for now, I stayed quiet.
Matteo’s gaze returned to me. “So… Isabella.”
I met his eyes without flinching.
“You’ve got every room talking,” he continued. “The girl with the dagger. The whisper in Viktor’s ear. The one who walks beside Romanov without flinching.”
He said it like it was a compliment. Or a warning. Maybe both.
I didn’t blink. “Let them talk. I’m not the one hiding behind whispers.”
A pause. A beat of silence. Then—Matteo smiled. Not a smirk. A real, amused, open smile. And it was… disarming. Infuriatingly so.
Rafael, beside me, said nothing—but his hand moved just slightly on my back. A reminder. A tether.
Matteo spoke again, this time to Rafael. “She’s bold. I like her.”
Rafael’s voice was quiet but laced with steel. “I don’t care what you like.”