"Bruno was the one who orchestrated the car bombing. The one that was supposed to kill me."
The world goes silent except for the blood roaring in my ears. "What?"
"He planted the bomb in my car twelve years ago. He's the one who helped me run away." She watches my face carefully.
Red floods my vision. My hand moves from the gun to her throat, squeezing just enough to feel her swallow. "You're lying."
"I'm not." Her voice stays maddeningly calm despite my grip.
Sophia
My legs burn from climbing the stairs to Lorenzo's office. Dante made me wait forty minutes in the car while he "secured the perimeter," then another twenty in the restaurant kitchen while he "verified protocols." The man takes his job as enforcer way too seriously, but at least he finally brought me here.
The movie tickets crinkle in my pocket as I reach the third floor. It's probably stupid—Lorenzo Sartori doesn't seem like the type to sit in a dark theater eating popcorn. But being cooped up in the compound gives my brain too much time to spin fantasies about normal couple activities.
Movies, walks in the park, grocery shopping together. Things that will never happen in our world of bulletproof cars and armed escorts.
Still, I want to try. Want to see his face when I suggest we sneak out for two hours of normalcy.
I'm three feet from his office door when I hear it—a woman's voice, low and musical. My hand freezes on the doorknob. I can't hear what she's actually saying.
That voice though. Something about it makes my skin crawl with recognition I can't place. I lean closer to the door.
My hands shake as I shift to peek through the old-fashioned keyhole. The angle shows me Lorenzo's back, his body pressed against someone at the wall. A woman with dark hair, her face tilted up toward his. His hand at her throat.
Luna.
Lorenzo is standing the same way he presses me against walls. The same possessive cage of his body.
My eyes burn, vision blurring. I blink hard, forcing myself to keep watching. Luna's face comes into focus.
His body language screams intensity, but I can't tell if it's rage or... something else. The way he leans into her space, the way she doesn't flinch from his proximity. Like they're picking up a dance they started twelve years ago.
My stomach churns.
The hallway spins. I grip the doorframe to stay upright, my knees threatening to buckle.
Of course.
Of course Lorenzo would realize he didn't want me. I'm just some scared girl who showed up at his door begging for protection. He saved me because that's what he does.
But Luna? Luna was his equal. His match. The woman who broke him so thoroughly that years later, her name still makes him freeze.
My chest cracks open, pain spreading through me.
"You're nothing like her," he'd said once. I thought it was a compliment. Now I think it was disappointment.
I back away from the door, my hand pressed to my mouth to muffle the sob building in my throat. Everything we built these past weeks—lies. Beautiful, convincing lies that I desperately wanted to believe.
Deep down, some part of me always knew.
I need to leave. Now. Before that door opens and I have to face them both. Before I have to see the truth written across Lorenzo's face. That I was never anything more than an obligation wrapped in convenient attraction.
My legs shake as I move toward the stairs. Each step down feels like walking through quicksand, my body fighting against what my mind knows I have to do. The second floor passes in a blur. Then the first. I pause at the landing, pressing myself against the wall.
Dante said he'd wait in the kitchen before coming upstairs. The kitchen is to the left, the exit to the right. If I'm quiet, if I'm quick?—
I peek around the corner. The hallway stretches empty, afternoon sunlight streaming through the front windows. No guards. No Dante. Just twenty feet between me and the door.
