“You bastard.”
“Yes,” he says with no denial or shame. “I am.”
He tilts his head, studying me as if he can peel back skin and bone and look straight at the worst parts of me.
“But what does that make you,cara?”
The question lands like a slap. Hot tears fill my eyes so fast it burns. But if Lorenzo expects me to collapse, he’s forgotten who I am.
I lift my chin, even as tears spill over. “It makes me a woman you cornered,” I say, my voice shaking with fury. “A woman you lied to. Manipulated. Trapped.”
I step closer before he can recover, close enough that he has to actually look at what he’s done to me—to the tears, the trembling mouth, the hatred blazing through all the wreckage.
“You don’t get to stand there and sneer at me for breaking under pressure you created,” I whisper. “You don’t get to weaponize my worst moment because you don’t like the truth.”
His jaw flexes but I keep going.
“You think this gives you power?” A bitter laugh breaks out of me. “No, Lorenzo. It just proves exactly what kind of man you are.”
His eyes darken. “And what kind is that?”
“The kind,” I say, “who would rather blackmail a woman than face the fact that she still chooses someone else.”
He goes utterly still, and the storm in his eyes turns black. I should probably stop but I don’t.
“You want to know what that makes me?” My tears are falling freely now, but I don’t wipe them away. I want him to see every single one. “It makes me stupid enough to have once loved you.”
His face empties and for one shattering second, I think I see it—see the blow land somewhere deep enough to matter.
“Call Dante,” I say again, quieter now, but steadier somehow. “Or admit this was never about protecting me. It was only ever about possession.”
Lorenzo stares at me for a long moment, so still he barely looks human. Then he says, very quietly, “No.”
I blink at him. “No?”
“No,” he repeats. “You will not be calling him tonight. You will not be going anywhere with him. And you will stop speaking as if this is a negotiation you still control.”
Fresh anger surges through the hurt. “You promised.”
His expression doesn’t change. “And then you told me you were carrying another man’s child.”
My breath catches. He sees it and keeps going, relentless.
“A man,” he says, “who was in an impossible hurry to marry you. A man whose first instinct was not diplomacy, not explanation, but threats. Men. Bloodshed. A private army at the gates.” His voice hardens. “Do you know what that sounds like to me?”
He answers himself anyway. “Guilt.”
The word hangs between us like a blade.
“No,” I whisper.
His eyes flash. “If Dante Russo is the man who had you taken—if he put his hands on you, moved you, drugged you, and then wrapped himself in virtue while he waited to marry you—then this is no longer a private matter between men who dislike each other.” He takes a step closer. “It is war.”
The room seems to shrink around us.
I shake my head, but it feels futile. “You’re wrong.”
“Then prove it.”
