Page 53 of His Savage Ruin
Hours pass like this. I try to read one of the books Isabella lent me, but the words blur together until they're meaningless. I sit on the edge of the bed, then stand, then pace again. My body vibrates with too much of everything—too much anger, too much guilt, too much unspent energy that doesn't know where to go.
The door swings open without warning and Isabella strides in and shuts it firmly behind her. I’m surprised that she didn’t knock or ask permission but I’m happy to see her all the same.
Her eyes sweep over me once, taking in my disheveled appearance, my pacing, the way I'm hugging my arms around myself. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
A hollow laugh escapes before I can stop it. "More like the devil."
Her mouth twists into something that might be a smile under different circumstances. "Same thing in this house."
I sink onto the edge of the bed, pulling my knees up to my chest. I feel exposed even though I'm fully dressed, like she can see everything that happened in that hallway written on my skin. "He made Romeo cut off his own finger because of me."
Isabella's expression doesn't soften the way I expect. If anything, it sharpens, goes harder around the edges. "Then Romeo was lucky it was only a finger."
I stare at her. "Lucky? Isabella, he's maimed. He'll never?—"
"He's alive." She folds her arms across her chest, voice clipped and steady. "You don't understand what it means to cross Matteo. He's not just my brother. He's Il Diavolo, Alessia, a Don. You should know best that he needs to be like that. Men like Emilio Moretti would destroy him—would destroy all of us—if he showed weakness today or any day."
The name stops my breath in my chest. "Emilio?"
Isabella's gaze flickers. Just for a second, but I catch it—hesitation, like she's said something she didn't mean to reveal.
She doesn't answer.
"Tell me." I set my feet on the floor, lean forward. "Isabella, tell me what you meant."
“It’s nothing. You know how the men in this world behave. He can’t show weakness.”
“No,” I cut her. “You meant something specific. Why did you say “today or any day?”
"God, my brother will kill me,” she glances toward the door before lowering her voice. “Matteo's gone to meet with him."
The words hit like a fist to my sternum and my lungs forget how to work. "He's what?"
"He didn't want you to know." Something softer enters her expression now, almost like regret. "He told me it wasn't your concern. I..." She trails off, shaking her head. "I shouldn't have said anything."
Not my concern. The rage that floods through me is so sudden and sharp it makes my vision tunnel. My body, my fake pregnancy, my life being used as leverage—and he thinks I don't deserve to know he's walking into a meeting with the man who would see me dead the second he learns the truth?
My hands fist in the bedsheets. "He's insane."
"He's Matteo." Isabella's words come out sharp, but there's something else woven through them—loyalty, affection, fear all tangled together. Her jaw tightens and I can see it in the set of her shoulders, the way her arms pull tighter across her chest. She's terrified for him. "And if Emilio wants to meet, it's not peace he's after. It's leverage."
My throat closes. "Leverage like me."
Isabella doesn't confirm it, but the silence stretches between us, answer enough.
I press my fists to my temples, wanting to scream but the sound won't come. Instead, my voice comes out as a whisper. "What if he doesn't come back?"
For once, Isabella doesn't answer quickly. Her arms loosen at her sides. Her eyes soften, lose some of that hard edge. But she doesn't offer me comfort. She doesn't lie and tell me everything will be fine.
She just lets the question hang there between us like smoke, thick and choking.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Matteo
The Meridian Hotel looms ahead, its gilt facade dulled by years of New York winters. I don't walk in blind, of course. I’m not an idiot. Enzo and Rafael position themselves twenty paces apart, blending into the flow of polished businessmen and hotel staff like they belong here.
Enzo's ahead with his phone pressed to his ear, every inch the executive taking a call, but I catch the bulge under his jacket and the way his eyes sweep the lobby in calculated patterns. Rafael lingers near the coffee bar, hands in his pockets, casual—but his right hand never strays more than two inches from his piece.
