But I don’t.
I can’t force her to understand what we already know. I’ll give her time to find her way back to me.
I was never a man who believed in fairy tales or fate—those things don’t exist for sons of darkness.
But with her…there’s a pull I can’t break. She belongs in my world.
She just hasn’t admittedit yet.
16
BEATRICE
The apartment is dark when I unlock the door, that familiar hush settling over me the moment I step inside. The air feels different somehow—too still, too heavy, as if the walls themselves are holding their breath. The faint warmth from the wine I drank earlier lingers in my veins, but beneath it sits the unmistakable weight of what I did tonight, what I allowed myself to feel, what I allowed myself to want.
Matteo Davacalli cannot come near me again. If he does, I won’t survive it.
Not my resolve.Not my future. Not the carefully packed lie of a life I’m barely holding together.
I drop my purse on the counter with a dull thud and press my elbows onto the cool stone surface, letting my head hang for just a moment, willing myself to breathe, to think, to regain even a sliver of control.
“Long day?”
The voice slices through the dark, and I jolt back two full steps, hand flying to my chest as my pulse spikes painfully.
My eyes snap toward the piano, toward the faint outline of a fresh box of roses sitting where there had been nothing this morning.
And then I see him.
Giacomo sits on the piano bench, tucked into the shadows like something coiled and patient, elbows braced on his knees, his gaze fixed on me with the kind of stillness that makes my skin crawl.
“Giacomo,” I manage, my voice thin. “I thought…You’re early.”
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t smile. He simply watches me with the unblinking calm of a predator assessing the moment before it strikes.
“I had an early flight,” he says, his tone quiet and cool enough to slide under my skin. “I couldn’t wait to see you. I missed my fiancée.” His eyes sharpen, cutting straight through whatever composure I’m trying to gather. “Though it seems I cannot say the same for you, cara. Out of sight, out of mind… isn’t that how the saying goes?”
My heartbeat turns violent, thundering in my chest, flooding my limbs with tingling adrenaline. Every instinct flares—run, freeze, placate. The air feels poisonous, thick with the implication beneath his words.
I force my legs to move, turning away under the guise of busying myself, pulling open the refrigerator just to have something solid between us. “You must be exhausted. Let me make you something. Coffee, maybe… or tea? Your flight was long, I’m sure. I can cook too, if you want. Carbonara? I’ve been practicing. I think I finally perfected the recipe.”
I turn, trying a smile I can’t feel, but it withers the moment I meet his eyes.
They are narrow. Cold. Accusatory. Every muscle in his body is drawn tight with something dark and coiled.
And I know, without him saying a word, that he didn’t come home early to see me.
He came home earlybecause something is wrong. He came home early because he suspects.
“Giacomo?” I swallow hard, forcing my voice into something resembling calm. “Is something wrong?”
He doesn’t answer.
He just watches me.
His eyes track every twitch of my fingers, every shift of my weight, every breath I take, as if he’s cataloging the smallest betrayal, as if he’s waiting for even a flicker of guilt to give him permission to explode. The silence between us stretches too long, too tight, coiled with an anticipation that turns my skin cold.
Stay calm,I tell myself. But my pulse is already pounding in my throat.
