Page 88 of The Kingpin’s Bride

He turned back to me. His eyes were wet and furious and completely unmoored. “My father used to say love was the thing that got men killed in this life. He made sure I learned the lesson young. I watched him put a gun in my mother’s mouth when I was twelve because she wasn’t obedient enough. He made me stay in the room. He told me that was what love looked like when it went wrong. And then he made me help clean it up.”

The confession hung in the air like smoke. I felt the blood leave my face.“So you don’t get to stand there with my cum inside you and tell me you love me. Because if you love me, I will destroy you the same way. I will lock you down. I will watch every door. I will kill anyone who touches you. I will become the exact beast he trained me to be, and I will do it with your name in my mouth the whole time.”

His voice dropped to a whisper that was somehow louder than the shouting. “I am halfway there, Morena. Do not push me the rest of the way.”

I put both hands on his face.

He flinched hard.

“I love you,” I said again, clear and steady. “And I’m not taking it back. So if you’re going to become an animal, you’re going to do it while I’m here. You’re going to do it knowing I see exactly what you are and I’m staying anyway.”

His hands came up and gripped my wrists hard enough to bruise. For a second I thought he might shove me away. Instead he dragged me against him and buried his face in my bare neck.

“You’re going to regret this,” he whispered against my skin, voice completely wrecked. “You’re going to wake up one day and realize you told a killer you loved him and he decided to keep you forever.”

I wrapped my arms around his head and held on. I was holding him when the small voice came from the doorway.

“Rena?”

We both froze.

Camilla stood there in the pink jacket she had fallen asleep in, barefoot, hair a tangled mess, eyes huge and shiny with tears. Her little face was blotchy from crying.

I pulled away from him instantly and dropped to my knees.

“Cami. Come here.”

She ran straight into me. I wrapped her up as carefully as I could, mindful of how little she was. She buried her face in my neck and started crying harder, the quiet, exhausted kind of crying that comes after too many bad nights.

“I had the bad dream again,” she whispered. “The one where the door won’t open and you’re not there.”

“I’m here,” I said, rocking her gently. “I’m right here. You’re safe.”

Matteo hadn’t moved. He was standing where I left him, chest bare, blood on his shirt, looking like a man who had just been ripped out of one world and dropped into another. His eyes were fixed on Camilla like she was something fragile and impossible.

She peeked at him over my shoulder. For a second I thought she might hide again. Instead she sniffled and said, in the smallest voice: “I’m hungry…”

Matteo’s throat worked. He crouched down slowly, the same way he had beside her bed earlier, like he was afraid of scaring her.

I didn’t look at him when I stood. I just shifted Camilla higher against my chest and carried her toward the kitchen like the last five minutes hadn’t happened, like there wasn’t blood drying on his shirt and a confession still hanging in the air like gunpowder.

“Okay,” I said, voice as even as I could make it. “Hungry we can do. What do you want? Toast? Eggs? The cereal with the little marshmallows that I pretend I don’t buy for you?”

She hiccuped against my neck. “The marshmallow one.”

“Of course.”

Matteo moved then. He went to the cabinet like his hands weren’t still shaking, pulled down the box, the bowl, the spoon. He poured too carefully, like the cereal might shatter if he rushed it. Milk last. He set the bowl on the table and pulled the chair out for her without a word. It was a small miracle he had it.

I set Camilla down. She climbed up, small and solemn, and started eating like it was the most important job in the world. Every few bites she glanced at him. Then at me. Then at the doorway, as if checking that it was still open.

Matteo stood a few feet back, arms crossed over his bare chest, jaw locked. The blood on his shirt looked worse under the kitchen light. I caught his eye and tipped my chin toward the hallway.

He didn’t move. I went to him instead.

“Go change,” I said under my breath. “You’re scaring her.”

I put my hand on his forearm. The muscle jumped. “She’s four. She had a nightmare that the door wouldn’t open and I wasn’t there. You standing here looking like you just walked out of a slaughterhouse is not helping. Change. Wash your face. Then come back.”