Did he know? We had been careful for months, and I had told my parents I was staying at a friend's house. They weren’t expecting me home until the morning.
Fingers trembling, I scrolled through the messages. Each one seemed more frantic than the previous one.
Sophia, where are you?
You’re not at Lizzie’s, I need to get you NOW!
Sophia, they are gone.
I paused at that one, and a weird icy calm swept over me. Who was gone?
I scrolled to the next one.
They killed them. Our parents are dead, Sophia. Matteo arranged it.
It was like the ground shifted under me, the world around me spun. Clutching my throat, I fought the urge to sob out loud.
Gio had to be wrong. My parents couldn’t be dead. They couldn’t be. The last conversation I had with them couldn’t be full of lies.
Matteo killed them.
I lifted tear-filled eyes to the closed bathroom door. No, I didn’t believe that either. Matteo loved me. He wanted to marry me.
He had said he would do anything to be with me. Did that mean murdering my family?
No, he would know that I would never forgive him for that.
Which meant—
I bit down on my fist to stop myself from screaming.
He had seduced me, filled my head with lies, and bedded me for some other cruel reason, and then he had killed my mom and dad.
He had betrayed my whole family.
Staring down at the blood on the tops of my inner thighs, I fought the urge to kill him myself. I wanted to storm into that bathroom and bash his head in with the showerhead, but I knew that was a pipe dream.
Dragging on my clothes, I grabbed my heels and my purse. I slipped from the room and ran down the hallway.
I’d have to get a cab. I couldn’t ask Gio to pick me up from a hotel. He would have too many questions that I didn’t want to answer.
He had said he loved me, and I had believed him. I’d let Matteo ruin me.
I had walked into this hotel, a woman in love, and now I was leaving it with so much hatred in my heart that I felt like a completely different person.
All because of one man.
Matteo Romano.
Love could turn into something bitter so quickly. Because I hated him now.
Chapter One
Sophia
6 years later
I didn’t mind the rain. Coming from New York, I was used to all sorts of weather, but this light drizzling rain, that seemed to be barely there, still soaked you to the skin. It was the worst.
