Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Matteo
The air in the bunker is thick with the scent of stale coffee and growing tension. My fifth cup sits untouched on the table in front of me, the surface marred with faint rings from countless others. Nico’s voice cuts through the low hum of the overhead fluorescents, sharp and precise as always.
“We’ve confirmed the charges were military grade,” he says, sliding a file across the table. “Whoever planted them wasn’t playing around.”
I flip open the folder and scan the photos inside—grainy images of debris, scorch marks, and fragments of metal twisted into grotesque shapes. Though I want to look away, I force myself to memorize every detail. My father deserves it.
“And the Russos?” I ask, my voice flat.
Nico hesitates, his eyes narrowing. “There’s chatter that points their way. Nothing concrete but enough to raise flags. If it wasn’t them, someone wants us to think it was.”
Across the table, Dante leans back in his chair, his arms crossed. His face is more somber than usual, and his scowl digs in deeper the longer we sit here.
“We should have a sit-down,” Nico suggests, leaning forward. “We need to know if they’re involved. If this was them, we handle it. If it wasn’t…” He pauses, his gaze cutting to mine.
We can’t afford a war over a misunderstanding.
I rake a hand through my hair, the weight of the decision pressing against the back of my neck, coiling tension there. “Fine. Set it up. But if they’re lying?—”
“They won’t walk out of the room,” Nico finishes for me, his voice like steel.
Dante leans forward, trenches dug into his forehead. “You’d better be goddamn sure you want to play nice with them, Matteo. I’d just as soon burn their entire family tree to the ground.”
I glance at him, catching the flicker in his eyes, layered behind the anger. Not fear—Dante doesn’t fear anyone—but fury, maybe. A need to act.
As our father’s enforcer, he was accustomed to taking swift action, delivering punishing retribution. Being underboss is a more thoughtful, strategic position, and it’s at war with his inherent personality.
“Anything else?” I ask, ready to end this meeting before the tension can boil over. Nico’s advice is one hundred percent the opposite of Dante’s.
“Yeah.” Dante shrugs, leaning forward as he studies me. “I haven’t seen Alessia this week when I’ve stopped by for our meetings. What’s going on there?”
The room goes silent.
Nico shifts and begins to shuffle pictures back into his file.
“Jesus Christ,” Dante mutters, leaning forward. “Don’t tell me you’ve fucked this up already.”
My jaw tightens, the familiar heat of anger rising in my chest. “Mind your own business, Dante.”
“This is my business,” he snaps back. “You’re the Don, Matteo. And you look like shit. Is your head even in the game or are you falling apart over a woman?”
My fists clench under the table, but I force myself to stay calm. “Alessia is my wife.”
“And you’re the head of this family,” Dante shoots back, his voice low and sharp. “We need you here, not chasing after someone who?—”
“Enough.” My voice cuts through the air like a whip, and for a moment, the only sound is the low hum of the ventilation system.
“Protect the family.” Dante stands, his chair scraping against the floor. “If you’ve got issues under your roof, you’re not protecting the family.” He raps his scarred knuckles on the tabletop and looks at me pointedly. “We could have trouble brewing with the Russos, and you’re fucking up with the DeLuca daughter. If you want trouble on two different fronts, you’re an idiot.”
He stalks out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him, leaving me alone with Nico.
“Your brother’s not wrong,” Nico says quietly after a moment. “She needs to come home, and you need to make it happen.”
I glare at him, but he doesn’t flinch. I still can’t believe he was fine with his wife spending the night in a hotel, drinking champagne and ordering room service. A lot of room service. The charge that showed up on my card shocked me. “Don’t start, Nico.”
“Just like you didn’t hold back when it was me and Bella?” His voice is calm, measured, but the edge is unmistakable. “You told me to get my shit together, Matteo. Maybe it’s time you take your own advice.”
I push back from the table, the chair groaning in protest. If I fucking knew how to do that, I would.
Snatching up my coffee, I stalk toward the door.
Instead of following me inside the main house, Nico heads for his vehicle, leaving me alone with my morose thoughts.
Much as I hate to admit it, my underboss and consigliere are right. Maybe I reacted so badly because I know it.
When Nico was having issues with Bella, I was impatient and annoyed with him. How could someone lose their shit over a woman? But now that I’m trying to figure out what the hell is going on with my life, I’m clueless, and worse, helpless.
Fucking annoying.
My whole life, I’ve known what to do. Each decision had been obvious, and once I set my course, I didn’t waver.
Even with Clara, I didn’t hesitate.
I loved her. Madly. Stupidly.
But never recklessly.
I’d considered proposing to her, but when she recoiled from the monster she believed me to be, I chose family and never looked back.
With emotional detachment, I locked the broken pieces of my heart behind my wall of duty, my lesson learned and never forgotten.
The clock on the kitchen wall shows it’s earlier than usual, and misery loves company.
I let Nash know I’m ready to roll, and he ensures my vehicle is brought around.
Instead of heading for the office, I go to my mother’s house.
As if it were weeks ago, she’s in the kitchen, a pot of coffee brewing, espresso on the stove. There’s a spread of food, as if she was ready for a visit from me and Nico, like it was back then.
My heart aches for her.
“Matteo!” Her eyes light up. Even though she smiles, there’s tiredness behind it. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
So who is she expecting? Or is she going through the motions, staying in her routine, as a way of coping?
“I wanted to check on you,” I say, bending to kiss her cheek. “How are you?”
She pours two espressos. “I’m fine, caro. Just…” She looks toward my father’s office. “Tired of the silence, I suppose.”
Until Alessia left, I had no idea how much I’d come to count on her presence. I even miss her bratty, sassy ways. With the way she challenged me, my life was never boring.
I appreciated watching her soak in the bathtub, seeing her marvel at the new growth in the gardens.
In such a short time, she filled parts of my life that I didn’t know were empty. I can’t imagine how my mother is managing without her life partner. At one time, this house had been full: of kids, of visits from his lieutenants and capos, from Roberto, his consigliere before Nico. Laughter, danger. Life .
“I was thinking,” she goes on, offering me a demitasse cup. “Maybe we should start our Sunday dinners again.”
“It’s a lot of effort.” I study her. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“Yes. I need it, Matteo. And I have staff to help, if needed.”
“Lasagna?” I ask.
She smiles, and that pleases me. “How about eggplant for Alessia?”
When I don’t answer right away, she studies me. And maybe my expression betrays me. With a mother’s instinct, she leans back against the counter. “How are you, Matteo?”
“Adjusting. Coping.” Since we don’t have enough information yet, I don’t tell her where we are in the investigation.
“I remember those days. They weren’t easy.”
They couldn’t have been. My father seized power. There had to have been a lot of planning, and I know there was significant bloodshed. Now I wish I’d thought to ask him the details, what made him take the action. He was still a rich man, with businesses of his own. He could have made a different choice.
But could he have?
Protect the family.
That didn’t mean just his wife and children, it extended to aunts, uncles, cousins.
My mother is still considering me. “And how is married life?”
I hesitate. The truth is a weight that’s pressing down on me. But if I am not forthcoming, my mother will know. How she knows, I have no idea. It’s a mother thing, she’s told me in the past. “She’s currently…” I sip my espresso, stalling.
She waits.
“Staying at the Sterling Uptown,” I admit finally.
“Ah. I see.”
No doubt that she does.
“Sit.”
I make a show of checking my watch.
“It’s early. You have time.’
Maybe a conversation with my mother is what I need. Probably that’s why I headed here instead of straight to work.
While I sit at the island, she fills a plate for me.
“She left for a reason.”
Did she? If so, I have no idea what it was.
“Was there a fight?”
As I pick up a piece of bacon, I shake my head. “I left for the Hill Country, and when I returned, she was gone.”
“I see.”
Glad someone fucking does.
“Before that?”
“What do you mean?” I scowl.
“How much time have you spent together? As a couple?”
She was a Mafia wife—an excellent one. More than anyone, she has to know what my life has been like. “I’ve been busy, Mama. With everything going on?—”
“That’s no excuse, Matteo,” she interrupts, her tone firm. “Your father was busy too, but he never let it stop him from showing me I mattered. He made time, Matteo. For me, for the family. The Sunday dinners mattered to me. He’d rather have done something else, I’m sure. Work, probably.” She smiles at the memory. “His morning meetings could have been taken away from the house, at the office maybe. But he chose to be here, with me.”
The information shocks me. I always figured his decision had more to do with security than anything.
“We had coffee together every morning. Over thirty years, Matteo.” She nods, clearly remembering. “He tried never to spend the night away from me. Showed up for school events for you kids. We had date nights, before that was actually a thing.” She levels her wise gaze on me. “That’s what kept us strong.”
Her words hit harder than I expect, and I stare into my cup.
“Your wife is a good woman. She stepped up for the family. To make your father happy. He died at peace because of her sacrifice. Your position was stronger at the ascension because of your marriage.”
I wince. “She knows I appreciate it.”
“And does she know you care about her? As a person, not just as someone you married out of a sense of obligation?”
When I don’t answer, she finishes her espresso and refills it. “Your father always showed me that he cared. Gifts—which I didn’t need.”
Her jewelry box is filled, I’m sure. Every holiday, every birthday, Mother’s Day, he gave her extravagant tokens, flowers, trips.
“He selected them all himself. Went shopping.”
I have a hard time picturing that.
“He never left the house without telling me he loved me.”
My father, a hardened Mafia boss, had done that?
Wincing, I remember that I used to serve Alessia coffee in the mornings, and I’d stopped doing that.
“We never went to bed angry with one another. He’d stay up all night if he had to in order to listen to me, to understand.” She blinks back tears. “Our relationship was his biggest priority.”
And I had put my responsibilities to the family ahead of Alessia, even after she married me.
“She didn’t choose this life. If what I hear is true, she didn’t want it.”
My mother is right.
“It’s your job to make it bearable for her. Be her partner. Her rock. The more time you spend together, the better your relationship—and you—will be. Cherish her.”
I’d stopped making love to her, and that morning in the kitchen, when she’d touched me, I’d rebuffed her instead of dragging her into my arms and kissing her reassuringly.
Perhaps unforgivably, I’d gone to the Hill Country without even telling her I was leaving the house or saying when I’d be back.
With remorse, I remember my rage when I got home and found out she was gone.
Yet I’d done something similar to her without even thinking.
“A man needs a firm foundation in order to lead.”
Wise words, I’m sure.
“Think about her, Matteo,” she says softly. “What matters to her. If you want her to stay, you have to show her why she should.”
Her implication stings. Still, I can’t argue. Clearly I’ve failed Alessia.
“Get your house in order and all else will follow.”
Standing, I cross to her and press a kiss to her forehead. “Thank you for the advice.”
“Come on Sunday, Matteo. And bring Alessia with you.”
How the hell am I supposed to pull that off?
As if I’ve spoken the words aloud, my mother says, “You’re a smart man. Figure out what you need to do.”
For the first time in my life, I wonder if my mother has overestimated me.
The next day, I still have no fucking clue how to fix my relationship, but I know this has gone on long enough, and I have to take action, even if it’s painful.
In my office, I lean back and pick up the phone. I probably should have done this sooner.