CHAPTER 16

Jamie didn’t remember how he got back to his room.

Only that at some point, Matteo was there.

Sitting on the edge of the bed. Not touching him. Not speaking.

Just there.

Jamie’s body shook under the blankets, breath uneven, eyes staring at the wall like it might open up and swallow him whole.

Matteo finally spoke. “You saw something you weren’t meant to.”

Jamie flinched.

“I’m sorry" Matteo continued quietly. “Not for what you saw. For how you saw it.”

Jamie turned his head slowly. Matteo’s face wasn’t smug. Wasn’t cruel. If anything, he looked… tired.

“You had killed him,” Jamie whispered.

“Yes.”

Jamie’s throat burned. “Did it feel good?”

Matteo’s jaw tightened. “No.”

Silence stretched between them.

“I don’t enjoy it,” Matteo said after a moment. “Neither does Enzo.”

Jamie laughed weakly, hysterical. “You expect me to believe that?”

Matteo looked at him then, really looked at him. “Do you think men like us get to choose what we enjoy?”

Jamie had no answer.

Matteo stood. “Sleep. You’ll need it.”

Jamie grabbed his wrist before he could stop himself. The contact felt dangerous, electric.

“Am I going to die?”

Matteo’s eyes softened—just a fraction. “No.”

“Promise me.”

Matteo hesitated.

“I promise you this,” he said finally. “You are alive because we want you alive.”

That wasn’t comforting.

Jamie stopped eating after that.

Food tasted like ash. Sleep came in fragments, broken by dreams of echoing rooms and Greg’s voice calling his name.

Lucas noticed.

“You’re acting weird,” Lucas said one afternoon, sitting beside him on the terrace. His ankle was finally free of the brace, healed enough that he’d been itching to explore again. “You okay?”

Jamie forced a smile. “Jet lag.”

Lucas frowned. “We have been here for almost a month.”

Jamie opened his mouth to say something—anything—but footsteps approached.

Enzo appeared, hands clasped behind his back. “Lucas,” he said warmly. “I hear you’re ready to walk again.”

Lucas brightened. “Yeah, actually—”

Jamie’s chest tightened.

Every conversation ended like this. Every moment alone cut short.

When Enzo walked away with Lucas, Jamie stayed frozen, nails digging into his palms.

He thought of California.

The noise. The freedom. The way danger there felt random, not deliberate.

That night, Jamie made a decision.

He was leaving.

He tried to plan.

Tried to think through logistics. Passports. Flights. Timing.

But fear clogged every thought.

Then he noticed her.

A maid lingering too long outside his door. Watching. Listening.

Her name, he learned later, was Rosa. She didn’t speak to him—but she wasn’t the suspicious one.

Greg had been.

And now Greg was gone.

Jamie cornered another servant in the hallway. “Who replaced Greg?”

The servant hesitated before replying. “There is no one named Greg.”

That was when Jamie understood.

People didn’t get replaced here.

They got erased.

Lucas confronted him the next morning.

“You’re not eating. You’re not sleeping. You flinch every time someone walks in the room,” Lucas said, voice low. “What happened to you?”

Jamie swallowed hard. “I think we should go home.”

Lucas stared at him. “What?”

“California,” Jamie said quickly. “Now. Today.”

Lucas laughed once, confused. “You dragged me here. You begged me to stay. You said this was our last chance to be reckless.”

“I was wrong.”

Lucas’s face fell. “Jamie—”

Footsteps.

Matteo appeared in the doorway.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” he said calmly.

Jamie felt sick.

Lucas forced a smile. “We were just talking.”

“Yes,” Matteo said. His eyes flicked to Jamie. “I know.”

Jamie’s heart dropped.

Later that night, Matteo found Jamie alone on the balcony.

“You’re spiraling,” Matteo said.

“You had killed Greg. In front of me. I have never seen a dead person until I met you!” Jamie snapped.

Matteo didn’t deny it. “Greg made a choice.”

“So did I,” Jamie said shakily. “The second I came here.”

Matteo stepped closer.

“The second you walked onto my beach,” he corrected softly, “you became part of something much bigger than yourself.”

Jamie whispered, “You think you own me.”

Matteo didn’t answer.

Which was worse.

Jamie chose midnight because fear was loudest then.

Because the mansion slept in shifts, and because Matteo—dangerously, foolishly—trusted him most when the lights were low and the world felt intimate.

He left Lucas a note slipped beneath his door, written in careful, shaking handwriting.

Meet me at the cove. Midnight. Don’t tell anyone. Trust me.

Jamie re-read it three times before he moved. 

Determined

Matteo was in his room when Jamie arrived.

Shirt unbuttoned as always, sleeves rolled, the faint scent of whiskey clinging to him like habit. He looked up when Jamie entered, surprise flickering briefly before being replaced by something softer. Something dangerous.

“You’re awake,” Matteo said.

“So are you,” Jamie replied.

Matteo studied him. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

Jamie forced himself to step closer. He had rehearsed this—every movement, every breath. “Maybe I wanted I realised something now.”

That did it.

Matteo’s restraint cracked not with hunger, but with conflict. Jamie could see it in the way his jaw tightened, the way his fingers flexed like he was bracing himself against something inevitable.

“This is a mistake,” Matteo murmured standing to leave the room

Jamie reached for him anyway.

“Stay.”

Matteo exhaled sharply, like a man stepping off a cliff.

He sat beside Jamie on the bed who moved closer to him.

“ I thought you were scared of me?” he asked his voice gruff.

Jamie placed a hand over Matteo’s bicep and clung to him.

“Make me forget. Please...” Jamie didnt finish his sentence. He couldnt.

He kissed Jamie like he was afraid to break his fragile mental state—controlled at first, then desperate, as if he could erase the tension that had been building for days. Jamie let himself melt into it, let Matteo think this was consent, want, choice.

I’m sorry, Jamie thought, even as he deepened the kiss.