The Obsession

The longest Night

Chapter Thirteen – The Longest Night

The silence of the villa pressed in on her like a weight.

Isabella paced the length of the room, her bare feet whispering across the silk rug, her heart still hammering from the failed escape. Every time she closed her eyes, she felt Matteo’s arms around her again—strong, unyielding, dragging her back from the edge.

She hated him. She hated herself more for remembering the heat of his body, the steady rhythm of his breath against her ear.

Her reflection in the mirror startled her: hair tangled, cheeks flushed, eyes wide with fury and something she couldn’t name. She looked like a stranger. A woman caught between terror and desire.

“No,” she whispered fiercely to the glass. “I will not break. I will not want him.”

But the villa didn’t care. The roses in the vase seemed to lean toward her, mocking her with their lush beauty. The sea breeze through the balcony curtains carried the faintest trace of his cologne, as though he lingered even in the air she breathed.

Hours dragged on. She curled up on the bed, but sleep refused to come. Every sound—footsteps in the hall, the creak of wood—made her flinch. Was it him? Would he come back?

At one point, she rose and threw the roses against the wall, watching them scatter like fallen blood. The sight gave her a brief, hollow satisfaction. But when she sat back down, the emptiness returned.

By dawn, her throat was raw from silence, her body aching from tension. She hadn’t slept. She hadn’t eaten. Her anger burned bright still, but beneath it pulsed something darker: the terrifying awareness that Matteo Ricci wasn’t just invading her life.

He was invading her.

And as much as she swore she would fight him, a quiet, poisonous voice whispered in her mind: What if part of you already belongs to him?

She crushed her head into the pillows, smothering the thought, smothering everything.

Tomorrow—no, today—she knew he would come. With answers. With his impossible demands. With rules.

And when he did, she would be ready to hate him. She had to be.