Chapter Four

The words hung in the air like glass — fragile, trembling.

Alessandro blinked, once, twice, completely thrown off guard. For a man who controlled everything — from billion-dollar deals to the temperature of a room — he looked… human for a moment. Vulnerable. Speechless. His body leaned back slightly, a reflexive recoil.

Sienna mistook his shock for hesitation — and mistook hesitation for hope. So she pressed on, her voice trembling but determined.

“As you well know, after my grandfather’s passing… maybe even before… he’s going to retire and make me chairman of his company,” she said, as though she were pitching a business deal rather than pleading for love. 

“Hudson Industries is one of the top manufacturing companies in the country, and if you marry me… it’ll be yours.”

She swallowed hard. The words felt wrong leaving her lips, but she couldn’t stop. She told herself love demanded risk — even the humiliating kind. Her pulse pounded in her ears. 

She wasn’t sure what terrified her more — his silence or the possibility that her offer might actually disgust him.

Hudson Industries had been valued at a hundred billion euros the previous year, with quarterly revenues exceeding a hundred and fifty million. It was an empire men would sell their souls to own.

But Alessandro Guidotti wasn’t just any man — he already owned empires. His kind didn’t get trapped. They did the trapping.

He listened in silence, his expression neutral — too neutral. Inside, he’d already made his decision. He didn’t need Hudson Industries. He didn’t need a woman’s love wrapped in gold paper and tied with desperation.

Sienna was kind, beautiful even, and she understood the nature of his work. She never demanded more than he was willing to give — and yet, this was exactly why he couldn’t stay. Six months had been too long already. He’d broken his own rule.

“Sienna, I…” he began.

“And my mother’s estate,” she rushed out, her voice shaking. “It’s valued at three hundred million euros. It can be yours too.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I… I love you, Alessandro. I love you so much.”

His eyes hardened. The softness she’d once believed lived there was gone, replaced by a cold finality that pierced through her hope.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said stiffly. His tone was composed, rehearsed — the voice of a man who’d had this conversation before. “But I don’t love you. And I never will.”

Her lips parted, a whisper of disbelief escaping her. “I—”

“It’s my fault,” he cut in sharply, his tone clipped, controlled. “I’m sorry I led you on. It wasn’t my intention to hurt you.”

A brittle laugh escaped her, shaky and broken. “We never intend to hurt people,” she said quietly, “but we do anyway.”

“You know I don’t do this,” he said after a pause, frustration edging into his voice. “See someone for this long. I—”

“That ought to mean something, right?” she asked hopefully, clinging to the remnants of their time together.

“No,” he replied without hesitation. “It doesn’t.”

Each word was a blade, precise and merciless.

“Look, Sienna,” he continued, standing his ground as her heart crumbled before him. “You’re an amazing woman. Any man would be lucky to have you in his life. But I’m not that man. Not for you, or for anyone else.”

Sienna tried to hold it in, but her composure shattered. The tears came fast and fierce, spilling down her cheeks like a storm she couldn’t control. She cried as though her world had cracked in two — because it had.

He didn’t reach for her, didn’t offer comfort, just a neatly folded handkerchief, as if grief were something that could be dabbed away.

“I’m sorry,” Alessandro said as he rose from his chair, his voice calm, distant. “Let’s not… meet again.”

He turned and began to walk away, each step an echo in the hollow space between them.

“Did you… did you even like me?” she called out, her voice trembling.

He stopped as she gripped his wrist, his back still to her. The question hung there, desperate and fragile, and he knew the truth would either set her free or bind her tighter.

He turned just enough for her to see his face — expressionless, detached.

“As much as I liked the other women before you,” he said evenly.

The words struck her like a slap. She let go of him as though his presence burned, turning her face away so he wouldn’t see her break again. She turned away, unable to bear the sight of him walking out — the man she’d loved, the dream she’d built, all dissolving into the soft click of the door closing behind him.

Alessandro didn’t wait. He walked out, the sound of his shoes fading with her hope. Alessandro Guidotti didn’t look back. He didn’t believe in looking back.

As he stepped into the night, he exhaled, his thoughts already drifting elsewhere — to solitude, to silence, to the life he valued most. He had made a promise to himself long ago—a quiet vow whispered in the aftermath of too much pain. He would never love anyone but himself, because love, as he’d learned, meant nothing. 

Absolutely nothing. Someone had taught him that lesson the hard way, and it had branded itself into his mind like a scar that refused to fade. Experience, after all, was the best teacher—cruel, unforgiving, and far too effective.

There were moments when he almost forgot that promise, moments when he caught himself softening. But then the memory would return—the betrayal, the disillusionment—and he’d remember why he built walls so high no one could climb them. It wasn’t pride that kept him detached; it was survival.

Love complicated things — and complication was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Janessa Pierce had been proof of that, her obsession nearly costing him his reputation. Never again.

From now on, he promised himself, no woman would last more than two days in his life. No attachments. No distractions. Just silence — the kind he could control.

As Alessandro handed the valet his ticket, the night air carried a faint chill, the kind that always made him impatient to leave crowded places. His phone buzzed in his jacket pocket, an unfamiliar number flashing on the screen. 

He frowned. He never took calls from numbers he didn’t recognize — too many nuisances, too many ghosts pretending to have something to say. But that night, something in his gut urged him otherwise. Against his better judgment, he answered.

“Who’s this?” he demanded curtly, his tone clipped and cold.

Silence. Only the sound of steady breathing on the other end. The kind of silence that wasn’t empty — it was deliberate, calculated. His jaw tightened. He’d dealt with stalkers before, obsessive investors, rivals who thought threats made them powerful. It wasn’t worth his time.

“I’m hanging up,” he said, irritation threading through his voice.

A voice, distorted and low, finally broke through. “Goodbye, Alessandro Guidotti.”

Then — click. The line went dead.

For a heartbeat, he stood still, the echo of his name hanging in the air like smoke. He slipped the phone back into his pocket, mentally brushing it off. Paranoia wasn’t his style. He’d been taught not to flinch — not even when the world tried to make him.

But fate had other plans.

Two things happened at once — his car rolled to a stop in front of him, the golden lights from the chandelier hanging above the porte-cochère casting a soft glow over the entrance. 

The light caught the sleek curves of his silver Lamborghini, making it glimmer like liquid mercury beneath the night sky.

And then another black car glided up beside it. The passenger window slid down halfway, smooth and silent.

In that fraction of a second, Alessandro’s instincts screamed, but not fast enough.

All he saw was the glint of steel, the cold eye of a gun, a masked face — then two deafening shots shattered the night.

He hit the ground hard, warmth spreading across his shirt as the world tilted out of focus. The sounds around him blurred — footsteps, shouting, the sharp scent of burning rubber.

And as he lay there, the last thing that flickered through his fading consciousness wasn’t fear, but memory — Joelle’s tear-streaked face haunted him—the way her small palm had pressed helplessly against the orphanage window, fingers splayed against the cold glass as if she could still reach him. As if she could still stop them from taking him away.

He had never forgotten that moment. Not the tears streaming down her face. Not the silent plea in her eyes. Not the way he had done nothing—because he had been a child, because he had been powerless, because he had been chosen and she had not.

For years, he had buried her in the deepest part of himself, beneath the name they had given him, beneath the man he had forced himself to become. Alessandro Guidotti did not look back. Alessandro Guidotti did not need anyone.

But Joel had.

And sometimes, in the quiet hours of the night, when the world was still and the past crept in uninvited, he wondered if she had hated him for leaving. If she had believed his promise had been a lie.

For once in his life, he found himself praying—for something that had nothing to do with power, money, or revenge. He prayed he wouldn’t die without seeing her face again. Just once. Just long enough to know she had survived. Just long enough to know she was alright.