I wouldn’t have ended it until they were dead.”
“You don’t know that.”
“That’s the thing, Alessia, I do know that. I know exactly what my next move was going to be, and trust me, it’s not something people get back up from.”
“I wish you could see what I saw.”
“And I wish like hell you hadn’t seen any of it,” he said, his voice rough.
“You were … I thought … I thought they were going to get away with it. That no one would hear me scream. No one would stop them. I thought that they would do it. And then you came and you didn’t let them. Do you have any idea what that meant to me? Do you know what you stopped?”
“I know what I stopped.”
“Then why do you regret it so much?”
“I don’t regret it, not like you mean.” He could remember his father’s face still, as he’d administered punishment to men in his debt. The calm. The absolute calm. But worse, he could remember his father’s face when someone had enraged him. Could remember how volatile, how beyond reason, he became in those situations.
And always, the old man had a smug sense that he had done what must be done. Full and complete justification for every action.
Just as Matteo had felt after Alessia’s attack. How he had felt after the fire.
“To me you were just a hero,” she said, her words soft.
They hit him hard, like a bullet, twisted inside of him, blooming outward and touching him everywhere, scraping his heart, his lungs. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.
“It’s so much more complicated than that,” he said.
“Not to me. Not to the girl you rescued. You were like … You were every unfulfilled dream from my entire life, showing up when I needed you most. How can you not understand that?”
“Maybe that,” he said, “is our problem now. You know a dream, a fantasy, and I am not that man. I’m not the hero of the story.”
She shook her head. “You were the hero of my story that day. And nothing will change that.”
Coldness invaded him. “Is that what led you to my bed that night?”
She didn’t look away. “Yes.”
He swore, the word loud in the empty expanse of the ballroom. “So that was my thank-you?”
“No!” she said, the exclamation reverberating around them. “It’s not like that at all. Don’t make it into something like that it’s. No.”
“Then what, Alessia? Your fantasy of a knight?” Her cheeks turned pink and then she did look away. “Dio, is that what it is? You expected me to be your chivalrous knight in shining armor? What a disappointment this must be for you. You would have likely been better off with Alessandro.”
“I didn’t want Alessandro.”
“Only because you lied to yourself about who I am.”
“Who are you, then?” she asked. “You’re my husband. I think you should tell me.”
“I thought we went over this already.”
“Yeah, you gave me that internet bio of a rundown on who you are. We told each other things we already knew.”
“Why do we have to know each other?”
“Because it seems like we should. We’re … married.”
“Not really.”
“You took me into an elevator and had me against the wall—what would make it more real for you?” she asked, the words exploding from her, crude and true, and nothing he could deny.
“That’s sex, Alessia, and what we have is great, explosive sex. But that kind of thing isn’t sustainable. It’s not meant to be. It’s not good for it to be.”
“And you know this because you’re constantly having spontaneous, explosive sex with strangers?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“There’s no control in it. No sense. We nearly let it get filmed, nearly let the elevator go to the next floor. Neither of us think when sex is involved.”
“Maybe you think too much.”
“And maybe you don’t think enough. You feel, and look where all of that feeling has gotten you.”
Her lip curled into a sneer. “Don’t you dare blame this on me! Don’t you dare act like it was me and my girlish feelings that led us here. That’s far too innocent of a take on it, first of all. Yes, I might have built you up as a hero in my head, but what I wanted that night in New York had nothing to do with you being some kind of paragon and everything to do with me wanting you as a woman wants a man. I didn’t want hearts and flowers, I wanted sex. And that was what I got.