A Hunger for the Forbidden(41)

“And do you?” he asked. “Do you love it?”

She shook her head. “No.” Her voice was a whisper. “But I’m not unhappy all the time. And I think that’s something. I mean, it has to count for something.”

“What about now? With this?”

“Are you happy?”

“Happiness has never been one of my primary goals. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it too closely.”

“Everybody wants to be happy,” she said.

Matteo put his hands into his pockets and looked over the big stone wall that partitioned his estate from the rest of the world, looked up at the moon. “I want to make something different out of my family. I want to do something more than threaten and terrorize the people in Palermo. Beyond that … does it matter?”

“It does matter. Your happiness matters.”

“I haven’t been unhappy,” he said, and then he wondered if he was lying. “What about you, Alessia?”

“I made a decision, Matteo, and it landed me in a situation that hasn’t been entirely comfortable. It was my first big mistake. My first big fallout. And no, not all of it has been happy. But I can’t really regret it, either.”

“I’m glad you don’t regret me.”

“Do you regret me?”

“I should. I should regret my loss of control more than I do—” a theme in his life, it seemed “—but I find I cannot.”

“What about tonight? In the elevator? Why did you just walk away?”

“I don’t know what to do with us,” he said, telling the truth, the honest, raw truth.

“Why do we have to know what we’re doing?”

“Because this isn’t some casual affair, and it never can be.” Because of how she made him feel, how she challenged him. But he wouldn’t say that. His honesty had limits, and that was a truth he disliked admitting even to himself. “You’re my wife. We’re going to have a child.”

“And if we don’t try, then we’re going to spend years sniping at each other and growing more and more bitter, is that better?”

“Better than hurting you? I think so.”

“You’ve hurt me already.”

“I did?”

“You won’t promise to be faithful to me, you clearly hate admitting that you want me, even though as soon as we touch … Matteo, we catch fire, and you can’t deny that. You know I don’t have a lot of experience with men, but I know this isn’t just normal. I know people don’t just feel this way.”

“And that’s exactly why we have to be careful.”

“So we’ll be careful. But we’re husband and wife, and I think we should try … try for the sake of our child, for our families, to make this marriage work. And I think we owe it to each other to not be unhappy.”

“Alessia …”

“Let’s keep taking walks, Matteo,” she said, her voice husky. She took a step toward him, her hair shimmering in the dim light.

He caught her arm and pulled her in close, his heart pounding hard and fast. “I can’t love you.”

“You keep saying.”

“You need to understand. There is a limit to what we can share. I’ll have you in my bed, but that’s as far as it goes. This wasn’t my choice.”

“I wasn’t your choice?”

Her words hit him hard, and they hurt. Because no, he hadn’t chosen to marry her without being forced into it. But it wasn’t for lack of wanting her. If there was no family history. If he had not been the son of one of Sicily’s most notorious crime bosses, if there was nothing but him and Alessia and every other woman on earth, he would choose her every time.

But he couldn’t discount those things. He couldn’t erase what was. He couldn’t make his heart anything but cold, not just toward her, but toward anyone. And he couldn’t afford to allow a change.

Alessia had no idea. Not of the real reasons why. Not the depth he was truly capable of sinking to. The man underneath the iron control was the very devil, as she had once accused him of being. There was no hero beneath his armor. Only ugliness and death. Only anger, rage, and the ability and willingness to mete out destruction and pain to those who got in his way.

If he had to choose between a life without feeling or embracing the darkness, he would take the blessed numbness every time.