Page 87 of His Savage Ruin
Then I see the envelope in his hand, and my stomach drops through the floor.
He crosses the room in three strides, and leaves the envelope on the bed between us. It lands with a soft thump that sounds too loud in the sudden silence.
"Explain this,principessa."
My hands shake as I reach for it, and I have to force my fingers to close around the paper because every instinct I have is screaming at me to run.
I look at the single sheet of paper inside. The message is short, written in that same looping script that's haunted me for weeks now:
Have you told the man you sleep with what you do to your lovers when you don't need them anymore?
The words blur together as my vision tunnels, black spots dancing at the edges as my lungs forget how to work properly. The sheet slips from my numb fingers and floats down to land on the tangled sheets between us, innocent white paper that might as well be a death sentence.
"Alessia," Matteo's voice cuts through the roaring in my ears, demanding answers I'm not ready to give. "What have you not told me?"
I can't speak. Can't force words past the constriction in my throat, can't do anything except stare at that paper and feel the last few weeks of lies and performance finally catching up with me. Someone knows what I did, what really happened that night, and they're going to destroy me with it.
"Alessia." He steps closer, and I flinch back instinctively before I can stop myself. The movement makes something flash across his face—hurt, maybe, or anger that I'd think he would hurt me now after everything. "Talk to me. What does this letter mean?"
My throat closes around any possible response, and all I can do is shake my head because the truth is too big and too terrible to fit into words. The fear is a living thing crawling up from mystomach into my chest, squeezing my lungs until every breath feels like drowning.
But then I look at his face—really look at it—and see past the anger to the concern underneath. This man has protected me, fed me, kept me safe even when he had every reason to use me as a pawn and nothing more. He's touched me with gentleness I never thought I'd experience, made me feel things I didn't know I was capable of feeling.
And if someone else knows the truth, if my secret is going to come out anyway and destroy everything, then he deserves to hear it from me first. Even if it means he will never look at me the same way again. Even if it means losing whatever tentative trust we've built between us.
Even if he never forgives me, he deserves to know.
"I need to tell you something," I hear myself say, and my voice sounds strange and distant like it's coming from underwater. "Something I should have told you before, but I was too afraid."
Matteo goes very still. "What is it?"
My hands twist together in my lap, nails digging into my palms hard enough that I'll have crescent-shaped bruises tomorrow, but the pain helps ground me enough that I can force the next words out. "The night Lorenzo died, I told the Morettis it was an attack by unknown enemies."
"I know that," Matteo says carefully, his eyes never leaving my face.“And they went after me.”
"It's a lie." The confession tears out of me, raw and terrible and liberating all at once. "There were no unknown attackers. No one broke into the house that night."
The silence that stretches between us is too heavy. I force myself to meet his gaze even though everything in me wants to look away, wants to hide from the judgment I'm terrified I'll see there. My whole body is shaking now, trembling so hard I can hear my teeth chattering, but I make myself say the words that will either save me or damn me completely.
"Ikilled him." The admission hangs in the air between us, stark and undeniable.
Matteo's face goes completely blank, all expression draining away until he looks carved from marble. He doesn't move, doesn't speak, just stares at me like he's seeing me for the first time and trying to reconcile this new information with everything he thought he knew.
The silence stretches so long that I start to panic, start to think maybe I've made a terrible mistake by telling him, maybe I should have kept lying and taken my chances with whoever's been sending these letters. But then he moves, sinking down onto the edge of the bed slowly like his legs have suddenly stopped working properly.
"Say that again," he says quietly, and the soft tone is somehow more terrifying than if he'd shouted.
"I killed my husband." My voice cracks on the words, but I force myself to keep going. " It was me. I'm the one who killed Lorenzo Moretti and then blamed you."
CHAPTER THIRTY
Alessia
Two months earlier
I hear the front door slam hard enough to rattle the windows in their frame and I smell expensive whiskey and Lorenzo's cologne. My stomach clenches immediately because I know that sound. I know what it means when he comes home angry and drunk and looking for something to take his rage out on.
I'm in the bedroom when he finds me, standing by the window in my nightgown. The smart thing would be to pretend I'm already asleep, to curl up under the covers and hope he passes out in his study like he sometimes does when he's had too much to drink.
