Page 76 of The Lies We Tell

He was eager to get his hands dirty.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Pulling the blanket tighter around her against the chill, Tessa stared into the unlit fireplace. She’d tried to ask the maid who’d brought her breakfast to bring in more firewood, but Giulia wouldn’t even make eye contact, let alone have a conversation with her.

Matteo’s orders, no doubt. He hadn’t come to see her in the two days since he’d locked her in. Sometimes she thought she heard him coming and going from his room, but he never responded when she called his name through the door.

He well and truly hated her. And she couldn’t say she blamed him. She wouldn’t be likely to put much stock in what he had to say if the roles were reversed. But that didn’t stop her from wanting to tell him the truth.

Worse than that, she missed him. Missed feeling his arms around her at night, missed the feel of his breath on her shoulder while she slept, missed the sound of his voice. It was downright pathetic how much she missed him. But she was no more able to stop it than she was to get him to come in here and talk to her.

Of all the things her father had taken from her already, he’d succeeded in taking one more. A man who didn’t view her as a piece of property or a wild thing to be beaten into submission.

But that look in Matteo’s eyes when he put the pieces together, when he realized she’d been lying to him all this time. It cut deeper than she’d expected it to. The hurt, the betrayal, the anger. She might never be able to purge it from her mind. It bubbled up a guilt that squeezed until she could barely breathe.

She thought she’d braced herself for this part, for the distrust and the rejection, for the seething rage. But apparently she hadn’t. She wasn’t sure anything could have prepared her for the searing ache in her chest whenever she thought about him or heard him on the other side of the door.

It might have been easier for him to stomach if she’d been able to tell her side of it first. If she could have at least been the one to tell him before he found out from someone else. From Luca. The brother who hated her enough to look smug when Matteo dragged her from the study.

Now she was stuck in this room, scheduled to meet her father in a few hours, with no way to contact him, no way to get out of here. Her window of opportunity to make this right was slowly closing.

Matteo would kill her father eventually, that she was sure of. But he would never trust her again, and she had no way of redeeming herself if he wouldn’t even sit down and listen for five minutes.

When the key shuffled in the lock again, Tessa didn’t even bother getting up. Whoever it was, the butler, a maid, they would come in, set the tray on the little desk against the wall, and leave again.

They wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t speak to her. It was as if she’d ceased to exist for everyone in this house. The only acknowledgment of her presence was making sure she didn’t starve to death.

The door swung in, followed by the soft sound of footsteps, and the rattling of the metal tray when it met wood. She waited for the footsteps to recede, the door to close, the lock to slide back into place with a click that never failed to make her stomach tighten and her teeth clench.

“It’s freezing in here.”

Tessa went still at the sound of Carina’s voice. The first voice she’d heard in two days, save for her own. Keeping the blanket wrapped tight around her body, she stood and turned.

“I ran out of firewood yesterday. None of the staff will speak to me.”

“Yeah,” Carina said with a frustrated sigh. “Matteo told them not to.”

A bitter laugh escaped her. “What does he think I’m going to do? Encourage them to stage a coup?”

When Carina didn’t immediately hurl back an angry retort, Tessa began to worry something might be wrong. No one else in the family had bothered to come see her since Matteo locked her in. Why would they start now unless there was bad news?

“Did something happen?” She took a step forward when Carina pursed her lips, refusing to answer. Or maybe debating whether she should. “Is Matteo okay? Just tell me that much if you can’t tell me anything else.”

Something in Carina’s eyes shifted, softened, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Matteo is fine. Just busy. We’ve all been busy cleaning up after your lies.”

Tessa gripped the blanket in her fingers as the guilt punched through her again and dropped back into the chair with a heavy sigh.

“When my father first told me my mother was still alive, I never even considered saying no to his plan. He knew Matteo might take me if he came back for Drago. I didn’t know if it would work, but I had to try. You understand why I had to try, right?”

Carina shook her head, shoulders slumping, and blew out a breath. “Just because I understand why you did it doesn’t mean I condone it. You put the people I love most in this world in danger.”

“I know. I wish I could tell you I wouldn’t do it again if presented with the same choice, but I can’t.” Tessa bit the inside of her cheek and blinked back tears. “I spent years wishing my mother would come back. Then years after that making peace with the fact that she never would.”

She looked up at Carina with tears swimming in her eyes and blurring her vision. “But she’s dead.”

“How do you know that?” Carina asked softly.

“That’s the reason you saw my number on my father’s phone. I told him I wouldn’t help him anymore if he didn’t let me talk to my mother. If he couldn’t prove to me she was alive. I guess when he had her call me, he slipped up and used his regular phone. But the woman I spoke to wasn’t her.”

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