Matteo might never love. The ending might not really be happy. The truth was, she lived her life in denial. The pursuit of contentment at least, at all costs, and if that required denial, then she employed it, and she’d always done it quite effectively.
Walking down the aisle toward Alessandro had been the first time she’d truly realized that if she didn’t do something, if she didn’t stop it, it wouldn’t stop itself.
She wrapped her arms around herself, cold driving through her. She had another choice to make. A choice about Matteo. And she wouldn’t make it lightly.
There was no sugarcoating this. No putting on blinders. It was what the wives of these Corretti men, of the Battaglia men, had always done. Looked the other way while their husbands sank into destruction and depravity, but she wouldn’t do that.
If she was going to be Matteo’s wife, in every sense, then she would face it all head-on.
It was empty to make a commitment to someone if you were pretending they were someone they weren’t. It was empty to say you loved someone if you only loved a mirage.
Love. She had been afraid of that word in connection to Matteo for so long, and yet, she knew that was what it was. What it had always been. At least, she’d loved what she’d known about him.
Now she knew more. Now she was going to have to figure out whether she loved the idea, or the man.
Matteo lay in bed. It was past midnight. Hours since he’d last seen Alessia. Hours since they’d spoken.
His body ached, a bleeding wound in his chest where his heart should be. The absence of the heart was nothing new, but the pain was. He had lived in numbness for so long, and Alessia had come back into his life.
Then things had started to change. He’d started to want again. Started to feel again. And now he felt like he was torn open, like the healed, scarred-over, nerveless pieces of himself had been scrubbed raw again. Like he was starting over, starting back at the boy he’d been. The one who had been taken into his father’s hands and molded, hard and cruel, into the image the older man had wanted to see.
He felt weak. Vulnerable in a way he could never recall feeling at any point in his life.
Alessia had walked away from him, and he couldn’t blame her. In a way, it comforted him. Because at least she hadn’t simply blithely walked on in her illusion of who she wanted him to be. She had heard his words. And she’d believed them.
He should be completely grateful for that. Should be happy that she knew. That she wasn’t committed to a man who didn’t truly exist.
But he couldn’t be happy. Selfishly, he wanted her back. Wanted the light and heat and smiles. Wanted one person to look at him and see hope.
“Matteo?”
He looked up and saw Alessia standing in the doorway, her dark hair loose around her shoulders.
“Yes?” He pushed into a sitting position.
“I felt like I owed it to you to really think about what you said.”
“And you owed it to you.”
She nodded. “I suppose I did.”
“And what conclusion have you come to?”
“You aren’t the man I thought you were.”
The words hit him with the force of a moving truck. “No. I’m sure in all of your fantasies about me you never once dreamed that I was a killer.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t. I still don’t think you’re that. I don’t think you’re perfect, either, but I don’t think it was ever terribly fair of me to try to make you perfect. You had your own life apart from me. Your own experiences. My mistake was believing that everything began and ended during the times our eyes met over the garden wall. In my mind, when you held me after the attack, you went somewhere hazy, somewhere I couldn’t picture. I didn’t think about what you did after, not really. I didn’t think of the reality of you returning home, covered in blood. I didn’t think about what your father might have said to you. I knew Benito Corretti was a bad man, but for some reason I never imagined how it might have touched you. I only ever pictured you in the context of my world, my dreams and where you fit into them. It was my mistake, not yours.”
“But I wouldn’t have blamed you if you never imagined that. No one did. Not even my family, I’m certain of that.”
“Still, I wasn’t looking at you like you were a real person. And you were right to make me see.”
“Alessia, if you want—”
“Let me finish. I see now. I see you, Matteo, not just the fantasy I created. And I don’t want to walk away. I want to stay with you. I want to make a family with you.”
“You trust me to help raise your child after you found out what I’m capable of?”
“That night of your life can’t live in isolation. It’s connected to the rest of your life, to all of it. To who your father was, the history of what he’d done to other people, to what he’d done to you.”
“He never did anything to me, he just—”
“He forced you to do things you would never have done. He made you violate your conscience, over and over again until it was scarred. He would have turned you into a monster.”
“He did, Alessia. That’s the point. He did.”
She shook her head. “You put a stop to it.”
“I had to,” he said, his voice rough. “I had to because you don’t just walk away from the Correttis. It’s not possible. My father would not have released his hold.”
“I know. I understand.”
“And you absolve me?”
“You don’t need my absolution.”
“But do I have it?” he asked, desperate for it, craving it more than his next breath. She nodded. “If I have yours.”
“For what?”
“For what I did. For not telling you about Alessandro. For agreeing to marry him in the first place. For trapping you in this marriage.”
“You didn’t trap me.”
“You said—”
“Alessia, I have been manipulated into doing things far worse than marrying you, and I have done it with much greater coercion. A little news piece on what a jerk I am for not making your child legitimate was hardly going to force my hand.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“To cement the deal. To give our child my name. All things I could have walked away from.”
“Then forgive me, at least, for lying to you. For leaving you in the hotel room.”
“I do. I was angry about it, but only because it felt so wrong to watch you walking toward him. To know that he would have you and not me. If I had known that there was a deal on the table that could be secured by marriage to you I would have been the one volunteering for the job.”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “When my father first told me about the deal with the Correttis, that it would be sealed by marriage, I said yes immediately. I was so sure it would be you. And when it was Alessandro who showed up at the door to talk terms the next day I thought … I thought I would die.”
“Waiting for your knight to rescue you?”
“Yes. I was. But I’ve stopped doing that now. I need to learn to rescue myself. To make my own decisions.”
“You’ve certainly been doing that over the past couple of months.”
“I have. And some of them have been bad, ill-timed decisions, but they’ve been mine. And I want you to know that I’ve made another decision.”
“What is that?”
“You’re my husband. And I’ll take you as you are. Knowing your past, knowing the kind of man you can be. I want you to understand that I’m not sugarcoating it, or glossing over the truth. I understand what you did. I understand that … that you don’t feel emotion the same way that I do. The same way most people do.”
“Do you really understand that? I keep it on a leash for a reason, Alessia, a very important reason, and I won’t compromise it.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“And still you want to try? You want to be my wife? To let me have a hand in raising our child?”
“Yes. No matter what, you’re the father of my child, Matteo, and there is no revelation that can change that. I don’t want to change that.”
“How can you say that with such confidence?”
“Because no matter what you might have done, you aren’t cruel.”
She leaned in and he took a strand of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. Soft like silk. He wanted to feel it brushing over his skin. Wanted to drown out this moment, drown out his pain, with physical pleasure.
“Am I not?” he asked.
“No.”
“You’re wrong there,” he said. “So very wrong. I am selfish, a man who thinks of his own pleasure, his own comfort, above all else. No matter how I pretend otherwise.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Yes, it is. Even now, all I can think about is what your bare skin will feel like beneath my hands. All I want is to lose myself in you.”
“Then do it.”
His every muscle locked up, so tight it was painful. “Alessia, don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t sacrifice yourself for me!” he roared. “Don’t do this because you feel sorry for me.”
“I’m not.” She took a step toward him. “I want this because I want to be close to you. To know you. To be your wife in every way.” A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “I’m also not opposed to the orgasms you’re so good at giving me. This is by no means unselfish on my part, trust me.”