Page 370 of Rosetti Family New York
The lie comes easily, reflexively. The same way I've been lying to myself for four days.
"I hated it." The words taste like ash. "I hated every second of it."
Something flickers across his face. Disappointment? Or maybe he knows I'm lying and finds it amusing. His thumb traces a circle on my thigh, and I have to bite down on my lip to keep from reacting.
"Did you?" His voice is soft, dangerous. "Because your pulse says something different."
I want to pull away, want to escape the intensity of his gaze and the heat of his touch. But I'm trapped between him and the car door, trapped in this space where lies feel as thin as paper.
"You don't know anything about me," I say, but my voice shakes.
"I know more than you think." His hand doesn't move, but somehow the touch feels more possessive. More claiming. "I know you've spent your whole life being exactly what everyone expected. And I know that's slowly killing you."
The words slice too close to something I don't want to examine. Something that's been cracking wider every day I spend in this place, every morning I wake up and find coffee waiting for me, every time he looks at me like I'm something worth destroying a man over. But I can't let him see that he's right.
"You're wrong."
"Am I?" He leans back slightly, but his hand remains on my thigh. "Then why are you trembling?"
I am trembling. My hands, my voice, something deep inside my chest that I can't suppress. But I won't give him thesatisfaction of knowing why. Won't admit that every word he says feels like he's reading from a script of my deepest fears.
"I want to go inside."
For a moment, he doesn't move. Just studies my face like he's trying to read the truth written there. Then he releases my thigh and opens his door, coming around to help me out like the perfect gentleman he pretends to be.
But I've seen what lies beneath that polished surface now. I've seen the violence, swift and brutal and completely measured. And the most terrifying part isn't what he's capable of.
It's how badly some buried part of me wants to see it again.
The thought follows me into the house, uninvited and unwelcome. I climb the stairs to my room, hyperaware of his presence behind me, of the way his eyes track my movement. At my door, I pause without looking back.
"Goodnight, Matteo."
"Goodnight, Isabella." His voice is rough, edged with something I don't want to identify. "Sweet dreams."
I close the door between us and lean against it, my heart hammering. Through the wood, I hear his footsteps retreat down the hall. Only then do I allow myself to breathe.
In the mirror across the room, my reflection stares back. Flushed cheeks, bright eyes, lips slightly parted like I'm waiting for something. I look like a woman who's been thoroughly claimed.
I look like a woman who enjoyed every second of it.
The lie I told him echoes in my head. I hated it. But my body tells a different story. The way my pulse raced when he destroyed Nico. The way heat pooled low in my belly when he called me his. The way I'm still trembling from his touch.
This is just trauma bonding, I tell myself. A psychological response to captivity. It doesn't mean anything real. It doesn't mean I actually want this.
I sink onto the edge of the bed and bury my face in my hands. Four days. Four days, and he's already unraveling everything I thought I knew about myself. Everything I thought I wanted.
I hated it. I hated every second.
If I keep telling myself that, maybe eventually my body will believe it too.
7
Matteo
I've been walking the halls since two in the morning, bare feet silent on hardwood floors. Three hours of pacing like a caged animal, replaying the sound of Nico's face hitting marble. The wet crack of cartilage. The perfect spray of crimson across white linen.
The satisfaction still burns warm in my chest, but it's tangled with something else now. Something that feels too much like restlessness. Too much like wanting.
