My hands are shaking so badly that I have to shove them in my pockets. The violence I've been suppressing for months—the rage that's been building every time I watched her with Alessandro, every time I had to stand there and pretend I didn't care—it's all rising to the surface now, and I don't trust myself.
I try to think. Valentina was a fiction. A character Giulia created to manipulate me into giving her what she wanted. And what did she want?
The question stops me cold. What was the endgame here? What was she trying to accomplish by deceiving me for months? Did she think it was funny? Did she get some kind of thrill from watching me fall for her while knowing I had no idea who she really was? Or was it something else?
My feet are moving before I make the conscious decision, back down the hallway, and to the door. I reach for the handle.
I should leave. Should walk away and never look back; let her deal with the consequences of her deception on her own. But I can't.
There's something she said that's been echoing in my head since I walked out."There's something else. Something you need to know."
What else could there possibly be? What other bomb could she drop that would make any of this worse?
I push the door open. She's on the floor, her back against the bed, and her arms wrapped around herself, her face buried in her knees. She looks up when I enter, and the hope that flashes across her face makes me want to break something.
"Luca—"
"Don't." The word comes out cold, but underneath is a fury that makes the air between us feel dangerous. "Don't say my name like that. Like you have any right to it."
She flinches. "Please. I can explain?—"
"Explain what?" I close the door behind me, and the sound makes her jump. "Explain how you've been lying to me for months? Explain how you let me confess things I never would have said if I'd known who you were? Explain how you manipulated me into betraying everything I've sworn loyalty to?"
"It wasn't like that?—"
"Then what was it like, Giulia?" I nearly spit out her name. "Tell me. Help me understand how any of this was anything other than a calculated deception."
She's crying again, tears streaming down her face and her whole body shaking. "I love you. I've loved you for years, and I didn't know how else?—"
"You love me." The words are flat and empty. "You love me, so you decided to lie to me. To create a fake identity and seduce me and let me fall for someone who doesn't even exist."
"She does exist! I exist! Everything I told you was true?—"
"Except your name. Except who you are. Except every single thing that actually matters."
I move closer, and she shrinks back against the bed.Good.She should be afraid. Should understand exactly what she's done. "Do you have any idea what you've made me complicit in?" My voice gets louder, the control slipping. "You're Romeo's sister. You're the don's daughter. You're the woman I'm supposed to protect, not fuck. And you made me—you made me?—"
"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean?—"
"You didn't mean what? You didn't mean to lie? You didn't mean to manipulate me? You didn't mean to put me in a position where your brother will have every right to kill me when he finds out?"
"We can?—"
"We can what?" I loom over her, and I can see the fear in her eyes, see her trying to make herself smaller, trying to disappear. "We can keep lying? We can keep pretending this never happened? We can just go back to how things were before?"
"No. I know we can't. But we can?—"
"There is no 'we,' Giulia. There never was. Because the woman I fell for doesn't exist. She was just a character you played to get what you wanted."
"That's not true?—"
"Then what is true?" I crouch down so we're eye level, and the movement makes her press harder against the bed. "Tell me. What part of any of this was real?"
"All of it. Every moment we shared, every word I said—it was all real. I just—I needed to be someone else. Someone who could have you."
"So you lied."
"Yes. I lied about my name. But everything else?—"
