Chapter 86 -
She had not been thinking. That was the problem. The whiskey and Micheal’s story about Andrea and weeks of living in this house watching Leo move around like a ghost had combined into something reckless and stupid. She had convinced herself that she saw something in him worth saving, something real beneath all the armor and the anger.
But maybe Lucia had been right. Maybe Nia was just desperate and lonely and looking for connection in all the wrong places. Maybe what she thought she felt for Leo was just her own broken heart trying to find something, anything, to hold onto in this nightmare her life had become.
A knock on the door made Nia jump, which made her head explode with fresh pain. She whimpered into the pillow, pressing her palms against her temples like she could physically hold her skull together.
“Miss Wallace?” Matteo’s voice came through the wood, muffled but clear enough. “Breakfast is being served.”
“Go away,” Nia called back, then immediately regretted it when the sound of her own voice sent daggers through her brain. “I am not hungry.”
“Rosa says you need to eat,” Matteo said. There was something gentle in his tone, something that suggested he knew exactly what had happened last night and felt sorry for her. Which somehow made everything worse.
“Tell Rosa I am fine,” Nia said. She pulled the blankets tighter around herself, creating a cocoon of darkness and shame. “I just need to sleep.”
“You slept for six hours,” Matteo pointed out. “It is past ten.”
Ten in the morning. Which meant the family would already be at breakfast. Christian and Lucia trading barbs across the table. Micheal probably hungover and grinning anyway. Gabriel eating his cereal and asking innocent questions that cut too close to uncomfortable truths.
And Leo. Leo would be there, sitting at the head of the table in his perfectly pressed suit, his face carefully blank, pretending that nothing had happened. Pretending that he had not kissed Nia like she was the only real thing in his world just hours ago.
“I am not going to breakfast,” Nia said firmly. “I am never leaving this room again. I am going to stay here until I die of embarrassment, which should be any minute now.”
There was a pause from the other side of the door. Then Matteo said, carefully, “The boss is asking for you.”
Nia’s entire body went rigid. “What?”
“He sent me to make sure you come down to breakfast,” Matteo said. “He was very clear that your presence is required.”
“Tell him I am sick,” Nia said. It was not even a lie. Her head was pounding, her stomach was churning, and she was pretty sure if she tried to stand up the room would start spinning. “Tell him I have the plague. Tell him I am dying. Tell him whatever you want but I am not going down there.”
“Miss Wallace,” Matteo started, but Nia cut him off.
“No,” she said. The word came out sharper than she intended, edged with panic and humiliation. “I am not going down there and facing him after what happened last night. I am not going to sit at that table and pretend everything is normal while he looks at me like I am nothing. So you can tell Leo that I am not coming and if he has a problem with that, he can come up here himself and drag me down there.”
Another pause. Then Matteo said, very quietly, “He might actually do that.”
“Let him try,” Nia said, though the thought of Leo coming to her room made her stomach flip in a way that had nothing to do with the hangover. “I will lock the door. I will barricade it with furniture. I will do whatever it takes to not have to look at him right now.”
“Alright,” Matteo said, and he actually sounded sympathetic. “I will tell him you are unwell.”
“Thank you,” Nia said. She listened to his footsteps retreat down the hallway, each sound of his boots against marble making her head throb. When the sound finally faded completely, she let out a breath she had not realized she was holding.
She was alone again. Alone with her headache and her humiliation and the memory of Leo’s kiss still burning on her lips.
“I kissed Leo DeSanto,” she said to the darkness under the blankets. “And he pushed me away.”
The rejection hurt worse in the morning light, with sobriety making everything sharp and clear. Last night, cushioned by whiskey and late hours and the strange intimacy of the forbidden wing, it had been possible to convince herself that maybe Leo’s fear was just fear. That maybe if she pushed hard enough, if she was honest enough, she could break through his walls and reach the man underneath.
But morning had a way of making delusions obvious. Leo did not want her. He had made that very clear. The kiss had been a mistake, a moment of weakness that he regretted. And Nia was just the stupid prisoner who had thrown herself at her captor and gotten exactly what she deserved.
She pulled the pillow over her head, pressing it down until the world went dark and muffled. If she could just stay like this forever, she would not have to face Leo. She would not have to see the pity in Micheal’s eyes or the knowing look on Lucia’s face or the way Rosa would try to comfort her with kind words that could not fix what was broken.
Another knock at the door made her groan.
“Matteo, I said I am not coming,” she called out without moving the pillow.
“It is not Matteo,” a voice said. Female, sharp, unmistakably Lucia. “And you are coming out of there right now.”
Nia pulled the pillow off her face, blinking against the dim light filtering through the blankets. “Lucia?”
“Open this door, Nia Wallace,” Lucia commanded. There was steel in her voice, the kind of authority that came from being a Romano before she became a DeSanto. “Or I will have Matteo break it down.”
“You cannot do that,” Nia said, but she was already pushing the blankets off, her body obeying before her brain could catch up.
“Watch me,” Lucia said. “I am the lady of this house whether I want to be or not. And right now I am telling you to open this door.”