Chapter 74 Seventy four
Elena's POV
The fever came for me like a thief in the night. It did not ask permission. It did not knock. It simply arrived, and within hours I was lost inside my own body, burning and shivering and burning again.
I had been running on empty for weeks. The stress of the wedding, the silence after, the driving lessons, the books, the constant watching. My body had been telling me to slow down but I did not listen because I could not listen, because slowing down meant thinking, and thinking meant feeling, and feeling meant admitting how broken I really was.
So the fever made the choice for me.
One morning I could not get out of bed. My limbs were heavy, my head was pounding, and when I tried to stand the room spun so fast I fell back against the pillows. Sophie came to check on me and her face went pale when she touched my forehead.
"You are burning up," she said. "I am getting the doctor."
I do not remember much after that. The days blurred together like watercolors running in the rain. I remember heat, terrible heat, like someone had lit a fire inside my bones. I remember cold, shaking cold, when the fever broke for a few hours and I could not stop my teeth from chattering. I remember dreams, strange dreams, dreams where I was back in the club in my green dress, dreams where Matteo was the stranger again and I was not his prisoner, dreams where I was free.
And I remember him.
He was there when I opened my eyes in the middle of the night, disoriented and terrified, and he was sitting in a chair beside the bed with a cloth in his hand. His tie was gone. His shirt was wrinkled. He looked tired in a way I had never seen before.
"Drink this," he said, and he held a cup to my lips, and the broth was warm and salty and I drank because I did not have the strength to refuse.
He stayed. He kept staying. Every time I woke up, he was there. Sometimes he was reading. Sometimes he was just watching. Sometimes he was pressing a cool cloth to my forehead and the relief was so sharp it made my eyes sting.
I heard him on the phone once, his voice low so he would not wake me, telling someone that all meetings were canceled, that he would not be available, that they would have to handle it themselves. The Don, canceling meetings. For me.
I was too sick to understand what that meant.
On the worst night, when the fever spiked so high I thought I might burn up from the inside, I reached for something solid, something real, something to hold onto in the darkness. My hand found his. His fingers closed around mine and held on tight.
In my delirium, the walls between past and present crumbled away. I was not in the fortress anymore. I was in the club. I was in the elevator. I was in his arms and they were safe and he was not my jailer, he was just the man who looked at me like I was magnificent.
"Matteo," I whispered. His name from the club. His real name before I knew the truth. "Matteo, do not let go."
He did not let go. His hand held mine all through the night.
When I woke up, the light was different.
The fever had broken sometime while I slept, leaving me weak and drenched in sweat but clear headed for the first time in days. I turned my head slowly, expecting to see Sophie or the doctor or maybe no one at all.
He was there.
Matteo was asleep in the chair beside my bed, slumped awkwardly, his neck bent at an angle that would hurt when he woke. He had not shaved. There were dark circles under his eyes. He looked nothing like the powerful Don who controlled everything and everyone.
And my hand was still in his.
I do not know how long I lay there looking at him. At the way his lashes rested against his cheeks. At the way his mouth was soft in sleep, unguarded, almost gentle. At the way his fingers were wrapped around mine like he had been holding on all night and would keep holding on forever.
Then I remembered.
The fever. The dreams. The whispered name.
I had called him Matteo. I had called him by the name of the stranger, the sanctuary, the man I had given myself to before I knew he was the monster. I had begged him not to let go.
And he had not let go.
Panic shot through me like lightning. I pulled my hand away as if I had touched fire, as if his skin would burn me, as if holding onto him for one more second would undo everything I had built since the truth came out.
His eyes opened instantly.
There was no slow waking, no groggy confusion. One moment he was asleep, and the next he was looking at me with those dark eyes, completely aware, completely present. And for just a heartbeat, there was no mask. No cold Don. No calculating strategist. There was only him, raw and tired and unguarded, looking at me like I was something he could not live without.
Then he spoke, his voice rough from sleep, from days of silence, from whatever he had been holding inside.
"Even your hatred is warmer than your indifference."
The words hung in the air between us. I did not know what to say. I did not know how to answer. I was still processing the fact that he had been here, that he had stayed, that he had held my hand through the worst night and let me call him by a name that was not his.
He stood up. His body moved stiffly from sleeping in the chair. He looked at me for one more moment, something flickering in his eyes that I could not read, and then he walked out of the room without looking back.
The door closed softly behind him.
I lay there in the bed, still weak, still trembling, my hand tingling where his had been. The room felt empty now. Too quiet. Too cold.
He had stayed. He had held my hand. He had canceled meetings and brought me broth and slept in a chair for days because I was sick.
And I had called him Matteo.
I pressed my palm against my eyes and tried to breathe. The fever was gone but something else was here now, something worse, something that felt like hope and terror all tangled together.
Even your hatred is warmer than your indifference.
He would rather have me hate him than feel nothing at all. He would rather have my anger, my fire, my fight, than the cold silence I had wrapped myself in since the wedding.
And the worst part, the part I could not admit out loud, was that I understood.
Because his indifference would have been easier. If he had left me alone to suffer, if he had let the doctor handle it, if he had stayed away, I could have kept my walls intact. I could have gone on hating him clean and simple.
But he had stayed. He had held on. And now my walls had cracks I did not know how to fix.
I pulled the blanket up to my chin and stared at the empty chair. It was still warm where he had been sitting. I could see the dent his body had made in the cushion.
The maid came in later with soup and fresh water. She told me the Don had asked about me three times already that morning. She told me he had not slept in his own bed for four nights.
I did not ask her to stop talking. I did not tell her I did not care.
Because I did care. That was the problem. I cared and I hated that I cared and I did not know what to do with any of it.
The fever was gone but I was sick in a new way now. Sick with wanting and fear and the memory of his hand in mine.
I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep so the maid would leave. But all I could see was his face when he woke up, unguarded and raw, looking at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
Even your hatred is warmer than your indifference.
I did not know what came next. I only knew that something had shifted. Something had cracked. And there was no going back.