Chapter 26 The Confession
Alessia came back to the penthouse with a plan.
Wait until Liam fell asleep. Slip the fiberoptic wire from where she’d taped it beneath the nightstand drawer. Access the safe. Photograph everything Thorne wanted. Be gone by morning.
Simple. Clean. Final.
She’d repeated it all the way up in the elevator, like a prayer.
But when the door opened, Liam was already there, standing in the living room.
“Hey,” he said. “How was the salon?”
His voice was even. Too even.
“Fine,” she said, forcing herself to keep walking. “Long. The stylist talked a lot.”
He didn’t answer right away. Just watched her.
Then, “Your hair looks the same.”
Her stomach dropped.
“She mostly did a treatment,” Alessia said quickly. “Deep conditioning.”
“Right.” He straightened, closing the distance between them. “Alessia… is everything okay?”
She felt it then—the pressure behind her ribs, the way her breath started to sit wrong in her chest.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because you were gone for three hours,” he said. “Because you look pale. And because you look like you’re about to break.”
His eyes searched her face, sharp with concern. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just tired.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are.” His voice softened, not accusing, just tired. “After everything we’ve been through, do you really think I can’t tell?”
The walls she’d spent years building shifted. Just a little. Enough to scare her.
“I can’t talk about it,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because if I do,” she said, her voice barely there, “everything falls apart.”
Something crossed his face—confusion, frustration, then something that looked a lot like hurt.
“I thought we were partners.”
“We are.”
“Then trust me,” he said quietly. “Whatever it is, let me help.”
Her throat burned.
She wanted to. God, she wanted to.
But wanting didn’t change what would happen if she did.
“I need to rest,” she said, moving past him. “I’m sorry. I just… I need to be alone.”
She shut the door before he could respond and leaned back against it, pressing her fist to her mouth as tears threatened.
Get it together, she told herself. You know what you’re here to do.
Her eyes slid to the nightstand.
Tonight. It would happen tonight.
The nightmare came at 2:07 a.m.
She was ten again, standing at the top of the stairs.
Her mother’s voice echoed up the hallway, raw with fear. “I’m taking her with me, Salvatore. I’m done.”
Her father’s reply was calm. Cold. “You’re not going anywhere.”
The shove.
The scream.
Her mother’s body at the bottom of the stairs, twisted wrong, neck bent at an angle Alessia didn’t yet have words for. Eyes open. Empty.
Then her father’s hand on her shoulder. Heavy. Bruising.
“You saw nothing,” he said. “It was an accident. Say it.”
“It was an accident,” ten-year-old Alessia whispered.
“Again.”
“It was an accident.”
“At the funeral,” he continued, “you will smile. You will accept condolences. You will be the perfect daughter. If you don’t, they’ll take you away from me. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Good girl.”
The funeral blurred together—black dresses, murmured sympathy, hands touching her shoulders. A closed casket. People telling her how strong she was.
When it was her turn to stand beside it, her father leaned down and whispered, “She left you. Remember that. She tried to abandon you. This is what happens to people who betray family.”
Alessia woke choking, her body shaking so hard the mattress rattled. Her chest seized, breath coming in sharp, broken gasps.
She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
A knock. Soft. Urgent.
“Alessia?”
Liam.
She tried to answer. A sob escaped instead.
The door opened. Liam stood there in sweatpants and a T-shirt, his face shifting when he saw her—concern turning instantly to alarm.
“Hey,” he said, crossing the room and sitting beside her. “Hey. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t a dream.”
His hand closed around hers. “Then what was it?”
“A memory.”
He didn’t flinch. “Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” he said gently. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
And something inside her finally gave way.
“I watched him kill her,” she whispered. “I was ten. I watched my father push my mother down the stairs.”
Liam went completely still.
“She wanted to leave,” Alessia said. “She was taking me with her. She had everything planned—money, fake IDs, a place in California.” Her voice cracked. “He found out. I don’t know how. They fought. She told him he couldn’t stop her.”
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“He pushed her like it meant nothing. Like she wasn’t a person.”
Her hands shook violently. “She fell twenty stairs. Broke her neck. She died before she hit the floor.”
Liam’s grip tightened.
“And then he looked at me,” she continued, tears spilling freely now. “So calm. And told me to say it was an accident.”
She laughed once, broken. “He made me practice. Over and over. Until I could say it without crying.”
Liam swallowed hard. “Jesus…”
“At the funeral, he made me smile,” she said. “Made me hug people. Thank them. While my mother was in a box.”
She looked at him, eyes red and swollen. “So when you wonder who I am—why I’m always watching, why I lie so easily—that’s why. I’ve been lying about the most important thing in my life since I was ten.”
Understanding settled into his expression, heavy and unmistakable.
“And the marriage,” he said quietly.
“Another cage,” Alessia whispered. “Another role.” Her voice broke. “But then you became real. And I don’t know how to keep lying when the one person who’s honest with me is supposed to be my enemy.”
The silence stretched.
Then Liam pulled her into his arms.
She broke completely, sobbing into his chest as years of grief finally tore free. He held her without saying much, his hand in her hair, his presence solid and unmovable.
When the tears slowed, he pulled back just enough to look at her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You never should’ve carried that alone.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“No,” he said. “But I understand you now.”
His thumb brushed her cheek. “You’ve been fighting a war since you were a child.”
“So have you,” she murmured. “Since Declan.”
Pain flickered across his face. “Yeah.”
He lay back, pulling her with him. She didn’t resist.
“Tell me about him,” she said softly. “Not the heir. Your brother.”
Liam was quiet for a long time.
“He was fearless,” he finally said. “Loud. Reckless. The kind of person who made everything feel possible.”
“Did you follow him?”
“Everywhere.” A faint smile. “He used to sneak me into punk shows. Brooklyn basements. Places where no one cared who we were.”
“I can’t imagine you there.”
“I was trying way too hard,” he admitted. “But Declan never laughed. He just let me exist.”
She smiled weakly.
“And then he died,” Liam said. “And I became him.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” he agreed. “None of this is.”
They lay there, tangled together, breathing through the quiet.
“We’re ghosts,” Liam said eventually. “Living other people’s wars.”
“I don’t want to be one anymore.”
“Me neither.”
His fingers laced with hers.
They slept like that—two people holding each other against the dark.
And for the first time in years, Alessia slept without dreams.
Only the sound of his heart beneath her ear.
And the knowledge that morning would come.
That she would have to break this.
But for one night, she let herself believe in peace.
Just for a little while.