22
MATTEO
Irealize, as we all head to the study as if we're going to negotiate some business transaction, that the conversation about to take place should have happened a long time ago.
Santos takes the armchair nearest the door. He drops into it with the contained energy of a man who has been running on something uncomfortable all morning and has found sitting down marginally preferable to pacing. He is rolling the watch on his wrist, which is what Santos does when something has gotten past the charm and he is feeling it properly. He wants this done. So do I. Jennifer is thirty meters away and neither of us is built for sitting still when she is not well. Being alphas and billionaires does not make us immune to that. If anything it makes it worse, because we have resources to fix most things and this is not something resources can fix, which neither of us has any patience for.
Tomas settles by the window. Pad open. Glasses on. To make sure that we're all on the same page, he's probably taking notes or recording this session so if she ever comes back, we have proof of what transpired today.
Chiara sits on the sofa across from all of us. Spine straight, hands folded, her tulip scent reaching me across the room in a way that used to arouse me. Now, nothing. She's dressed as if she's a bride at her wedding, in a long flowing white dress, as if she wants us to think about what could have been, with her hair pinned up.
She speaks first, which I expected. Chiara has always led.
"I was afraid," she says. "For the first two years, I stopped treating this like an arrangement and became someone who was fully in it. I loved all three of you." She pauses, takes the pause deliberately, holds it. "Not the same way. Differently. Enough that it frightened me, because I couldn't tell if any of you were in it with me."
Tomas leans back in his chair. His hand goes to his glasses, adjusting lenses that do not need adjusting. He is absorbing something he didn't fully prepare for.
Chiara admitting that she was wrong. I didn't think it was possible for me either, but people change, especially when they are in love.
Shit, is this what is happening with Jennifer? Love.
"Instead of asking," he says, quiet and measured, "you decided."
"Yes," she says.
Santos stops rolling the watch.
"I looked around," Chiara continues, "and all I could see was the three of you. A unit. Complete before I ever arrived." Her eyes move between us, direct and unhurried. "And me? I was there when it suited you. When one of you needed to knot. When you wanted warmth in the house. When it was convenient to have someone loving you." Her voice stays even throughout, which is what makes it land harder than it would if she were angry. "I was never fought for. Never claimed in any way that mattered. Never given the attention I should have beenable to expect. I was an addition. A convenience dressed up as something more."
Santos sits forward in the armchair.
"You should have said that then," he says.
"As far as I'm concerned, we never promised you anything," I say.
"Yeah, but we have emotions. I do. Just because we agreed to something doesn't mean my feelings didn't change after a while. I'd hoped yours would too," she says.
I keep my hands flat on the desk and say nothing yet because some things said quickly become things you cannot take back. My jaw is tight. She is not wrong about what she just said. But there is another part of this conversation that has not happened yet and I intend to have it.
Tomas takes his glasses off.
He looks at them, turns them over once in his hands, puts them back on. Then he shakes his head, slowly.
"She is not wrong," he says. His voice is low and carries the specific quality it has when he has arrived at something uncomfortable and is saying it plainly because that is what Tomas does. "We built something that felt secure and then mistook the walls for strength." He looks at Chiara. "There was room for you. We behaved as though there wasn't, because we had an arrangement."
Chiara looks at him, and she's surprised by his response. Tomas says things once when he is ready, and the fact she wasn't expecting it means that after all the time we spent together, she didn't know us at all.
I push back from the desk.
Not standing. I lean back in the chair and look at her.
"It doesn't mean what you did was right," I say.
Chiara meets my gaze. She does not flinch from it, which I have always respected about her.
"You left," I say. "Without a real conversation. You made a decision about what we felt without asking us what we felt, which is the same failure you are attributing to us, and then you walked out and went to another pack and we spent three years." I stop. Start again, because the next part needs to be accurate. "Not only did you run off with another pack. You sold our secrets. Our business dealings, to make money with your new pack. You betrayed us after we opened our home to you." My voice stays level as I think about the anger and pain I put in a box a long time ago. "You humiliated us, Chiara. On social media, making up stories about us. Coming to board meetings and walking in half naked, claiming we locked you in a kennel. We tolerated a lot more than any alpha would."
"Matteo," Tomas says.