Renzo finally sank into the chair across from me, but his eyes didn’t leave me.
“That same server brought Vincenzo a glass a few minutes before he kissed you. He drank it without hesitation.”
He paused, jaw tightening. “And then...”
“I couldn’t catch everything,” he admitted, eyes narrowing as if replaying the moment frame by frame. “But Matteo’s lips... they formed one word. One single word.”
He spoke it slowly, like a gunshot cutting through the air: “‘Peach.’”
The word hit me like a bullet, sharp and cold.
My stomach dropped.
The room tilted beneath my feet.
No—
No, that couldn’t be—
The altar flashed behind my eyes.
The kiss.
Vincenzo’s lips on mine.
That strange, unfamiliar taste—
Followed by—tightness.
My throat closing. Air vanishing.
Panic.
Blackness swallowing everything whole.
I had convinced myself.
With absolute certainty. That Vincenzo had done it. That he had poisoned me.
That he had used that moment—our vows—as a demonstration of control.
A reminder of power.
A way to break me before I become his wife.
If Matteo was behind spiking Vincenzo’s glass with peach—trying to kill me—it made a twisted kind of sense.
After all, the Spanish rebels wanted me dead.
But the real question clawing at my mind was far darker: how did he know I was allergic to peach?
No one should have known.
Not here in Italy.
Not on our wedding day—the first time they even laid eyes on me.
It was impossible. And yet...
