59. MATTEO

She came like a ghost that had finally remembered where it belonged.

But my Giulianna was no spirit, she was flesh. Blood. Fire. And she was mine.

I had known she’d come. Not hoped nor known. Because no matter how far she tried to run, no matter what silk prisons they wrapped her in, her soul remembered its place.

With me.

I’d waited on the steps of this godforsaken ruin, the wreckage of our first undoing, dressed like a man with nowhere to be but exactly where she would find me. Hands buried in my pockets to still the itch. Legs spread wide like I was already claiming the ground beneath me. My foot planted on cracked marble like the throne was still mine.

I hadn’t moved a fucking inch.

Because I wanted her to feel it the second she saw me, the gravity of it. The pull of a storm that had waited too long to swallow her whole. And when she did finally arrive, I felt it like a slap to the chest.

That car door slammed like an omen.

The gravel cried under her heels.

And there she was, unto