12. Broken Vows #2
But I don't lie either. And the silence between us is the most honest thing I've expressed in weeks.
Sebastian comes on the sixth day.
I'm sitting on the bed staring at the garden when the door opens. Not a knock. Not a guard announcing a visitor. Just the handle turning and the door swinging wide, and Sebastian De Santis stepping into my room like he's entering his own living room.
Dante is behind him — pale gray eyes, black coat, stationed in the hallway where my guard should be. The guard is gone. The hallway is empty.
My body goes cold. Not fear — something sharper. The animal instinct in me recognizes that the perimeter has been breached and the predator is already inside.
"How did you get in here?" I ask.
Sebastian closes the door behind him. He doesn't rush. He unbuttons his coat. He looks around the room — the bed, the window, the unopened letter on the desk — with the casual assessment of a man inspecting a property he's considering purchasing.
"You're wondering about the security," he says.
He sits in the chair by the window — my chair — and crosses his legs.
"Your guard — the one posted outside this door, the one who walked the east wing corridor every night, the one who stood six feet from you while you slept.
He's been mine since the day Matteo hired him. "
The words settle into the room like smoke.
"One man," Sebastian continues. The smile is pleasant.
The eyes are surgical. "Positioned inside my brother's estate for weeks.
He's the one who placed the photograph on Matteo's desk.
He's the one who copied the security rotations and schedules from the briefing boards.
He's the one who cloned your phone while it sat charging on your nightstand.
" He pauses, letting each revelation land.
"And he's the one who opened the service door four minutes ago so I could be sitting in this chair, talking to you, while my brother is across the city believing his house is secure. "
My hands grip the edge of the mattress. Not because I'm afraid of Sebastian — I'm past afraid. I'm calculating. Processing. Understanding, with each sentence he delivers, the full architecture of what was done to me.
The guard cloned my phone. The guard fed Sebastian real details. The guard built the evidence that Matteo used to exile me. Everything — the folder, the timestamps, the operational details that looked like they came from me — came from a man standing six feet from my door, and Matteo never knew.
"Why are you telling me this?" I ask.
"Because I want you to understand what I'm capable of.
" Sebastian's voice is warm. Conversational.
The tone of a man discussing the weather while describing the blueprint of your destruction.
"I had a man inside my brother's house for weeks.
I built a case against you from nothing.
I turned Matteo against the one person he's ever trusted.
And I did it all without leaving a fingerprint. "
He leans forward.
"Imagine what I could do if I actually wanted to hurt you."
The room is very quiet. The garden is visible through the window behind him — the dogwood, the gravel, and the ivy on the stone wall. Beautiful and unreachable, like everything else in this house.
"I'm not here to hurt you, Sofia. I'm here to help you."
"Help me." I keep my voice flat. Steady. But my hands are still gripping the mattress, and he can see it. He can see every ripple of fear I'm trying to flatten, and he's cataloging each one the way a buyer inspects merchandise — noting the flaws, calculating the price.
"I can get you out of this. Out of this room, out of this house, out of my brother's life.
" He opens his hands — palms up, a gesture of offering, the body language of a man who's practiced generosity until it looks natural.
"A new apartment. A fresh start. Your mother's care continues — I've set up a trust Matteo can't touch.
Lucia gets her transplant regardless of what happens between the brothers De Santis. "
He lets that sit. Lucia. He says her name the way you play a trump card — casually, like it's just another word, knowing it's the only one that matters.
"You've thought of everything," I say.
"I always do. That's the difference between me and Matteo.
" He leans back in the chair. Comfortable.
Expansive. A man in his element. "My brother reacts.
He feels something and he acts on it — the ambush, the retaliation, the war.
Everything Matteo does comes from here." He taps his chest. "Emotion.
Impulse. It makes him passionate, I'll grant him that.
But passion is a liability in this business.
It's why he got ambushed in an alley. It's why he married a stranger to secure a throne.
And it's why he read a folder and threw away the only person who's ever made him human. "
The words cut. Not because they're cruel — because they're accurate. Sebastian is holding up a mirror to Matteo's worst qualities and angling it so I can see my own reflection in the damage.
"I don't operate on passion," Sebastian continues.
"I operate on patience. On planning. On the understanding that power isn't about how hard you hit — it's about making sure you never have to.
" He gestures around the room — the comfortable prison, the garden view, the guards that answer to his brother but couldn't stop him from sitting in this chair.
"Matteo surrounded you with men and walls and called it protection.
I walked through all of it with a single phone call.
That's the difference, Sofia. That's what I'm offering you.
Not fists. Not fire. Intelligence. Structure. A man who thinks before he moves."
He's selling. I can feel it — the pitch, the rhythm, the way each sentence builds on the last like stairs leading somewhere he wants me to go.
He's not just offering me an escape. He's offering me a narrative.
A story where Matteo is the villain, Sebastian is the savior, and I'm the grateful woman who chose the smarter brother.
“All you have to do,” he says, “is tell them what they need to hear.”
My stomach tightens.
“What they need to hear,” I repeat.
Sebastian’s smile doesn’t move. “The truth is flexible, Sofia. People don’t want the whole thing. They want the version that makes sense to them.”
“You mean your version.”
“I mean the version that protects you.”
He says it so smoothly, so reasonably, that for half a second it almost sounds like kindness. Like he isn’t standing in Matteo’s house, asking me to help him destroy Matteo with evidence he created.
“You had access,” he continues. “You lived inside the estate. You saw meetings. You heard names. You watched men come and go at odd hours. All you have to do is confirm what the evidence already suggests.”
“Even if it isn’t true?”
His eyes sharpen, just a little.
“Even if it is useful.”
The room goes colder.
There it is. Not the truth. Not protection. Usefulness.
He isn’t asking me to tell the truth. He’s asking me to become another piece of evidence. Another forged document. Another weapon placed carefully in Matteo’s path.
He stands. He crosses to me — not fast, not threatening, but deliberate. He stops three feet away and looks down at me with an expression so perfectly calibrated to concern that if I didn't know better, I'd believe every word.
"You've been living with him for weeks, Sofia.
You've seen the violence. The blood on his hands.
The way he operates — the raids, the intimidation, the men who disappear.
You've seen what this family really is beneath the estate, the charity galas, and the old money polish.
" His voice drops. Intimate. Confiding. "And then he turned on you.
My brother read the evidence I built and did exactly what I knew he would — he chose the throne over you.
Because that's who Matteo is. That's who our father made him. "
Each sentence is a knife, and he's placing them precisely — not stabbing, just pressing the tip against the bruise, testing how much pressure it takes before I fold.
He doesn't know the details of what happened in the library.
He doesn't need to. He designed the outcome.
He knows the damage because he engineered it.
"You deserve better than that," he says softly. "You deserve a man who wouldn't need a folder to know your worth. A man who sees you — really sees you — and doesn't look away."
My eyes burn.
I hate that my eyes burn.
I hate that his words are finding the exact places where Matteo left wounds and pressing into them with surgical precision.
I hate that some part of me — the exhausted, exiled, heartbroken part — wants to believe that this man in the expensive coat is offering salvation instead of servitude.
But I've been reading men since I was nine years old. Since that morning when my father smiled at me over breakfast and left with a suitcase before dinner. I learned young that the men who speak the softest are usually carrying the sharpest blade.
Sebastian isn't offering me freedom. He's offering me a leash with a longer chain.
"You want me to testify against him," I say.
"I want you to protect yourself. My brother has already thrown you away. He chose a piece of paper over the woman who—" He stops. His jaw works. For one second — just one — something real flickers behind the performance.
Not warmth. Not concerned. Frustration.
The frustration of a man who expected this to be easier. Who expected the desperate woman in the borrowed room to take the deal because desperate women always take the deal.
He didn't account for the fact that this particular desperate woman has been taking deals her entire life and has learned to read the fine print.
"Over the woman who cared about him," he finishes. The composure is back. The smile is back. But I saw the flicker. And he knows I saw it.