The flight across the Atlantic was a suffocating, silent funeral for the version of Anastasia that had dared to believe she was safe.
Matteo didn't speak to her once. He sat across from her in the private cabin, his eyes fixed on a tablet, the blue light carving his features into a mask of cold marble.
Every time she tried to catch his eye, he looked through her as if she were the thing that wounded him the most.
Even though she had spent months wishing to be free of his house, free of his name, free of the suffocation of being Matteo Ramirez's wife, sitting across from him now, watching him detach from her in real time felt worse than captivity.
The betrayal had curdled into something far more dangerous than simple rage. It was a icy resolve.
To Matteo, Anastasia wasn't just a woman who had hidden the truth, she was a strategic failure.
