Chapter Eleven
Morena
Two weeks later
The cream, the journal, and Matteo’s uncrackable demeanor had become the only rhythm I knew.
Morning light cut across the penthouse in thin gray bars.
I sat on the low stool in the kitchen wearing new white clothes.
He made coffee, black and strong for him, sugary and sweet for me.
By now, he knew how I liked it. I could not make myself pick up the fork.Matteo watched me for a long moment.
Then he pulled the stool closer, sat, and took the fork himself. “Open up for me.”
I stared at him. The tattoos on his forearms flexed as he cut a piece of egg.
Dark hair damp from his shower. That same beautiful, terrifying face that had watched me break the night before, every night since our wedding.
I was scared of him. I was also staring at the way his mouth looked when he was being careful, and I hated that my pulse jumped.
He held the fork to my lips. “I said open, wifey.”
I opened.
He fed me slowly. One bite at a time. Egg. Then toast. Then a piece of fruit. His free hand rested on my lap. But the touches were gentle. Almost careful. He wiped a crumb from the corner of my mouth with his thumb and did not comment on the way I flinched.
“Good,” he murmured when half the plate was gone. “You do not get to starve the body I own, baby. Not when it has work to do.”
I finished what he gave me. My cheeks burned. The gentleness was somehow worse than the cold. When the plate was empty he stood. He set his phone on the table between us, screen open to a number I knew by heart.
“One call. Speaker. Every word is mine to hear. You try anything clever and Dario dies before the line goes dead. Clear?”
“Yes,” I nodded eagerly.
He hit call. Dario answered on the third ring, voice thick with sleep and something uglier. “Well, well. The traitor finally learned how to dial. Miss me already?”
My throat closed. I forced the words out. “I just needed to confirm… things.”
He laughed. The sound was low and mean. “Still begging for attention. Did the new owner get bored of that tight little hole? Or did he send you crawling back because you can’t stop thinking about the man who actually broke you in right?”
I flinched. Dario kept going, voice dripping with mockery.
“Listen to you. Soft. Broken. Exactly how I left you. Tell me, does he make you thank him after he ruins you, or is that just for me?” he hissed.
Matteo moved. He took the phone from the table, brought it to his mouth, and spoke in a voice so quiet and final that the air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
“Dario Rizzo. This is Matteo Ventura.. One more filthy word about her body, one more threat, and I come for you personally. Do you understand me?”
Silence on the other end. Then a shaky breath.
“Yeah,” Dario said, all the swagger gone. “I understand.”
Matteo’s eyes never left mine. “Good. She will call again when I decide she can. Until then, you do not exist to her. Hang up.”
The line went dead. I stared at him, stunned.
He had defended me.
The shock of it sat heavy in my chest, warmer and more dangerous than any threat.
Matteo set the phone down and looked at me for a long moment. Something unreadable moved behind those dark eyes.
“I have work that will keep me gone until tomorrow night,” he said.
“You will stay here. Alone. Food is in the fridge, you can also order takeout through a tablet I’ll leave you.
I have chefs. The diary stays open. You write while I am gone.
If I come home and find you have hurt yourself or tried anything stupid, the next time I try to fill you with my heir will make last night look PG13. ”
I nodded, throat tight.
He picked up his keys, turning toward the door. The tattoos on his arms flexed as he shrugged into his jacket. That sharp, beautiful face stayed cold, but the memory of him feeding me and defending me on the phone would not leave.
I realized, with a quiet and terrifying clarity, that I was going to miss him.
***
I tried to write the next entry the way he ordered. My hand shook so hard the pen scratched nonsense. I closed my eyes and a photograph rose behind them the way it always did when the room went still.
Camilla on a bare floor. Thinner than the last picture. Holding a half-eaten apple. Eyes flat. The red shirt I had never seen before. The stuffed animal that looked clean and expensive while she looked like she was disappearing.
Dario’s voice echoed in my mind, calm and pleased.
She’s still breathing. That’s the only update you get until the numbers improve.
I had danced for those numbers. I had handed over every bill.
I had let him show me the photos like treats for a dog that performed correctly.
And now I was here, collared, filled, scheduled, being bred by a man who paid a fortune for the right to use my body while my sister was still somewhere in the same city, still under the same man’s control, still waiting for a savior who had promised she would never let this happen.
The diary page blurred. I pressed the heel of my hand against my mouth so the first sound would not escape.
I was supposed to be strong enough to survive long enough to get her back.
Instead I was lying in a stranger’s bed with his claim leaking out of me, writing entries about how little I slept and how much my body ached, while Camilla was getting thinner in rooms I could not find.
Tears soaked the open pages. The gold pen rolled off the bed. I could not stop. I did not want to stop. The guilt and the fear and the helpless rage finally had room, and they took all of it.
I hated him for buying me.
I hated myself more for the tiny, shameful part that had started to want the man who bought me. And underneath both hates lived the only truth that still mattered: Camilla was still out of my reach.
And I was still here, breaking exactly the way the world had always planned.
Hours passed slowly. I tried to stay busy. Eating. Watching TV. The seconds ticket by so painfully, I began to resent the silence. I realized I was waiting for him.
I wrote a lot in the journal despite my initial fight. Maybe it helped a little, but the bitterness of knowing he’d read every word soured everything.
He didn’t come home before bedtime, and I sulkily crawled into bed with a packet of cookies I found in a pristine marble cupboard. I must have fallen asleep at some point, because when I woke up, it was morning, and I was no longer alone.
Matteo was fully dressed in black, sleeves rolled to the elbows the way he always wore them, but I could see the ink that lived under the fabric now, burned into my eyelids.
Dense black roses and skulls curved across his chest in my memory from the nights he had taken his shirt off.
A swallow sat low on his stomach. Pin-up girls and strange monsters crawled down both arms.
His dark hair was pushed back and messy, the undercut sharp against the longer top. A cigarette rested between his lips, unlit, the filter held loosely like he had forgotten it was there. Cold. Beautiful. Dangerous in the quiet way that made my stomach drop and my thighs press together.
I was terrified of him. I was also so wet it was humiliating. I wasn’t sure if it had been a wet dream that prompted it.
I glared at him. “Back so soon?”
“Oh yes,” he smirked. “Couldn’t wait for the next entry in your journal.”
I glared harder, pulled the sheets higher and fought the urge to hiss. Then, I grabbed the diary off the nightstand and tossed it at him. #Have at it.”
He opened the book without much of a reaction. As I watched him leaf through it, I realized how many pages I’d filled with my stupid ramblings. My heart sped into overdrive when his gray eyes finally met my own.
“Who is Camilla?”
My bottom lip wobbled. “She’s… I…”
He was listening, but I couldn’t get the words out.
“I can’t,” I choked out between sobs. “I can’t do this. Please.”
“You can. You will, because you don’t have a choice.
”He caught my chin again. Fingers firm. Thumb pressing just under my lip so I had no choice but to meet those dark eyes.
I did. My own eyes felt swollen and red.
My mouth trembled. I hated that even in collapse he looked at me like something he had decided to keep forever.
“Why are you falling apart?” he asked, quiet and sharp. You need to answer my questions, so I can help you. So tell me what this is.”
I opened my mouth and almost said her name.
Camilla.
The word sat on my tongue like a live coal.
I wanted to spit it out so badly my chest ached.
I wanted to tell him Dario held the only pure thing left in my life.
That every photo, every threat, every night on that stage had been about keeping her breathing.
I wanted to beg him to take her instead of me. I swallowed it whole.
“Dario,” I whispered instead.
Matteo’s eyes narrowed a fraction. The unlit cigarette shifted between his lips.
“He’s out there,” I forced out, voice cracking. “He thinks pieces of me belong to him. He has ways to hurt… what’s left. If you kill him, something worse happens. I can’t. Please. Don’t kill him.”
Silence stretched. City lights beyond the glass painted cold bars across the bed. Matteo’s thumb stroked once along my jaw, almost thoughtful, almost cruel. “Give me one clean reason not to put a bullet in his skull tonight.”
The demand was soft. Absolute. The kind of line that would live in my head for years. I stared up at him, tears falling, and felt the truth try to claw its way out of my throat.
Camilla.
One word. One name. That was all it would take. He would know. He would understand why I was so terrified, why I had begged on the stage, why I had whispered those vows.
Yet I could not give it to him.
Not yet. Not when I had no idea what a man like Matteo Ventura would do with a child who was not his blood, only leverage. Not when the man who had bought me looked at me like this.