“I can’t?—”
“Keep it, Bella.” He releases my throat, and then re-clasps the necklace around my neck. “Gia is dead. She’s been dead for six years, and nothing can bring her back.”
“Then why did you want to get it back so badly?”
“Because I wanted you to know the truth.” His eyes meet mine. “I wanted to destroy you with it. But now, I don’t know if I can anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because things have changed between us.” His thumb traces the line of my jaw, impossibly gentle. “In the short time we’ve spent together, I’ve seen the depth to which you can love. The depth that your love will drive you. You crossed enemy lines for your brother because he was the hero of your story but the villain in mine. And your love drove you to walk into my life fearlessly.”
The tears won’t stop. They’re running down my cheeks and I can’t even pretend to control them anymore. This man—this monster I came here to destroy—just handed me the most vulnerable thing he possesses.
And I’m sitting here covered in guilt I can’t confess, wearing the skin of a woman who never should have died.
He tilts my chin up and wipes away at my tears. The gesture feels familiar and intimate, far more intimate than I deserve. Slowly, drop by drop, heat returns. It moves from the tip of his finger through my chin, beads in my throat, and rolls down into my stomach like it has from the countless small touches he’s left on me.
But where each prior touch all carried some variation of dominance, control, and command, this one is different.
This one seems to tell me: Look at me and see me as I see you.
“You asked me what we are,” he says quietly. “And I don’t have a proper answer for you because I don’t know what to call us. But I know you’re not my enemy. Maybe you never were.”
“Don’t.” I pull back from his touch, put distance between us. “Don’t say things like that.”
He looks at me quizzically, genuinely confused for what might be the first time since I’ve known him. “Why?”
The tears are coming faster now, and the truth is pressing against my throat like a scream. I want to tell him. I want to confess everything about my betrayal—about the information I handed over without understanding what the costs were.
I want to fall at his feet and beg forgiveness for being exactly what Luca was: a traitor who traded someone’s safety for her own agenda.
But I can’t.
Because if I tell him, I’ll lose him. And losing him means losing this thing that’s starting to feel terrifyingly real.
“Bella.” He reaches for me, and I see tender insistence in his eyes, and it breaks something fundamental in my chest. “Tell me why.”
“Because I’m not who you think I am.”
His hand brushes my cheek, catching tears that won’t stop falling. “I know exactly who you are.”
No.He doesn’t. He really, really doesn’t.
I turn my face away from his touch, push myself back away from him, and run.
The hallway of the chateau rushes past me, and I can feel the ghost of Gia D’Ambrosio chasing through its dark corners. My feet carry me through a house holding six years of grief in its walls.
I run because I cannot bring myself to continue standing in front of a man who just handed me his entire heart.
And I know I can’t pretend like I deserve to have it.
36
BELLA
I don’t remember leavingthe room. Don’t remember my hands pushing open the door to the grounds. The sticky heat of the summer night clings to my skin and makes every breath feel like drowning, and I keep walking because stopping means thinking.
And thinking means feeling.
