Page 48 of House of Lies
“You’re right. Forget I asked.”
I don’t blame him. I did this to myself. I deluded myself with this idea of happiness, knowing it wouldn’t last. And now I see it. I see where we’re headed, and I can’t allow it. I let him fool me into a false sense of security, forgetting that we would never be equals. I’m simply the woman who warms his bed at night. I’m not his friend. I’m not his confidante. Whatever I felt when we danced was an illusion. Nothing more.
“I will not forget that you asked.” He stands, taking his slacks from the floor. I watch him dress in a hurry. “I’m just thinking that the rules of this marriage are not clear enough for you.”
“Oh, but they are. You started by assaulting me, and then you flipped the page. You gave me back everything you had no right to take from me in the first place, and I’ve fucked you willingly. Damn, I even enjoyed it. But this will never be real between us.”
“Because I’ll never talk business with you or because you can’t forgive me?”
“Both. You’ll never trust me. And I get that. I’ll never trust you either, Mattia. But all we’re doing is trying to make an impossible situation work. But it’s not real. Deep down, we both know it.”
He turns on the lamp on the nightstand. I expect to see anger on his face, but it reveals nothing. It’s more unsettling than it used to be. I can’t decipher whether he’s angry, disappointed, or indifferent.
“So you’re telling me nothing was real over the last few months? Because I was there too, Caelia. You told me you could’ve loved me.”
“I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. I can’t tell anymore. And I could’ve never loved you. I can’t love you.” I shake my head. “It was a lie.”
“Can’t or don’t want to?” he questions.
Both. Is this what he expects from me? Love in exchange for his secrets? I don’t care about his secrets. He can guard them with his life, as he always has. We are two different people. We may be married, but we lead separate lives. Love is not a price I’m willing to pay for his secrets.
“Perhaps we should go back to how things used to be.”
“I can’t fucking believe you right now! Are you seriously saying this to me?”
His words slice through me, and I regret uttering them the moment they escape my lips. It’s a lie—it’s all a lie. It makes no sense. I’m falling for a man who has been so terrible to me—a man who has haunted my nightmares and treated me like garbage for so long. But deep down, I knew it the moment I wanted to go inside after him. I’m falling for him.
“At least back then, things made sense. I knew what to expect. I hate this fucking confusion I’ve been living in these past few months.”
“If this is what you want, then so be it.”
He storms out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
I lie in bed, hoping to fall asleep before I fall apart.
CHAPTER 29
Kaz
I woke up with a pounding migraine. The pain is so intense that I struggle to remain upright, my vision blurring intermittently. My temples throb from within, making it impossible to think clearly. I only managed to sleep for half an hour. I stare at the food on my plate, but my stomach protests. Domenico went to the mansion to change and ensure nothing had gone wrong.
Before I see her, I hear Caelia’s footsteps. She enters the kitchen as if she were a ghost, tiptoeing silently. Our eyes meet, but neither of us speaks. She’s wearing one of my black T-shirts that she must have taken from the closet, and all I can think about is spreading her on the kitchen table and fucking some sense back into her. I own her. Caelia is mine, whether she wants to admit it or not. She can resist it. She can deny it. But she is mine.
“Good morning,” I say, taking the high road as she approaches the fridge without uttering a word.
No answer. She’s so damn stubborn. I don’t trust her. Not her specifically. I don’t trust anyone completely. This is one of my biggest problems. I don’t trust anyone in this life. It’s a trait I inherited from my father. He always said that a woman could make or break a man, something my uncle dismissed with an eye roll.
“Are you sure this is how you want to handle things, Wildfire?”
I rise from my seat, closing the distance between us as she remains unaware. She glances over her shoulder a second too late. I spin her around, slamming the fridge door shut behind her, and trap her with my body.
“How can I say this nicely, Mattia? Go. Fuck. Yourself!”
I remind myself that I am not him as the urge to possess her consumes me. I refuse to press her against the kitchen counter and force myself on her. She has endured enough of that. Perhaps nothing between us over the past few months was genuine, but I never coerced her into anything. I even warned her from the start. I warned her to stay away from me. She played her part well. She wanted more than just biding time to escape. No, she wanted to prove to me that our marriage could have worked if Mattia had given her a chance, and I fell for it—my mistake.
“We can still fix this, Wildfire. We can talk about it.”
I want to trust her, but she’s so fucking unstable. I was right. She’s a wildcard; she's always two steps ahead of me, only because I have been too distracted by her pussy. But she put things into a new perspective last night. She made me reconsider everything she has said and done since I entered her life. And now I understand her game.