CHAPTER TWO

Chapter Two

Matteo POV

Something was wrong with my bride.

I had known it since the start of the ceremony.

It was not a feeling — I didn't deal in feelings, I dealt with facts — and right now the facts didn't quite line up.

But I was almost certain she was not my bride.

It was in small things, the way she held her bouquet too tightly, knuckles white against the white roses. The fraction of a second's delay before she turned when the priest addressed her by name.

Her frame was smaller, not enough that it couldn't be explained away, but like I had said, it was the small things.

I was a man who was good at reading people. I had spent the better part of my early twenties learning to spot a liar, reading the body language of people who were pretending.

So I was sure I was good at it. And while my bride hadn't spoken a word to me beyond the ceremonial ones, which on its own wasn't unusual — Isabella DeLuca had made clear during our engagement negotiations that she had no interest in performing warmth she didn't feel.

It was a choice I had respected.

And, frankly, it was one of the few things about the arrangement I found tolerable.

It also meant I had a pretty good idea what kind of woman she was — not sentimental and so definitely not the woman who still had her veil on after insisting firmly that it was family tradition for the husband to unveil the bride on the wedding night.

Now we were alone.

The room was quiet, and the last of my men had retreated behind closed doors.

It was just the two of us standing on opposite sides of a suite that smelled of white roses and expensive candles burning low.

I looked at my bride across the space between us, and I made a decision.

I would give her enough rope to hang herself.

"You look tired," I said conversationally.

"The flowers were a good choice, by the way. The roses. You mentioned at dinner in February you wanted something that didn't smell like a funeral."

She turned toward the vanity mirror, adjusting something at her collar.

"Thank you."

"You hated the ones your father suggested. Lilies, wasn't it?"

A beat. Very small.

"Yes."

It was the right answer. I had expected the right answer — whoever had prepared her had done thorough work.

I poured myself a drink from the decanter on the side table and kept my back partially to her, which was an invitation to relax.

People made their worst mistakes when they thought you'd stopped paying attention.

"For the honeymoon hotel, what do you think of Lake Como?" I said.

"I have been there once, and I never want to go back. It was —" she hesitated, and then huffed.

"Overpriced," she muttered.

Also correct. I took a slow sip of the whiskey.

"Ah yes, I remember you mentioned that once," I mumbled, setting the glass down.

"My mistake."

I turned to face her fully now, because the next question required me to watch her hands, her shoulders, every single move she made. Now they would count against her.

"We agreed on something before the engagement — a private arrangement, separate lives, no questions asked, so long as appearances were maintained. You said—" I paused, watching her carefully —

"…that the only thing you required was full access to the Milan accounts. Your words."

Her fingers twitched on the dress. Her spine straightened. 

The silence stretching one second too long.

She recovered quickly, I'd give her that. 

"Of course," she said.

But the damage was done.

There had been no agreement. Isabella DeLuca and I never discussed the Milan accounts.

The real condition? Neither of us was required to perform affection in private.

 “Keep the evenings my own, and I’ll keep yours,” Isabella had said. 

She was pragmatic and ruthlessness. I had found it almost admirable, privately.

Whoever this woman was, while she knew intimate details about Isabella, she was clearly out of depth — working from a briefing, and that briefing had a gap in it.

I crossed the room.

Not quickly — I didn't move quickly when I was angry. Speed barely gave the opponent time to feel the direness of the situation they were in. She heard me coming and turned, and I watched her chin lift the way people lift their chin when they are trying to look unafraid and hadn't quite managed it.

I took her by the throat and felt her go rigid.

The veil slipped off her face.

It caught for a moment on the pins in her hair, then gave, sliding sideways and falling to the floor in a whisper of ivory fabric, like a curtain parting.

And I was staring into the eyes of my supposed bride.

She drew a sharp intake of breath and stiffened even further.

My thumb below her jaw, my fingers curved along the side of her neck — using more than a little pressure over it.

I wanted her complete and undivided attention, and my time of asking for it politely had run its course.

I ran my fingers over the surface of her skin as I examined the woman in front of me. I felt something settle in my chest with cold certainty.

I had met Isabella DeLuca twice. I knew the architecture of her face the way you knew the face of a woman you had spent hours at a time with.

High cheekbones. A particular severity around the mouth that softened when she was amused and hardened when she wasn't.

This was not that face.

She was not Isabella 

Similar. Close enough that it had survived a church full of people and a three-hour reception. But not the same.

My hand didn't move.

"Who are you?" I said.

She stared up at me, breathing carefully, and said nothing.

"I won't ask again."