Page 95 of His Savage Ruin
"Tell us what happened," Luca says, and I can hear the control he's forcing into his voice, the way he's trying to stay calm when I know he wants to start breaking things.
“Moretti has Alessia, she’s been taken.”
"Her guards?" Rafael asks, and I can see his hand moving toward where his gun usually sits even though he's not armed right now.
"Both guards are gone, both phones are dead, and I'm betting that son of a bitch Marco is the traitor we've been looking for." My jaw clenches so hard I can feel my teeth grinding together.
Enzo finishes reading the letter and looks up at me with an expression I've only seen a handful of times in all the years we've worked together. "He wants you alone and unarmed. This is a trap, Matteo.”
"I know," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected when everything inside me is screaming to get in a car and drive to that warehouse right now. "But he has Alessia, which means I don't have a choice. I'm going."
"Like hell you're going in there alone," Luca says, and he steps forward with his hands clenched into fists like he's ready to physically stop me if I try to leave without them. "We're not letting you walk into a death trap just because some Moretti bastard wrote you a threatening letter."
"So we go in smart," Enzo says, and I can see his mind already working through possibilities, angles we can exploit. "You walk in the front door alone like he wants, and we position ourselves around the perimeter. The second anything goes wrong, we breach and extract you both."
"And if he has snipers watching the building? If he's got men positioned specifically to watch for backup?" I shake my head because I've already thought through all of this, already played out every scenario where we try to be clever and it gets Alessia killed. "He's not stupid, Enzo. He knows how we operate. He'll be watching for exactly that kind of play."
"Then what's your plan?" Rafael asks, and there's frustration in his voice because he's the kind of man who solves problems by hitting them until they stop being problems. "Just walk in there and hope he doesn't shoot you on sight?"
"My plan is to do whatever the fuck it takes to get Alessia out alive." The words come out hard and final, and I can see fromtheir faces that they understand I mean it, that I'm willing to trade my life for hers if that's what it comes down to. "If that means walking into Emilio's trap unarmed and alone, then that's what I'm doing."
"You know this is exactly what he wants," Dante says quietly. "He's counting on you being emotional about Alessia, counting on you doing something reckless because you care about her. The second you walk through that warehouse door, you're giving him everything he needs to end you."
"I know." I meet his gaze without flinching, and I watch understanding dawn in his expression. "But I'm going anyway."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Matteo
My mind keeps trying to reject what my eyes are showing me, insisting that this is some kind of hallucination brought on by whatever freaking drug they put in my smoothie. Lorenzo is dead. I killed him. I watched him fall and heard the crack when his body hit the stones and felt his pulse fade under my trembling fingers.
But he's standing three feet in front of me, breathing and smiling, and I can smell his cologne—that expensive scent he always wore too heavily because he thought it made him sophisticated.
"You look confused,bambola." He takes a step closer and I can see his face more clearly now in the swinging light from the overhead bulb. There's a scar running along his hairline that wasn't there before, pink and raised like it's still healing. "Did you really think a fall from a second-story balcony would kill me? I'm insulted."
My mouth won't work properly. I try to form words but my tongue feels thick and useless.
This isn't real. This can't be real.
"How..." The word comes out as barely a whisper and I have to swallow hard against the bile rising in my throat before I can try again. "You were dead. I checked. You had no pulse."
"I had a very faint pulse that you were too panicked to find properly I guess." Lorenzo moves closer still and I can see satisfaction in his expression, like he's enjoying watching me try to understand what's happening. "Father realized I wasn't actually dead. Smart man, my father. He had me moved quietly to a private doctor who works for the family."
The words don't make sense at first. My brain is trying to catch up, trying to understand what he's telling me, but everything is moving too slow, like I'm underwater.
Don Emilio knew from the beginning. Knew Lorenzo was alive and said nothing, let me spin my story about mysterious attackers while he watched and waited.
"I was in a coma for a week." Lorenzo reaches up and touches the scar along his hairline almost tenderly. "Fractured skull, broken ribs, some internal bleeding. The doctor told Father I might not wake up, and if I did there could be brain damage. But I’m a Moretti, we don’t go down easily."
A week. He was unconscious for only a week before waking up, which means he's been alive and aware for over two months while I thought I was safe, while I thought I'd gotten away with killing him in self-defense.
"When I woke up, the first thing Father told me was that you claimed to be pregnant." Lorenzo starts circling my chair and I try to keep him in sight but the angle is wrong. "Can you imagine how that sounded to me,bambola? Hearing my wife tell everyone she's knocked up when I know for a fact, I never fucked you?"
The crude way he says it makes my skin crawl, makes shame and rage twist together in my chest until I can't tell which one is stronger.
"Father asked me if maybe I'd forgotten, if maybe I'd been too drunk one night to remember properly." His voice carries bitter amusement now. "Had to explain to him that no, I definitely would remember finally getting inside that tight little cunt you kept denying me."
Nausea rolls through my stomach and I have to swallow hard to keep from vomiting. My eyes are adjusting to the dim light now and I can see past Lorenzo to something on the floor near the far wall that makes my breath catch. A body crumpled on its side with dark hair, hands zip-tied behind their back.
