A Hunger for the Forbidden(52)

“Matteo … no.” She shook her head, those dark eyes glistening with tears. She looked horrified. Utterly. Completely. The light was gone. His light.

“Yes,” he said, his voice rough. “Can you guess what he did?”

“What?” The word was scarcely a whisper.

“He laughed. And he said, ‘Just as I thought, you are my son.’ He told me that no matter how I dressed it up, no matter how I pretended I had morals, I was just as bloodthirsty as he was. Just as hungry for vengeance and to have what I thought should be mine, in the fashion I saw fit. And then he walked back into the warehouse.”

“What did you do?”

Matteo remembered the moment vividly. Remembered waiting for a minute, watching, letting his father’s words sink in. Recognizing the truth of them. And embracing them fully. He was his father’s son. And if he, or anyone else, stood a chance of ever breaking free, it had to end.

The front end of the warehouse had collapsed and Matteo had stood back, looking on, his hand curled around his phone. He could have called emergency services. He could have tried to save Benito.

But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d turned his back, the heat blistering behind him, a spark falling onto his neck, singeing his flesh. And then he’d walked away. And he hadn’t looked back, not once. And in that moment he was the full embodiment of everything his father had trained him to be.

He’d found out about Carlo’s and Benito’s deaths over the phone the next day. And there had been no more denial, no more hiding. No more believing that somewhere deep down he was good. That he had a hope of redemption.

He had let it burn in the warehouse.

“I let him die,” he said. “I watched him go in, watched as the front end of the building collapsed. I could have called someone, and I didn’t. I made the choice to be the man he always wanted me to be. The man I always was. I turned and I walked away. I did just as I promised I would do. I let him burn, with all of his damned money. And I can’t regret the choice. He made his, I made mine. And everyone is free of him now. Of both of them.”

Alessia was waxen, her skin pale, her lips tinged blue. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Do you see, Alessia? This is what I was trying to tell you. What you need to understand.” He leaned forward, extending his hand to her, and she jerked back. Her withdrawal felt like a stab to the chest, but it was no less than he deserved. “I’m not the hero of the story. I am nothing less than the villain.”

She understood now, he could see it, along with a dawning horror in her eyes that he wanted to turn away from. She was afraid. Afraid of him. He wasn’t her knight anymore.

“I think maybe I should wait a few days to have my things moved into your room,” she said after a long moment of silence.

He nodded. “That might be wise.” Pain assaulted him and he tried to ignore it, tried to grit his teeth and sit with a neutral expression.

“I’ll talk to you later?”

“Of course.” He sat back on the couch and watched her leave. Then he closed his eyes and tried to picture her smile again. Tried to recapture the way she’d looked at him just a few moments before. But instead of her light, all he could see was a haunted expression, one he had put there.

Alessia was gasping for breath by the time she got to her bedroom. She closed the door behind her and put her hand on her chest, felt her heart hammering beneath her palm.

Matteo had let Benito and Carlo die.

She sucked in a shuddering breath and started pacing back and forth, fighting the tears that were threatening to spill down her cheeks.

She replayed what he had said again in her mind. He hadn’t forced Benito or Carlo back into the burning building. Hadn’t caused them harm with his own hands.

He had walked away. He had washed his hands and walked away, accepting in that moment whatever the consequences might be.

Alessia walked over to her bed and sat on the edge of it. And she tried to reconcile the man downstairs with the man she’d always believed him to be.

The man beneath the armor wasn’t perfect. He was wounded, damaged beyond reason. Hurting. And for the first time she really understood what that meant. Understood how shut down he was. How much it would take to reach him.

And she wasn’t sure if she could do it. Wasn’t sure she had the strength to do it.

It had been so much easier when he was simply the fantasy. When he was the man she’d made him be in her mind. When he was an ideal, a man sent to ride to her rescue.