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"You can hate me for the rest of my life, sweetheart. Just open the fucking door." Three months ago, Matteo Arcuri believed undeniable proof that his beloved wife had betrayed him—and made a decision he can never take back. Now he has discovered the devastating truth: you were innocent. Worse, the man Matteo trusted to make you disappear quietly gave you a chance to escape, and after three months of believing you were gone for good, he has finally found you.
Matteo Arcuri had loved you for years before he ever married you. Four years into the marriage, you were still the one person who could make the feared head of the Arcuri family soften without trying. You knew the version of Matteo nobody else did—the man who slept badly unless you were beside him, remembered how you took your coffee, and could walk out of a room full of enemies without blinking only to complain because you had stolen his side of the bed. "Handle it." Which was why the evidence destroyed him. Messages. Bank transfers. Meeting records. Information that could only have come from someone close enough to know the inner workings of his organization. Everything pointed toward you feeding information to one of his enemies, and by the time the file reached Matteo’s desk, the case looked airtight. He should have asked. That was the thought that would come to haunt him more than anything else. But Matteo had spent his entire life learning that betrayal was fatal when hesitation was involved, so he made the decision like a Don instead of a husband. He called his underboss, Nico Cavalieri, into his office, pushed the file across the desk and gave an order he couldn’t take back. Nico stared at him. "Matteo—" "Don’t." His voice was cold enough to end the conversation. "Just fucking handle it." That was the last night Matteo saw you. Nico returned hours later and told him it was done. For three months, Matteo lived with that sentence. He kept working because there was nothing else to do. Ate when someone put food in front of him. Slept occasionally. He refused to enter their bedroom for almost two weeks because your clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe and your things stayed scattered around the house as if you might come through the door at any moment. He never moved any of it. Then the real traitor was caught. It began with one discrepancy in an account that shouldn’t have existed, then another. Within hours, Matteo’s men had uncovered something far larger. The messages attributed to you were manufactured. The bank transfers had been routed through accounts created in your name. The meetings never happened. Every piece of evidence had been carefully built to make Matteo believe the woman he loved had betrayed him. You had been innocent. Matteo read the report once, then again. By the third time, the words had stopped making sense. "No." He shoved away from the desk so violently his chair hit the wall. "Check it again." "We did." "Then fucking check it again." "It’s real." Something inside Matteo broke. The glass in his hand shattered against the wall. Papers disappeared from his desk with one sweep of his arm, a chair overturned, and suddenly the terrifyingly controlled Don was standing in the middle of the wreckage struggling to fucking breathe. "I killed her." Nico’s expression changed. "I fucking killed her." Matteo sank into the chair behind him, one hand covering his mouth as every ordinary memory became another weapon against him. You smiling across the kitchen. Asleep beside him. Saying his name. He had spent three months grieving you, and now he knew he’d never given the woman he loved the chance to say she was innocent. "Matteo." Something in Nico’s voice finally made him look up. "There’s something you need to know." Nico swallowed. "I didn’t do it." Matteo stared at him. "What?" "I couldn’t." Nico held his gaze. "She’s alive." For several seconds, Matteo didn’t move. Then he stood so quickly the desk shifted beneath his hands. "Where?" "I gave her money, documents and a way out. She made me promise I’d never tell you." "Where is she, Nico?" "No." Matteo crossed the room, fury flashing through the devastation on his face. "I am asking you once." "And I’m telling you no. You made your decision without giving her a choice. I’m not taking another one away from her." Matteo looked like he might kill him. Instead, after a long silence, he stepped back. Because Nico was fucking right. That didn’t stop Matteo from finding you anyway. It took nineteen days. A different name, another city, a small apartment in a quiet neighborhood where nobody knew the woman living upstairs had once been married to Matteo Arcuri. At 2:13 in the morning, Matteo stood outside your door. He’d faced armed enemies without feeling half as afraid as he did staring at that cheap piece of painted wood. His hand lifted, stopped, then finally knocked. When nothing happened, he knocked again, quieter this time. "Sweetheart." His voice nearly failed him. "It’s me." Matteo rested his forehead against the door, eyes closing. "You can hate me for the rest of my life, sweetheart." His hand curled against the wood. "Just open the fucking door."