Page 227 of Merciless Desires

“Then let me go.”

“I’ll see if my men are available.”

Marcella shook her head. “I don’t want to go with your men. I want to go alone.”

“I’ll take you.”

She scoffed. “I’m not letting you near my family.”

“Who says I haven’t already been near, amorina?”

Marcella ripped her hands from beneath mine. “Vaffanculo!” She snarled and backed up against the headboard. “Stay the fuck away from my family.”

“Our family,” I reminded her, which only pissed her off further. “If you want to visit your family, you will go with me.”

I stood and exhaled slowly, rounding the bed toward the door.

“Come downstairs when you are ready to talk about this further. Until then…you will eat what I make for you, amorina.”

Chapter Seven

MARCELLA

On the ninth day of being in this prison of a mansion, I was sick of re-reading books I had once loved. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a moment to sit down and read an entire book, but it didn’t feel the same as it once had. Not in this house.

Creeping out of my bedroom, I stared up at the two men on either side of the doorframe. They were broad, and they were bored. I wasn’t sure if they were the same men who had been stationed here the day Matteo tossed me on my bed. I hadn’t really been able to see anything through my hair, and I’d been too busy trying to get Matteo to let me go.

One reached for his phone, and I shot forward to grab his arm.

“No. Please don’t call him,” I begged, unsure how this would even play out.

Would they actually listen to me because I was Matteo’s fiancée?

With a slow exhale, he tucked his phone back in his pocket. When I turned to look at the other, he was talking. On the phone. To Matteo.

“Yes, she’s out. I’ll let her know.” He ended the call and faced me with a grim expression. “Mr. Cortese will see you in the den, Mrs. Cortese.”

“Miss Moretti,” I corrected, glaring at the idiot who’d given me away. “I am not his wife yet. Don’t address me as such.”

“Yes, Miss Moretti,” the guard behind me stated in an accent I didn’t quite recognize while the other rolled his eyes.

I didn’t know where the damn den was. I had only seen the foyer, dining room, and my prison cell of a bedroom. As I descended the stairs, I glanced around at all of the green accents in the foyer. All of the new green accents in the foyer.

Matteo had listened. He’d added color.

I didn’t like that. I couldn’t like him, and I’d never love him. He needed to be mean to me. He needed to be distant. That was how it worked. Marriages were rarely happy in our world, and mine would be no different.

Don’t get so damn excited over a shade of green, Marcella.

The black chair where I had been sitting when I first met Matteo now had plush deep green pillows that matched the rug beneath it. It was a start. It wasn’t enough, and it would never be enough, but it was a start.

This house would never be my home.

I could hear the low rumble of my future husband’s domineering voice. I hoped he would never speak to me that way, but if I wanted this to be a loveless marriage, maybe I would need him to.

I pushed further into the home, watching as the greens blended into blues in a gorgeous sunken den with plush black velvet couches. The rug beneath a coffee table with two glasses of wine was soft against my toes and a sleek sapphire, matching the pillows that still had tags on them.

Matteo stood near a floor-to-ceiling window, gazing out at the hazy morning sun. He was in another tailored suit without a jacket; a white button-down clung to a hardened frame below that I wouldn’t mind occasionally feeling when we tried for children.

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