7. Matteo
Matteo
Giovanni paces his office, wearing a groove into the hardwood floor while muttering his disbelief that Azra is staying under our roof. Valentina sits on the sofa near the window, one hand resting on her rounded stomach, the other rubbing slow circles over the fabric of her dress.
I slump low in a chair across from them and massage the bridge of my nose, exhaustion settling into my bones like wet cement. “Can you hurry the fuck up and get over your shock. I’m exhausted.”
“From torturing the man you were meant to give leniency to? He gave you the hand of his oldest son’s woman,” Giovanni repeats, as if saying it again will make it less true. “Yet you still sawed off his hand with a hacksaw.”
“You did what?” Valentina asks, sitting straighter.
“He hit her,” I answer, as if it’ll excuse everything. When Giovanni silently mocks me like my dick is half the length it is and skinnier than a pencil—which doesn’t feel far off the mark today—I add, “And she has extremely fuckable lips.”
I’ll forever throw my brothers under the bus with me.
If one of us goes down, we all go down.
It is the Caruso way.
“Don’t act like you didn’t notice them, Vanni.”
He doesn’t grant Valentina even a second of jealousy. “Why the fuck would I notice her lips? They’re not on my wife.”
“Wife-to-be,” I correct, grinning. He steps closer, knuckles bulging as he prepares to deck me for making Valentina uncomfortable.
Valentina raises a dark brow. “From what I’ve gathered from Vanni’s ramblings, the ruse didn’t end once you got Azra away from Don Adami.
” She throws up the universal sign for stop when Giovanni prowls closer to her, ready to maul her, before she scoots to the edge of her seat.
“But you don’t look thrilled by your decision. ”
“I’m tired,” I mutter. “Thrilled isn’t on the menu.”
“And your fiancée won’t be either when she finds out about the women you welcome under our roof every night.”
Valentina slants her head and purses her lips. “Giovanni.”
“What?” he says nondefensively, laughing. “You won’t be supporting him once you realize he’s so detached from reality he doesn’t even know their names. He remembers them by what day of the week they show up.”
I rub my temples. “I didn’t tell you that for you to judge me.”
“No,” Giovanni agrees, “you told me that because you were bragging.”
Valentina snorts, and when Giovanni shoots her a hungry, wanton stare, she lifts her hands in surrender.
Though he wishes he were anywhere but here, lecturing me, and someone more enticing, like with his head buried between Valentina’s legs, he turns back to me.
“What did you say to Elio the other week? Don’t act like our father wouldn’t hang you from the rafters by your nuts if you stepped out on your missus.
When you get shacked up, it’s the same pussy for eternity. ”
“Yeah, but this is different. We’re not really getting married.”
A sigh whistles in Giovanni’s chest. “Yet someone as sentimental as our father won’t care. He always said we’d fall in order. Dante is fucking gone… so guess whose name is next on the list?”
I scoff. “Papa is full of it.”
Hearing the fear in my tone, Giovanni laughs. “Only time will tell, lover boy.”
“We’re meant to fall in order,” I say before I can stop myself, “but Nico’s been gone for years.”
The room freezes, and I realize two seconds too late that I’ve cracked open a door Nico would give anything to keep bolted shut.
I either run when cornered or undertake a massacre. Since I’m fond as fuck of my brothers, I don’t contemplate the latter for even a second.
I stand, my chair scratching the floorboards. “I’m going to bed.”
“Matteo—” Giovanni starts.
“Tomorrow,” I say, already halfway to the door. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
Valentina’s voice follows me out, soft but stern. “Be kind to her, Matteo. It took a lot of gall for her to show up here today, and some women only become that courageous after being hurt.”
I don’t reply. I can’t. My fury is too high picturing Azra hurt.
The hallways between the main living rooms and the sleeping quarters are quiet with a silence that amplifies my thoughts.
After noticing the maid I ordered to take Azra to her room, I’m tempted to ask which room she put Azra in, purely so we can hash out more of our agreement without an audience, but it’s late, and I’m also full of shit.
When I’m tired, I’m not known for thinking with my head between my shoulders.
Instead, I ask her to bring fresh towels to my room.
She nods and then scurries off.
I’m halfway to my room when I collide with someone rounding the corner.
A familiar someone.
She’s wearing heels too high for the hour and perfume too emasculating for my mood. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her mascara smudged beneath them. Anger and something else I can’t be fucked deciphering taint her expression.
“Tuesday,” I say, because that’s the only name I ever gave her—the day she shows up.
She snarls at me like I ruined her life. “Don’t ‘Tuesday’ me.”
My lips twist. If she’d given me half the attitude she’s handing over now, maybe I would have learned her name.
Though I don’t give a shit, I ask, “Are you all right?”
She’s leaving the Caruso compound, fighting back tears. That’s something Giovanni, Dante, and our father wouldn’t approve of, and since I’m the only one here, it’s my mess to clean up.
My head rockets to the side when she slaps me hard enough to rattle my brain against my skull.
For the first time in my life, the pain does absolutely nothing to my cock. No increase in pulse or rapid inflation. Nothing. It acts as if a feather tapped me.
What the—
Tuesday sniffles. “You’ll never see me again.”
“Okay,” I say, genuinely unconcerned.
She gasps while clutching an imaginary stab wound in her chest, then rushes toward the entryway, heels clicking frantically.
For a handful of seconds, I peer in the direction she left before shrugging and walking away.
My room—my actual room, not the ones my brothers refuse to use because they’re convinced our mother would haunt them if they did anything close to all the nasty things I’ve done in those rooms—is in the west wing.
I push open the door and freeze.
Azra is on my bed. She’s not lying on it. She’s building something on it.
A pillow fort.
A full, architecturally structured pillow fort.
“The fuck are you doing?”
She doesn’t look up to see who approaches. She doesn’t need to. The goose bumps breaking across her nape announce that she noticed my presence long before I spoke.
“No one will believe our ruse if we don’t share a room.”
Irritation hits me too fast to pull back on the reins. “You shared a room with Antonio?”
Her chest rises and falls three times before she pulls the trigger of an unloaded gun. Her headshake is brief but firm enough to return Antonio’s name to the need-to-find-a-way-to-kill-him list instead of the he’s-a-dead-man list.
Azra keeps arranging pillows until they replicate the Great Wall of China. “Since I’d rather bite off my tongue than share a bed with you, it’s either this”—she gestures to the pillow fort before locking eyes with me—“or you sleep on the floor. The choice is yours.”
“It’s my fucking bed,” I remind her, my whine childlike.
“I don’t care,” she says without missing a beat. “Those are your only options.”
I stare at her in disbelief. Both her stubbornness and her pillow fort are ridiculous, but the way she’s taken over my space as if she belongs here has my cock knocking at the zipper in my pants.
I love her sass, but I’ll never admit that out loud.
“Fine,” I say, too tired to argue but also too curious about my cock’s odd response to her invasion of my space to walk away.
I pull off my shirt, then my belt, then the rest of my clothes until I’m butt fucking naked.
Azra’s head snaps up. She tries to keep her eyes locked with mine. I give her effort a solid two out of ten. “Wh-what are you doing?”
“I don’t sleep in pajamas.” I toss my clothes onto a chair. “Should you wish to share my room, you’ll have to get used to that.”
When I cross the room, my dick swinging like a pendulum in a grandfather clock, Azra disappears behind the wall of pillows like a startled animal and hides her flushed cheeks beneath the blankets.
While she grumbles under her breath that I’m a jerk, I slide into bed, the mattress dipping under my weight. Anger blooms in my chest, but that isn’t all that’s there. I’m also curious as fuck, and hard enough to drill diamonds.
Silence reigns supreme for the next several minutes before a muffled voice comes from the other side of the pillow fort. “You need to keep your dick in your pants.”
I smile without fear that it will express something I don’t mean. Azra stacked the pillows so high that they’re halfway to the roof, hiding my reaction. “Why? Are you jealous, micina?”
Her disgusted Ha! should shrink my dick.
It doesn’t.
Its throbs are near deafening.
“This isn’t about jealousy,” she says. “It’s part of the contract. If you’re cheating, you obviously think little of me, which means Ant—he won’t think much of me, so keep it in your pants.”
While rolling onto my side, I knock down several pillows just to annoy her. “If I have to give up sex, then you better cough up some benefits. I’m a man. I have needs.”
A disgusted grunt ripples her lips. “I’d rather die.”
“That’s exactly what will happen to me if I’m deprived. Blue balls are a silent killer. Ask any man.”
After another gag, the silence returns, stronger than ever.
Over the next several minutes, I mull over how I should be annoyed that my father forced me into this situation, or at the very least frustrated, but all I can think about is how Azra’s attitude might very well kill me, and how even the threat of death wouldn’t prevent me from signing up for a second round.