I guide my trembling wife away from the crowd, through silk drapes into a marble alcove designed for private conversations. Or interrogations.
"Alessandro…"
"Don't." I back her against the cold marble column, caging her with my body. Close enough that her perfume mixes with fear-sweat, creating something that makes my cock harden despite the gravity of the moment. "Your hands are shaking."
"I'm just nervous…"
"Try again, stellina. And this time, don't insult my intelligence." My thumb finds her throat, pressing against her racing pulse. The rhythm pounds against my skin, rabbit-quick with panic. "I've known something was off about you since our wedding night when I saw those calluses on your palms. Since you screamed in your nightmares. Since you flinched every time someone called you Frances."
Her whole body trembles now, pressed between marble and me. Those dark eyes that have been haunting my dreams go wide with terror. Real terror, not the simple nervousness of earlier.
"Please…"
"Please isn't an answer." I press harder against her pulse point, feeling it flutter like a trapped bird. "You're wearing her dress, her diamonds, sleeping in my bed, but you're not Frances Hewson. Who are you?"
A tear escapes, rolling down her cheek. She tries to look away but I catch her chin, forcing her to meet my eyes.
"Every socialite born to this world knows which fork to use," I continue. "But you? You're something else entirely. So I'll ask once more: who the hell are you?"
She tries one more time to salvage this, lips parting with another lie. "I've been away so long…"
My thumb presses harder. "We're past that, little liar. Tell me the truth or I call Marco right now. Let him extract it his way. He'll probably ask Luca to help."
The dam breaks. She sags against the marble, only my hand on her throat keeping her upright, and the words pour out between sobs.
"Emma," she gasps. "My name is Emma Pitt. I was… I am… I was a servant in the Hewson house."
The words hit with the force of a revelation. A servant. I married a fucking servant girl playing dress-up, not even Frances Hewson's friend or cousin, just hired help. If Marco discovers this deception, if the Hewson alliance crumbles, everything I've built to prove myself worthy collapses.
"Frances ran away the night before the wedding," she continues, tears streaming freely now, black mascara cutting tracks down her cheeks. "Mrs.Hewson found me scrubbing floors and realized I looked enough like her daughter to fool everyone. She threatened… she said if I didn't do it, if I didn't pretend to be Frances and marry you…"
"Why?" My voice comes out rougher than intended, scraped raw. "Why would you agree to that? So eager for money and silk dresses? For diamonds and elite parties? All to improve your position in the world?"
Even as I say them, the words ring false. This woman, whoever she is, has never delighted in the luxuries around her. She literally fled the building the first time I took her to a boutique.
"I had no choice!" The words explode from her. "She had leverage, something that would destroy someone I love if I refused. So I put on that wedding dress and became Frances Hewson. I've been lying to you every single day, every single moment."
For half a heartbeat, we’re both paralyzed by the ugly clarity in the air. Each syllable hangs between us, sharp as a razor.
The hand I’d used to pin her to the wall falls away, leaving a ghost imprint of her pulse still beating in my palm. She slides down the column, elegant as a wilting lily, her emerald dress puddling around her knees. For the first time—the very first time—it hits me that the body trembling in front of me is a person. Not a pawn. Not a bride. A person, living and raw, every nerve exposed and twitching.
A person who just confessed to obliterating my pride, my plans, my name.
My vision narrows to a single, suffocating point as the fury builds. My breath comes in short, punishing bursts. The world outside this alcove shrinks to the two of us: me, standing above her, a fist of rage incarnate; her, shrinking in her borrowed skin, clutching the fabric at her chest like it could hide the truth. The chandeliers outside cast a thousand gold reflections on the marble, but in here, all the light is sucked into the black hole of my disappointment.
"Someone you love?" I snarl, the words scraping my throat raw.
She doesn’t answer. Or maybe she can’t. Tears coat her face, dissolving her makeup and smudging her into something more honest, more mortal. The illusion is dead. All that’s left is the pathetic little ghost of Emma Pitt.
I want to break her. I want to break down the column, this room, the entire goddamn Four Seasons, and build it again from the blood and bone of my own pain. My hands curl into fists, fingernails biting half-moons into my skin until I taste the iron of my own blood in my mouth. I try to imagine what kind of man could inspire such loyalty, such insanity, that a woman would throw away her whole identity just to shield him.
All this for someone else. Someone she fucking loves.
The anger mutates. It becomes something uglier, more personal; a humiliation that burns hotter than hate. I’ve been made a fool of, by a girl too cunning and desperate to ever love me.
"Do you expect me to thank you?" I say, voice cutting with the edge of a razor. "For your loyalty? For your lies?"
She closes her eyes, lets her head thud back against the marble. "No," she whispers. "I expect you to ruin me. Or kill me. I don’t care anymore."
