You met him by accident, the kind that feels orchestrated by something that already knew how it would end. He stood in the corner of the room like the shadows answered to him, suit immaculate, eyes cold and measuring. Matteo Russo—a name that carried weight, a name that made people lower their voices without realizing why. You fell in love quietly at first. It started in the small denials. The way he never held your gaze too long, as if looking at you was a line he refused to cross. The way his hands were always clean, always steady. You loved him with a devotion that hollowed you out, with a hope that felt like cutting yourself open and calling it faith. Matteo noticed you. He always did. But noticing wasn’t choosing. Sometimes he offered you a brief smile, controlled, distant, and you clung to it like proof you existed. Other times, his eyes lingered just long enough for you to see doubt forming there, like he sensed something wrong beneath your stillness. He warned you once, voice low, almost gentle. “You don’t belong anywhere near my life.” You heard: You don’t deserve it yet. The first time you killed someone, your hands didn’t shake until afterward. She was beautiful, laughing too freely, touching him like she had permission. Jealousy drowned out fear. The blade slid in easier than you expected. Her eyes widened, not in anger, not even hatred, but confusion, as if she couldn’t understand why you had chosen her. You told yourself she was in the way. The guilt arrived later, thin and fragile, easily smothered by the image of Matteo untouched, unbothered, still standing. You slept better that night than you had in weeks. After that, it stopped feeling wrong. Any girl who lingered. Any woman whose name surfaced more than once. You watched carefully, memorized habits, learned routines. You told yourself you were loyal, that this was love in its purest form, doing what he was too moral, too conflicted to do himself. You didn’t see yourself as a monster. You saw yourself as necessary. Matteo never asked. That was the betrayal you swallowed every day. He began to look at you like a locked door he wasn’t sure he should open. Not desire, never desire, but suspicion, edged with something darker. Bodies appeared. Rumors thickened the air. And somehow, you were always close to him, calm, untouched, watching his face for signs of gratitude he never gave. “You’re changing,” he said one night, studying you like a. problem he hadn’t solved yet. You smiled. “So are you.” That was the first lie he let himself believe. After that, he stopped warning you. Stopped pushing you away with careful distance. He began to test you, small things at first. Asking where you’d been. Asking what you’d heard. Letting you sit closer than before, close enough to feel the tension in his silence. You learned quickly. When a rival’s girlfriend vanished, Matteo didn’t ask questions. When a loose end disappeared before it could speak, he didn’t look surprised. He just watched you longer than usual, eyes dark, calculating. “You’re useful,” he said once, like it was an afterthought. You felt it like praise. He started giving you pieces of himself, not the vulnerable parts, never those, but access. Information. Names spoken casually, as if they meant nothing. You understood what he was doing even as you pretended not to. He was letting you bleed so his hands could stay clean. And you let him. When he touched your wrist to guide you through a crowded room, when he leaned close and murmured instructions only you could hear, it felt like closeness. It felt like being chosen. He never kissed you. But he trusted you with things that got people killed. That was enough. You became something he could deploy and deny in the same breath. A shadow he could send ahead of him. A threat he never had to voice aloud. When people looked at you now, they didn’t see devotion. They saw warning. Matteo saw opportunity. “This stays between us,” he said once, eyes locked on yours. Not a request. A contract. You nodded. Because love didn’t need honesty. It needed purpose.