Chapter 32 Thirty two
Matteo's POV
The plan was simple, elegant, and cruel. I needed to cement her reliance, to make the abstract threat of losing me feel visceral. Fear of my father was too distant. Fear of losing me to another… that would strike at the heart of whatever was growing between us.
I arranged the business dinner. The guest was Alessio Conti, the youngest son of a allied family. He was handsome in a shallow way, rich, arrogant, and famously susceptible to beauty. I instructed him to be “charming.” I didn’t need to spell it out.
Watching from the head of the table was a study in controlled agony. Alessio leaned too close, complimented her dress, laughed too loudly at her polite, one-word replies. Elena was the picture of stiff discomfort. She picked at her food, her eyes occasionally flicking to me, confusion and a spark of betrayal in their depths. Good. Let her wonder.
My father, seated to my right, noted the interaction with a grunt. “The Conti boy seems taken,” he murmured, sipping his wine. “A useful backup, should your current… preoccupation prove unstable.”
The comment was a barb aimed at my loyalty. It also served my purpose perfectly. The seed was planted.
After dinner, I let Alessio linger with her in the salon for precisely ten minutes, watching his hand brush her arm as he pointed to a painting. A cold fire lit in my gut. It wasn't part of the act. It was real.
I intercepted her as she fled toward the kitchens, pulling her into the walk-in pantry. The door clicked shut, sealing us in the dark, spice-scented space. A single bulb cast long shadows. I caged her against a shelf, bags of rice and dried herbs pressing against her back.
“My father,” I said, my voice low and dangerous, “mentioned Alessio’s family as a potential alternative alliance. Should I prove ‘unsuitable.’”
Her eyes widened. The confusion cleared, replaced by dawning horror. She understood the transaction. She was inventory, and I could be swapped out.
“He was… pleasant,” she said, a weak, defiant lie.
My control snapped. I kissed her. It wasn’t the tender kiss from the chapel or the desperate kiss from the storm. This was possessive. Punishing. I poured all the seething fury of the evening: the sight of another man’s hands near her, my father’s casual threat, the game I myself had set in motion, into that kiss. My tongue claimed her mouth, my hands gripping her hips, pulling her hard against me so she could feel the rigid evidence of my anger and my want.
When I broke for air, we were both panting. “Pleasant?” I growled against her swollen lips. “The thought of another man even looking at you makes me want to burn cities to the ground, Elena.”
I meant it. The sly strategy was gone, burned away by a jealousy more real than I’d anticipated. The gamble had revealed a terrifying truth: I wasn't just making her afraid of losing me. I was showing myself my own breaking point.
I kissed her again, softer now, a desperate apology for the hardness. My hands came up to cradle her face. “You are mine,” I whispered, the words a feverish incantation. “Only mine. No alternatives. No backups. Do you understand?”
In the dim pantry light, her eyes were dark pools. I saw the fear I’d planted. But beneath it, I also saw a flicker of something else. A recognition of my raw, unchecked need. A mirror of her own.
The strategy had worked. But it had also stripped me bare. She nodded, a small, shaky movement. She understood. She was clinging to the devil she knew. And the devil, for all his schemes, was clinging just as desperately to her.
Elena's POV
The dinner was a new kind of torture. Alessio Conti was like a polished rock all smooth, shiny, and empty. His attention felt greasy, his smiles too wide. I kept looking to Matteo at the head of the table, but his face was a mask of polite indifference. He was allowing this. Why?
His father’s cold eyes watched it all like a spectator sport. The pieces clicked into a horrifying picture. I was a pawn. Matteo was a piece. And the board could be reset with new players at any time. The fragile safety I’d felt in his bed evaporated.
When Matteo pulled me into the pantry, the dark closeness was a shock after the bright, false salon. The smell of oregano and dust filled my nose. His body was a wall of tense heat.
His words confirmed my worst fear. I was an asset. He could be replaced. The “preoccupation” could be deemed “unstable.” My stupid, traitorous heart, which had begun to whisper words like sanctuary and his, seized with a new, sharper fear. Losing him.
I called Alessio “pleasant,” a pathetic attempt to salvage some pride. It was the wrong thing to say.
His kiss was a punishment. It was fire and possession and a raging fury that terrified and thrilled me in equal measure. This wasn't the calculated seducer. This was a man unraveling. His hands on me were almost rough, his mouth demanding a surrender I was already giving. When he spoke of burning cities, I believed him. The jealousy wasn't a performance. It was a terrifying, glorious truth.
He kissed me again, and the fury bled into a desperate kind of tenderness. His “Do you understand?” wasn't a question. It was a plea.
And I did understand. The game was infinitely more dangerous than I’d thought. We weren't just rebelling against his father. We were balancing on a knife-edge where his obsession was both my shield and my greatest risk. If I stepped wrong, he could be removed. And I would be passed to the next bidder.
But in that dark pantry, with his breath mingling with mine, the fear was inextricably tangled with a powerful, blinding truth. His jealousy proved his claim was real. His desperation mirrored my own. The devil I knew wanted me with a ferocity that felt like its own kind of salvation.
I nodded. I understood. I was his. Not as a passive prize, but as a willing accomplice to this dangerous, all-consuming obsession. The alternative: Alessio’s bland smiles, another cold contract, was unthinkable.
He rested his forehead against mine, our breaths slowly syncing. The chemistry between us was a live wire, no longer just about attraction, but about shared terror and absolute, mutual need.
“No one else,” I whispered into the space between us, making my own vow.
He let out a long, shaky breath, as if he’d been holding it all night. The sly, devious man was gone. In his place was just Matteo, as vulnerable as I was. We had orchestrated a jealousy gambit. And we had both lost, completely, to each other.