Burned Out of the Moretti Name Chapter 10

Burned Out of the Moretti Name Chapter 10

I looked at the hand Matteo held out. After a brief pause, I took it.

“Let’s start over,” he said with a small smile. “I’m Matteo Ferri.”

“It’s been a long time.”

Dinner was easier than I had expected.

When my manager stepped away for a moment, he looked at me and said quietly, “There’s something I wanted to tell you myself. I liked you when we were kids. I still do.”

I hesitated, then answered honestly.

“I’m not ready for anything new.” I was pregnant, and whatever happened next, I meant to keep my distance from anything that looked like feeling.

Matteo nodded.

“I know. I’m not asking for anything tonight,” he said. “I just want you to know that if the day ever comes when you are ready, I’d like you to think of me first.”

I hadn’t even opened my mouth when a familiar voice cut across the room.

“She won’t.”

I went still.

When I turned, Lorenzo was standing only a few steps away.

He looked thinner than the last time I had seen him, drawn tight with strain, but his eyes were fixed on

me with brutal certainty.

Matteo rose at once.

I kept my voice flat. “What are you doing here?”

“Seeing you.” His answer came fast. “Sofia, I need five minutes.”

“You’re not getting them.”

Matteo shifted half a step in front of me.

“You heard her.”

Lorenzo looked at him then.

“Move.”

Matteo didn’t.

Lorenzo hit him without warning.

The punch came hard and fast. Matteo hit back. Chairs went over. Glass shattered.

“Stop,” I snapped, already on my feet.

It took two of Lorenzo’s men to pull them apart.

Matteo wiped blood from his mouth. “I’m fine.”

I moved toward him, but Lorenzo caught my wrist.

“You’re leaving with him?”

“You hit him. Of course I am.”

His grip tightened.

“I thought you were dead,” he said, his voice stripped raw. “I stood outside that fire and thought that was

how it ended.”

“This isn’t about one affair,” I said. “It’s about what you allowed.”

“You let Bianca into our life. You let her provoke me, humiliate me, and push until there was nothing left.

And every time, you let it happen.”

“I ended it with her.”

“After I was gone,” I said. “After the fire. After you thought I was dead.”

He had no answer.

“Bianca didn’t ruin this alone. She only showed me what you were willing to tolerate.”

The color thinned from his face.

I pulled my wrist free.

“The fire didn’t kill me,” I said. “But it burned the last of what was left between us.”

He stared at me.

Then his eyes flicked to Matteo and darkened.

“This is what you want?”

“This isn’t about him. It’s about me being done.”

His jaw tightened.

“You expect me to watch you walk away from me and toward someone else?”

“I don’t expect anything from you anymore.”

For a second he said nothing.

Then, very quietly, “That’s where you’re wrong.”

I turned and helped Matteo with his jacket.

This time Lorenzo didn’t touch me.

I thought he was finally going to let me go.

“If you think I’m going to stand by and watch you build a life without me, you still don’t know me.”

A sharp cramp hit low in my abdomen.

For a moment, I couldn’t move.

My hand tightened against the table edge, the fear rising colder than the anger had been.

The baby.

I kept my face still and said nothing, waiting until the pain eased enough for me to breathe through it.

No one noticed.

Then I looked back.

There was blood at his mouth, his face had gone pale, and his eyes were colder now than they had been a

moment before.

“I asked tonight,” he said. “Next time, I won’t.”

The threat sat there between us, clear and deliberate.