Chapter 54 Fifty four
Matteo
I led old Antonio away, my grip firm on his fragile arm. My voice was smooth, a low murmur meant to soothe. “You’re dreaming in the sun, my friend. Let’s get you some water.”
“But the lemon drops for Piccolo Silvio…” he muttered, confused.
“Later,” I promised, handing him off to a startled under-gardener with a sharp look. “See he rests.”
I walked back to Elena. My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs. I crafted the lie before I reached her. Simple. Plausible.
“A childhood endearment,” I said, rejoining her on the path. I kept my voice light, amused. “From when I was very small. He’s confused. He mixes up generations.”
She didn’t react. She just looked at me with those clear, calm eyes. They saw right through the words to the panic underneath.
Later, in her room, I tried again. I sat beside her on the sofa. I wove a better story. “My father… he sometimes called me by my middle name. Silvio. When he was in a rare, sentimental mood. Antonio must have picked it up. It stuck in his old mind.”
She listened. She nodded slowly, as if considering it. As if believing it. “I see,” she said, her voice flat. “A sentimental mood.”
Her calm was worse than anger. Anger was hot, it could be met, deflected, cooled. This calm was a sheet of ice. I couldn’t get a grip on it.
She wasn’t fighting the lie. She was just… noting it. Filing it away with the others.
The dread in my gut grew heavier.
That night, I went to her. The distance was a physical ache. I needed to break the ice. To find the woman beneath the frost. To feel something real, even if it was hatred.
I reached for her in the dark of my bedroom. My hand touched her shoulder.
She didn’t pull away. She turned to me.
I kissed her. It was a question. A plea.
Her lips were soft, but they were still. Then they moved under mine. But it wasn’t surrender. It wasn’t passion.
It was cold. It was assessing. Her mouth was a search party, methodical, detached. It was as if she was tasting the lie on my tongue, testing its texture. Her hands came to my chest, not to push me away, but to hold me there, at a precise distance, while she conducted her examination.
A shudder ran through me. This was worse than rejection. This was clinical.
I broke the kiss, pulling back just an inch. I could barely see her face in the dark.
“Elena,” I breathed, my voice raw.
“Yes?” she replied, her tone even. Polite.
The word hung there. I had no answer. What could I say? Stop looking at me like I’m a puzzle. Stop kissing me like you’re taking inventory.
I rolled onto my back, staring at the dark ceiling. The space between us in the bed was an ocean.
She had won this round. Without a word, she had shown me she was no longer a player in my game. She was the referee. And she had found me guilty.
Elena's POV
He was so smooth with the old man. So convincing. The performance was perfect. The concerned heir, humoring a senile servant.
I said nothing. I just watched. I let him believe it worked.
Later, in my room, he told his pretty story. The middle name. The sentimental father. He was trying to sew the tear in his fabric. His voice was earnest. He almost looked like he believed it himself.
I nodded. “I see.” What I saw was a man scrambling. The cracks were showing.
That night, when his hand found my shoulder in the dark, I didn’t recoil. I turned. I let him kiss me.
I used it. His kiss was always a weapon, a distraction, a claim. Now, mine was a tool. I let my lips be cold. I focused on the sensation, divorcing it from feeling. The shape of his mouth. The faint taste of whiskey. The slight hesitation in his touch now, the uncertainty that had never been there before.
I was searching. Not for the truth, I had that. I was searching for the man behind the last mask. Was there any part of Matteo, the beautiful stranger, that was real? Or was it all Silvio, the Don, performing?
My hands on his chest felt the rapid beat of his heart. Good, I thought coldly. You should be nervous.
When he broke the kiss and said my name, it sounded like a wound. I gave him nothing back. Just a polite, empty “Yes?”
I heard the defeat in his stillness. He turned away.
I lay on my back, eyes open in the dark. The chemistry wasn’t gone. My body was still aware of his heat, his scent. But my mind was in control now. The attraction was a fact, like the weather. It didn’t dictate my actions.
He thought his kiss was a question. My kiss was an answer.
I know. And I am not yours anymore. I am my own. And I am watching you.
The balance of power had shifted on a silent, frozen axis. He could feel it. The sly, devious man was outmaneuvered by the stubborn woman’s silence.
From now on, every touch would be an interrogation. Every look would be a cross-examination. He had wanted me in his bed. Now he had me there as a silent judging witness to his own deceit.
And he had no idea what I would do with the verdict.