Page 69

But on the floor beside us, the DeLuca folder lies open, papers half-spilled across the rug like a wound waiting to bleed. Neither of us says a word, but we both know—this isn’t over. Not even close.

Yet despite all the odds, I pray I’m enough for her to stay.

Even as I hold her, I feel the clock ticking. Every breath she takes beside me is a moment I’ve borrowed from a truth that wants to tear us apart.

21

ARIA

Iwake tangled in Marco’s sheets, my body aching in places that remind me of last night’s weakness. His arm rests heavy across my waist, possessive even in sleep. I find myself studying the sweep of his dark lashes against his cheeks, the small scar above his eyebrow, the stubble darkening his jaw—memorizing him just as he memorized me last night.

Shame and desire war within me. I hate myself for giving in so completely, for craving his touch even as questions about my family hang between us like ghosts. I close my eyes, but that only brings back vivid images from last night.

The way his hands gripped my hips in his office, the cool surface of his desk beneath my heated skin. My father’s folder forgotten on the floor as Marco claimed me with a desperate hunger that matched my own. I remember how he carried me upstairs afterward, both of us barely dressed, how he laid me on his bed with such tenderness before sliding into bed beside me.

“Stay with me tonight,” he whispered against my neck—and God help me, I said yes.

We’d made love again in this bed, slower this time, my legs wrapped around his waist, his eyes never leaving mine.

Marco shifts beside me, his arm tightening around my waist, pulling me closer to his chest. His warmth envelops me, and I curl into him without thinking—like a flower turning toward the sun.

My body recognizes its home before my mind can summon all the reasons I should pull away.

And that’s when the truth hits me with the force of a physical blow.

I’m in love with him.

The realization slams into me—violent, inescapable.

I freeze against his sleeping form, breath lodged between denial and despair.

I’m in love with the man who holds me like I’m something sacred… but withholds the one truth that’s been rotting in the silence between us.

I’m in love with someone I can’t trust.

And that truth carves me open.

Betrayal and longing twist through me like jagged glass, tearing along every fault line I thought I’d buried.

Each heartbeat is a wound.

Each breath, a battle between the ache I feel… and the truth I can’t unlearn.

When did it happen? When did this arrangement—this fragile, strategic union—become something that makes my chest ache with wanting?

Maybe it started the night he didn’t raise a hand against Chiara, simply because I asked him not to. Maybe it grew in the quiet moments since—the way he remembers how I take my coffee, the soft brush of his fingers when he thinks I’m not looking.

Not in grand declarations, but in the smallest mercies. The ones I never asked for—but started needing all the same.

He’s gruff and dangerous and secretive, yes. But he’s also protective and passionate and infuriatingly complex.

That’s the true betrayal—not just that I gave my body to him so readily last night, but that I’ve given him pieces of my heart when he still holds so many secrets. I’ve fallen in love with a man, perhaps without even knowing who he is.

His breathing changes, becoming shallower, and I know he’s waking up. His fingers trace lazy patterns on my bare shoulder, featherlight touches that send shivers down my spine.

“I know you’re awake,” he murmurs, his voice rough with sleep.

I turn to find him watching me, those green eyes intent on my face as if searching for regrets.