Chapter 10 Ashes And Alliances

• Bella’s POV
• The morning after what happened in the wine cellar should have felt loud. It should have come with blaring alarms, broken glass, and chaos storming through every hallway. But instead... it came in silence.
• A cold, strange, too-quiet silence that wrapped itself around the entire villa like a heavy blanket nobody wanted but couldn’t shake off. It was the kind of quiet that wasn’t peaceful—but tense, stretched, hiding something underneath. Everyone was pretending things were normal, walking and talking like everything was fine. But nothing felt normal anymore. Not the way people looked at me when they thought I wasn’t looking. Not the way the air around Matteo seemed to buzz like a live wire. And definitely not the memory of his mouth on mine. That kiss. That moment.