Chapter Nine: The Mistress In The Newspaper
Three months later, the headline detonated at breakfast.
Mob Boss Keeps Secret Mistress While Seducing His Nephew’s Nanny.
The article included photographs.
A woman leaving Matteo’s penthouse.
A woman in his white shirt.
A woman with dark hair and red lipstick, smiling like she had won something private.
Alara stared at the screen.
The kitchen went silent.
Nico stopped swinging his feet.
Bruno lowered his coffee.
Matteo stood across from her, one hand still in a sling from the gala wound.
His face closed.
Too fast.
Too completely.
Alara looked up.
“Is it true?”
He said nothing.
That was the old wound.
Not the bullet.
Not the knife.
The silence.
It opened her cleanly.
“Matteo.”
His jaw flexed.
Still nothing.
Alara stood.
The chair scraped the floor.
Nico whispered her name.
She touched his hair without looking away from Matteo.
“Not now, sweetheart.”
Matteo flinched.
She saw it.
She hated that she still saw him.
An envelope arrived at noon.
No sender.
Inside were printed photos and a note.
You danced while he slept in another woman’s arms.
Alara read it once.
Then placed it on Matteo’s desk.
He stood by the window.
The same pose as the day he offered to send her away.
“I asked you a question.”
He did not turn.
“Leave it.”
The words were quiet.
They were also unforgivable.
Alara laughed.
A small sound.
Dead at the edges.
“Leave it?”
“For your safety.”
There it was.
Again.
The cage.
She walked to him and stopped behind his shoulder.
“You did not learn.”
His head lowered.
“I learned enough to know this is bigger.”
“You learned nothing.”
He turned then.
His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep.
His face carried pain he had no right to show.
“You think I would touch another woman?”
“I think you would let me believe it.”
That hit harder.
Because it was true.
He looked away.
Alara stepped back.
“Who is she?”
“No.”
“Who is she?”
“Alara.”
She slapped him.
Not hard.
Not like before.
Worse.
Controlled.
Final.
Nico cried out from the doorway.
Alara turned.
He stood there, pale, clutching the ambulance.
Matteo reached for him.
Nico stepped back.
The room fractured.
Alara’s anger went cold.
She knelt.
“Nico, go with Bruno.”
“No.”
His voice shook.
“No leaving.”
Alara closed her eyes.
Then opened them.
“I am not leaving you.”
She looked at Matteo.
“I am leaving this room.”
That was different.
She packed only what she had brought into the mansion.
Her old dress.
Her medical bag.
The note from the first morning.
I’ve already chosen too.
She almost left it.
Then took it.
Not as a keepsake.
As evidence.
At the clinic, Margot listened without interruption.
When Alara finished, the old woman said, “And what did his silence sound like?”
Alara looked at her.
“Guilt.”
“Or fear?”
“They are not opposites.”
Margot nodded.
“No.”
Pippa arrived with takeout and fury.
“I can leak his medical records.”
“No.”
“I can ruin him.”
“No.”
“I can key his car.”
“That one is tempting.”
Pippa sat beside her.
The room smelled of noodles, antiseptic, and humiliation.
Alara looked at the article again.
Something was wrong.
The woman in Matteo’s shirt wore it buttoned wrong.
Left over right.
Men’s shirts did not sit that way unless staged by someone unfamiliar with the garment.
Alara zoomed in.
The cuff hid a hospital bracelet.
Not decorative.
Clinical.
She sat up.
Pippa noticed.
“What?”
Alara enlarged the image.
On the bracelet, four letters were visible.
SORE.
Sorrento.
The rival family.
Alara’s pulse slowed.
The mistress was not a mistress.
She was bait.
And Matteo had chosen silence because he still believed pain could be used as armor.
Alara stood.
Pippa grabbed her wrist.
“Where are you going?”
“To unlock the cage.”
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered.
Greco’s voice purred through the line.
“Did he break your heart properly?”
Alara looked at the photo again.
“No,” she said. “But you just fixed my eyesight.”
