A rogue tear falls down my cheek, and I swipe it away. Words fail me, but I can see that they wouldn’t matter even if I could produce them. With one look at my face, Matteo knows he’s won. My stalker may have had me in his arms last night, but it’s Matteo’s ring I’ll wear for the rest of my life.
“Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to,” Matteo says. “You’ll see.”
4
ABELLA
Thunder rattles the windows, and lightning cracks across the sky, illuminating the figure towering over my bed. Tall, broad shoulders, big hands cloaked in black gloves, and dark, mysterious eyes—the only discernable feature behind the skull mask. They’re the hallmarks of the man who resurrects himself in my thoughts, even from behind a prison wall. Whether it’s my imagination running wild or the familiarity I can no longer deny, my brain has made this association that can’t be severed.
In my mind, he can only be Angelo Vitale.
When I’m asleep, he haunts my dreams, but tonight, his silhouette is so sharp beneath the moonlight, it steals my breath. Is he the ghost of the life I almost had, or is he the devil who stalks me in the darkness?
A charged silence crackles between us as he studies me the way a wolf sizes up its prey. Beneath that mask is something raw and primal. A man who moves like a predator, with a hunger so consuming he’ll hunt me to the ends of this earth.
Sometimes, I think I’m losing my mind. Maybe this is the punishment I deserve. A purgatory between the past andpresent, never quite certain what’s real and what are just broken fragments of memories.
It isn’t a stretch of the imagination to think I could have conjured him up in a lucid dream. Masochism is my favorite sport. Except, the evidence he leaves behind is too tangible to ignore.
The roses.
The texts.
The gifts.
The small scrape from his blade against my chest.
Heat licks along my flesh as the memory plays through my mind.
Hunted. Captured. Claimed.
My heartbeat thrashes in my ears as I recall the undiluted fear I felt as I dangled over the rooftop—one slip of his grip away from death.
It was terrifying. And yet, when I surrendered to the moment, it was a high unlike anything I’ve ever felt.
Now, as those dark eyes burn a path down my throat, pausing to linger on my rapid pulse, I can’t help but wonder what he’ll do next.
What psychological mindfuck does he have planned for me tonight?
He tilts his head to the side and cracks his neck, releasing a fraction of the tension from his rigid body. It isn’t enough. Truthfully, I think he could hate fuck me until the end of time, and it still wouldn’t be enough.
Something feral lives inside him. It’s more than obsession. It feels like starvation laced with fury.
I close my eyes on a shuddering exhalation, and the bed dips as he sits beside me, his fingers trailing the length of my jaw.
“No running this time,bella?” His thumb grazes my lower lip. “That’s a shame. I was looking forward to the chase.”
I shiver beneath his touch, nipples tightening under the thin fabric of my tank top. He leans closer, his heated words brushing against my ear.
“If you only knew all the ways I’ve imagined fucking you, you would run.”
My brain fails to verbalize a response because he’s right. I should run. But instead, I’m hanging on his every word, anxious to see what he might do.
It feels like a rebellion. Against my father. Matteo. All the rules that have been set for me. I have no control over my future, but in this moment, I have a choice. I could call for the guards. I could scream, and they would come to my rescue. Or I could run toward the fire and let the devil himself pull me down to hell.
“You know you have a debt to pay,” he tells me, the words dripping over me like honey.
My legs squeeze together, and his fingers tighten reflexively around my face. The scent of citrus, cloves, and leather stirs a distant memory, shadowed by a thousand others. They crash around my brain, colliding with each other until my heart cracks open. In a desperate bid for self-preservation, I close my eyes and take shelter from the pain.
