Chapter 13: The Other Girl
The silence after the call didn’t last. By noon the next day, it was shattered.
You tried. You made coffee, you answered work emails, you took Mercutio to the vet for his shots. But your phone was a live wire in your pocket. Twitter trends, Instagram mentions, the gossip sites—their gravitational pull was immense. You lasted until three PM, sitting in a café, the chai latte turning to clay in your mouth. You opened one. Then another.
The headline was brutal in its simplicity: ‘ROSSI’S ROMAN HOLIDAY: Star Spotted Canoodling with Model/Actress Chiara Moretti Days Before London Fixture.’
There were pictures. Grainy, but clear enough. A rooftop restaurant in Rome, strings of lights. Matteo, leaning back in his chair, smiling that easy, public smile. Across from him, a stunning woman with a cascade of dark hair, leaning forward, her hand resting near his on the table. Another shot, captured from a distance, showed him laughing, his head thrown back. She was touching his forearm.
The article was worse. It quoted “a source close to the couple” saying they’d been seeing each other discreetly for months, that Chiara was “thrilled at how serious it’s becoming,” and that Matteo was “smitten.” It mentioned her new film, his contract negotiations. It wove a perfect, plausible tapestry. It noted his long-standing “aversion to public relationships” and posited that Chiara might be “the one to finally change his mind.”
Your vision tunneled. The café noise faded to a dull roar. You felt your phone vibrate with notifications—friends sending links, asking if you’d seen it. You didn’t answer.
The logical part of your brain recited facts. He warned you. He said it was lies. He said not to let it in your head. But the other part, the raw, gutted part, played the images on a loop. His smile. Her touch. The date on the pictures was last Saturday. Two days after he’d left you in Milan. Four days before he’d made you come apart over a video call.
You went home. You didn’t cry. You felt numb, scraped hollow. You packed for London with mechanical precision, folding clothes into a small suitcase. The black lingerie he’d bought in Milan felt like a relic from another era. You almost left it behind.
His texts came through that evening, dry details: the hotel name, an address for the service entrance, a time. Leo will be at the loading dock at 8:30. Don’t be late. No mention of the story. No reassurance. Just instructions.
The flight to London was a blur of grey clouds and plastic-tasting air. You took a cab to the grand, columned entrance of The Dorchester, where a small crowd of fans and photographers clustered behind velvet ropes, hoping for a glimpse of the team arriving. You kept your head down, gave the driver the alleyway address.
Leo was a burly, silent man in a hotel uniform. He nodded, took your suitcase, and led you through a labyrinth of stainless-steel kitchens, past linen carts and roaring industrial boilers, to a private service elevator. The ascent was silent. He led you down a plush, empty corridor and opened a door with a keycard.
The suite was vast, opulent, and cold. All cream and gold, with a view over the dark expanse of Hyde Park. A bottle of champagne sat in a silver bucket. Two flutes. It felt like a stage set.
You’d been there for twenty minutes, standing at the window, when the main door clicked open.
He entered like a storm. Dressed in a dark, impeccably tailored suit, tie loosened, he carried the energy of the outside world with him—the shouts of the crowd, the flash of cameras, the tension of performance. He saw you, dropped his keycard and wallet on a side table, and didn’t stop walking until he was right in front of you.
“You looked,” he said flatly. No greeting.
“Yes.”
His jaw tightened. He smelled of the night air, of his cologne, and underneath it, something fiercely kinetic. “And?”
“And what, Matteo? You told me not to. I did. I saw the pictures. I read the article.” Your voice was eerily calm.
“It was a business dinner. She’s the daughter of a club director. My agent set it up. The pictures were sold by the waiter.” He spoke quickly, his eyes searching yours for belief. “The touch was her doing, not mine. The quote is from her publicist. It’s fucking noise.”
“It looked real.”
“It’s not.” He grabbed your hand, pressed it hard against the front of his suit trousers. You felt the rigid, thick outline of his erection. “Does this feel like a man who’s smitten with someone else? I’ve been fucking aching since that video call. I walked through a wall of cameras thinking about the taste of you. Nothing else.”
The directness was a shock, a bypass of all argument. You looked up at him. The charm was gone, stripped away. What remained was stark, hungry, and angrily defensive. “This doesn’t prove anything,” you whispered.
“It proves everything,” he snarled. He released you, running both hands through his hair in frustration. “Fuck this. Fuck this room. Come with me.”
He took your hand again, his grip uncompromising, and pulled you out of the suite, back into the corridor. He led you to a discrete, unmarked door, used another keycard, and pushed it open to reveal a narrow flight of stairs leading up. The air grew cooler.
You emerged onto a hidden rooftop terrace, a secret slice of London night sky. It was draped in black wrought-iron railings, strings of bulb lights muted against the deep blue. The city’s neon hum was a constant, low-grade buzz, smothering the sound of your breath catching as the wind hit you. The air smelled of rain-soaked paving stones from a recent shower and, overwhelmingly, of him—espresso, salt, and that expensive, faintly spicy perfume.
He backed you against the cold iron railing, the city sprawling behind you. “No paparazzi up here. No agents. No lies. Just this.” His mouth crashed down on yours. It wasn’t a kiss of affection; it was a claim, a punishment, a desperate proof. You kissed him back with equal ferocity, all the doubt and hurt transmuting into a sharp, physical anger.
His hands shoved your coat from your shoulders. They fumbled with the buttons of your blouse, tearing one free in his haste. “I need to feel you,” he growled against your neck, his teeth scraping your pulse point. “I need you to feel me. So you stop thinking. So I stop thinking.”
You clawed at his suit jacket, pushing it off. He undid his belt and fly with brutal efficiency, freeing his cock, which sprang out, fully hard and flushed. He pushed your skirt up, your tights and underwear down just enough. There was no finesse, no preamble. He hooked one of your legs over his hip, the cold railing biting into your back, and with one hard, driving thrust, he was inside you.
You cried out, the sudden, brutal fullness a shock. He was bigger than your fingers, bigger than memory, stretching you to a burning edge.
“Look at me,” he demanded, his voice ragged. He was still, buried to the hilt, his body trembling with the effort of control. “Look at me and tell me this is a man thinking about another woman.”
Tears pricked your eyes from the sting of the invasion, the emotional tumult. You looked. His face was a masterpiece of agonized need, every muscle taut. “No,” you gasped.
He began to move. Slow, deep, punishing strokes that shoved you back against the railing with each thrust. “This is what’s real,” he hissed, his breath hot on your cheek. “This heat. This tight, wet cunt clenching around my dick. The way you choke when I go this deep.” He drove in harder, hitting a spot that made you see stars. “Tell me you know it.”
“I know it,” you whimpered, your fingers digging into the hard muscle of his shoulders through his shirt.
“Fucking say it louder.”
“This is real!” The shout was torn from you, lost in the city’s hum.
His pace became frantic, a hard, driving rhythm that bordered on violence. The metal railing rattled softly behind you. His control splintered. “Who do you belong to right now?” he grunted, his hips slamming against yours.
“You.”
“And this cunt? Who does it belong to?”
“You! Matteo, please—”
“Come for me,” he ordered, his hand snaking between you, his thumb finding your clit, rough and perfect. “Come all over my cock and prove it. Mark me. Let me feel it.”
The orgasm exploded, a seismic wave that shattered the last of your resistance. You convulsed around him, a raw, guttural scream escaping your throat as the pleasure, sharpened by pain and emotion, wrecked you.
With a final, shuddering roar, he followed. He pulsed inside you, hot and deep, his whole body buckling as he emptied himself, his forehead dropping to your shoulder. He stayed there, buried, his breath coming in ragged gulps against your skin.
Slowly, the world filtered back. The chill of the night air on your sweat-sheened skin. The distant wail of a siren. The feel of him, softening but still intimate within you.
He finally pulled out, a slow, tender retreat that contrasted with the fury of the joining. He gently fixed your clothes, his hands now hesitant. He tucked himself away, fastened his trousers, but left his shirt hanging open.
He leaned on the railing next to you, not touching. The anger had drained, leaving a profound exhaustion. “It will always be like this,” he said quietly, staring at the endless city lights. “The noise. The pictures. The lies. My world… it manufactures them. It eats reality and shits out headlines.” He turned his head to look at you, his eyes dark and unbearably vulnerable. “The only place the real thing exists is in the dark. In hotel rooms. On rooftops. In the silence after. Do you understand?”
You understood. The arrangement wasn’t just about secrecy. It was about carving out a tiny, fiercely guarded space where a truth, however raw and complicated, could live. You nodded, your throat tight.
He reached out, his fingers brushing a tear you hadn’t felt escape from the corner of your eye. “Don’t cry for them,” he whispered. “They don’t get your tears.”
From below, a flash of light erupted—a photographer on a nearby balcony, a long lens pointed vaguely in the direction of the hotel’s glittering facade. They hadn’t seen you. Not here, not in this hidden dark.
But they were always there.
Matteo saw it too. A mask of cool indifference slid over his features, the private man receding. He took your hand, his grip firm. “Come inside. It’s cold.”
He led you back towards the warm, false light of the suite, leaving the real, fragile thing shivering in the dark behind you.