CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The alarm went off again, shrill and unnatural against the muted hush of the gallery. Alessia’s breath caught in her throat as the blaring sound echoed down the marbled halls. This wasn’t the first time in recent weeks, but it was the first time she’d been this close when it happened. Her fingers tightened around the gallery’s security tablet, pulse racing. She darted toward the main panel behind the east wing, trying to override it, but her fingers fumbled on the screen, the panic making her sluggish. Before she could finish the override, a heavy hand landed on hers.

“It’s okay,” Matteo’s voice cut through the noise like silk over steel. “I’ve got it.”

He was already inputting codes, navigating the system like he’d done it a hundred times. The alarm died with a sputter, the gallery falling back into eerie silence.

Alessia stepped back, heart pounding. “What—how did you get here so fast?”

Matteo didn’t look at her right away. He reached behind the panel, flicked a manual breaker, and only then turned, his expression unreadable. “I was already nearby,” he said simply, brushing invisible dust from his coat. “I thought I’d check in. Good thing I did.”

She blinked. “You just happened to be nearby?”

He smiled faintly. “You know how I am about you being alone here. I’ve had a bad feeling all day.”

The words should’ve soothed her, but they stuck, like something unfinished. Still, she nodded, swallowing down the unease. “It’s just… this is the third time the system’s gone haywire this week.”

“Which is exactly why I told you not to be here alone,” Matteo said. “Alessia, someone’s watching you.”

That last sentence slipped in like poison in honey. It wasn’t loud or frantic, but low, calm, sure. And effective.

She stiffened. “You think… it’s not just glitches?”

“No,” he said, reaching past her to close the breaker panel. “I think Giuliana’s tightening her grip. She’s not going to let go without drawing blood.”

Alessia rubbed her arms. The thought of being watched, truly watched, made her skin crawl. “I thought we disabled all the hidden cameras.”

“We did.” Matteo’s eyes flicked toward the upper corners of the room. “But that doesn’t mean there aren’t more. Or someone inside leaking access codes.”

Alessia leaned against the wall, her strength suddenly draining. “This place was supposed to be safe.”

“I know,” he said gently. “Which is why you need to stop thinking you’re safe without me.”

He stepped in closer, not touching her, not yet, but enough to trap her between the wall and the low heat of his presence. She was used to this by now, the way he seemed to occupy the room without force. But tonight, it was more than that. His presence felt like a shield and a leash all at once.

“I don’t want to be paranoid,” she whispered.

“You’re not paranoid,” he said. “You’re finally waking up.”

Something about the way he said it made her eyes flick up to his, searching. “What do you mean?”

Matteo hesitated, then reached for her hand, curling her fingers into his. “I told you back at the villa,” he said quietly, “that Giuliana wouldn’t just hurt you, she’d erase you. This? This is how it starts.”

Alessia didn’t reply. Her mind was reeling with every surveillance possibility, every door left unlocked, every interaction she’d had in the past two weeks. Suddenly, the gallery didn’t feel like hers. It felt borrowed. Fragile.

“Then what do I do?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

His grip on her hand tightened just a little. “You stay close to me. You let me handle things. The plan is already in motion.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “What plan?”

Matteo’s lips curved, but it wasn’t a smile. “The one that ends with you safe and her buried.”

That should have sent a shiver down her spine. Instead, Alessia nodded, and hated how easy it was to do so.

He leaned in, brushing a strand of hair away from her face. “We’ll need to keep your movements controlled. No unscheduled visits. No surprise stops.”

“You mean surveillance.”

“I mean survival,” he said simply.

His hand reached out, not to touch her, not quite, but to close the space between them, palm grazing the wall just beside her head. His body blocked the path behind her, not forcefully, but undeniably.

“You don’t trust me,” he murmured, voice low, velvet-wrapped steel.

“I don’t trust anyone,” Alessia replied.

But her voice faltered when he leaned closer, the shadows shifting across his face like oil over water.

“Liar.”

The word wasn’t cruel. It was intimate. Too intimate. Her breath hitched as his fingers ghosted along the edge of her jaw, not a caress, not yet. Just a study, like he was memorizing the fault lines of her restraint.

“If you wanted me to stop,” he whispered, “you’d have already walked away.”

She hated the way he was right.

Or maybe she hated that it didn’t matter anymore

The distance between them dissolved as his mouth claimed hers, not soft, not searching. It was calculated. Controlled. A kiss that demanded surrender rather than sought it. One that tasted of silence and fire, of a truth neither of them was ready to speak.

She kissed him back anyway.

Because tonight, it was easier than thinking.

Alessia lingered under the halo of stained glass, her breath just beginning to steady. The kiss had left something electric in its wake, not quite warmth, but something far more addictive. Matteo said nothing, simply took a measured step back, hands dropping casually to his sides.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she whispered.

He arched a brow, slow and composed. “Didn’t I?”

She looked away, trying to bury the flush rising in her cheeks beneath cool detachment. “You’ve set up the new surveillance. That should be enough.”

Matteo followed her line of sight to the nearest corner where one of the newly installed cameras now blinked, disguised as a restoration light, unobtrusive, utterly invisible to anyone who didn’t know what they were looking for. Especially Alessia. She only had access to two feeds, after all — the ones he wanted her to see.

“It’s not just about protecting the gallery anymore,” he said quietly. “It’s about protecting you.”

He brushed past her then, as if the moment hadn’t just cracked open the strange quiet between them. Alessia didn’t stop him. She stood there, blinking away the emotion, unaware of the small blinking red light that followed her even after he walked away.

By evening, Matteo was back in the surveillance room he'd rigged upstairs in the unused framing office — a converted space filled with wires, monitors, and the glow of live feeds from every corner of the estate. A hot cup of coffee steamed next to his elbow, untouched. He rewound a feed, the one from earlier, the moment she stood under the stained glass just before he kissed her. Alessia looked almost ethereal there, backlit in a mosaic of fractured color, completely unaware of how closely she was being watched. Studied. The control he now had was surgical. Calculated.

He leaned back in the chair, pulled out an old phone, and dialed a number from memory. It rang only once.

“You said you were out,” came the voice on the other end, male, dry, and amused. “So why am I getting signals from the De Luca estate again?”

Matteo didn’t bother with small talk. “It’s time to move.”

There was a pause. “So, the girl?”

“She’s not ready,” Matteo said, his voice low. “But she will be.”

“You’ve got eyes on her?”

“More than eyes.”

A short chuckle. “You always had a thing for the slow bleed. What do you need?”

Matteo stared at one of the monitors, Alessia pacing in her room, talking to herself as she scrolled through decrypted logs, no idea that every keystroke was mirrored in the copy he’d cloned hours earlier.

“I need a controlled leak,” he said. “A whisper about Giuliana’s offshore holdings — tied to a fake shipment from the gallery. Something just loud enough to reach Giuliana’s ears.”

“You’re baiting her?”

“I’m making her think Alessia’s slipping.”

The man on the other end gave a low whistle. “Ballsy. What if Giuliana doesn’t bite?”

“She will. She’s too paranoid not to.”

Matteo ended the call without saying goodbye. The burner was back in the drawer before the minute ended, beside another tool, an older photograph. Alessia as a child, maybe five years old, standing beside Dario in front of a wrought-iron gate. But the name at the back wasn’t Alessia.

It was Alba.

He didn’t look at it long.

Outside, the estate had gone quiet, servants locked in their routines, the lawyer conveniently distanced, and Alessia wrapped in his words, his arms, and the slow, silken web of trust he’d spun with such precision she barely noticed it tighten.

Now the plan — the real plan — could begin.

Not the version she thought she agreed to when they spoke in low voices late at night, when fear made her lips tremble and she clutched his shirt like a lifeline. No. This one had teeth. This one had roots in the promises he made to Serafina. In the deals struck with men Alessia would never know existed.

And Giuliana? She was just the first trap

The camera in her bedroom blinked. Matteo sat forward, watching Alessia again. She was holding the music box now, the one engraved with her name. Winding it in her lap, letting it sing something soft and cracked from time. She didn’t cry. But her eyes stayed fixed on the silver until the song ended.

Then, slowly, she reached for her phone.

Matteo leaned closer, expression unreadable.

But the moment she opened the encrypted gallery logs and typed his name into the search field — he moved.

Across the house, she would hear nothing. Just the creak of the old walls and the distant hush of trees. He was already erasing the keyword trail from her screen before she could hit enter. And when her door opened a few minutes later, she startled, hand flying to her chest.

“I thought you were asleep,” she said.

Matteo stepped into the room, gaze heavy. “I was. But something told me you weren’t.”

He crossed the room in slow, even steps and touched her face like she might break. And this time, when he kissed her, it wasn’t stolen.

It was claimed.

And still, his eyes stayed open.