37. Matteo
Matteo
The post-vows event is a blur of camera flashes, clinking glasses, and people offering congratulations they know I don’t deserve.
Hours pass in an instant. Our guests dance, drink, and laugh.
Shockingly, my brothers are the best behaved of the bunch.
Giovanni and Valentina tear up the dance floor as if they’re not weeks from the birth of their first child.
Dante and Lucia’s dance moves are more subdued since Camille stands between them, arms curled around their thighs, tethering them together as her conception did, and Nico flirts as if his eyes aren’t continually flicking to Alora.
I don’t have the faintest notion where Elio is throughout most of the reception. He floats in and out all night.
And Azra?
She avoids me like I have the plague.
Every time I get close, she slips away or someone interrupts.
Now, her luck has run out.
Our guests are leaving one by one, so soon it will be just my wife and me. My wife. Those words have escaped my mouth hundreds of times in the past seven hours. I’m hopeful that if I say them often enough, Azra will stop dodging the truth.
She hasn’t looked at me once with anything close to warmth through our vows and reception, but she’s smiled at everyone else with an effortless grace that makes her the belle of the ball.
“Mrs. Dominick,” she says sweetly, her voice like honey. “It was so lovely to see you again. Thank you for coming.”
Mrs. Dominick beams, pats Azra’s hand, and then leaves.
The second she’s out of earshot, Azra scans the rapidly emptying ballroom.
The realization that we’ll soon be the only two people in the room finally breaks her silence. “I didn’t need saving.”
“Didn’t say you did.”
“No… but you implied it.” She smiles at the next guest approaching to bid us farewell. “Mr. and Mrs. Halden,” she greets warmly. “Thank you so much for the new crockery. I will put it to good use. Perhaps before I’ve even left the reception.”
They gush over her, and she glows for them.
I don’t know who the fuck Mr. Halden is, but he has two seconds to get his eyes off my wife’s rack before I bury him under six feet of dirt.
He must be a dumb fuck. He practically drools on my wife’s shoulders while leaning in to farewell her with a hug. Azra steps back at the earliest convenience, but it’s obvious he’s made her uncomfortable. I hear the rattle of her bones when a shiver tracks up her spine.
“Halden.”
With a grin masking my dark interior, I extend my hand in offering. He foolishly wraps his hand around mine, and I break several of his fingers and toes. His loafer-covered foot collapses under my weight as I step up to him, mimicking how he greeted Azra.
To anyone outside our inner circle, we appear to be lifelong friends. I know better. His screams are silent, but I don’t need to hear his squeals to imagine him mentally scheduling an orthopedic appointment.
The pain in his eyes is extremely telling.
When he shadows his wife out of the reception area, or should I say hobbles behind, since he can barely see through the pain ripping through him, Azra turns back to me with eyes sharp enough to cut through bone.
“See how you just hurt Mr. Halden? I’m going to do the same to you the instant we’re alone.”
My growl comes out throatier than it should in front of an audience. “You need to stop threatening me. It’s not having the effect you’re aiming for. I’ve been hard all fucking night.”
Banding my arm around her slim waist, I pull her back until she can’t deny how hard her anger makes me.
Azra freezes scarcely long enough for me to register, then recovers, lifting her chin. “You’re a sick fuck.”
“Your sick fuck,” I correct.
The veins in her neck bulge as she struggles to hide her unexpected yet highly craved smile. “This isn’t a game. What you did was wrong. I have every right to hurt you,” she warns, quieter this time. “Slowly and painfully.”
Before I can respond, another guest approaches. This one is far more important than the ass-kissers we’ve been farewelling for the past hour.
“Mr. Caruso.” Azra’s voice is the highest it’s been all night. “I… ah…”
She’s worried Papa will be as furious as I thought her father would be when I disclosed his only daughter was about to marry a monster.
She has no cause to fret.
“Your dress is stunning, Azra, and the reception was lovely.” He presses kisses to each of her cheeks. “Welcome to the family.”
Azra blushes. “Thank you, Mr. Caruso.”
“As I’ve told you previously, please call me Papa.
” That sly dog. He knew this would be the outcome when he forced me to go along with Azra’s plan.
I don’t know how he knew, but I’d recognize his scheming face anywhere.
“It’s quicker to shout when you need help to pull him into line, which I’m certain you’ll face in the next day or two. ”
Azra laughs softly, the sound so sweet it causes my chest to ache. “If I need any help, you’ll be the first person I call.” Her tone lowers to something edging on playfulness. “But I think I’ve got this covered.”
“I have no doubt.”
After slapping my shoulder, Papa leaves, and Azra’s smile drops like a guillotine blade.
“I’ve heard rumors your father is adamant that his sons will uphold his beliefs of matrimony, particularly monogamy.”
I tug at the collar of my shirt. Mercifully, Dante didn’t return my serve when he collected me a suit. The hem of my pants reaches my ankles, though I’d be a liar if I said the material wasn’t itchy as fuck. I’ve been scratching like I have lice all night.
“Not a rumor.”
Like a pussy-whipped fool, I fall straight into Azra’s trap. “Then I wonder what he’ll say about the waitress you took home last night hanging around after our reception with the hope of round two?”
“Waitress?” I ask, genuinely dumbfounded.
She gestures subtly toward a woman in a black uniform collecting empty champagne flutes.
She could be the waitress from last night, but I can’t confidently declare that.
I am unwilling to take my eyes off my wife to see if any of her features register as familiar, and in all honesty, I wouldn’t give a fuck if she offered to serve me pre-dinner drinks naked.
That’s how disinterested I am.
Jealousy creeps up Azra’s neck when the blonde wiggles her fingers my way. She hates that she’s jealous. I fucking love it.
I try not to smile when she instinctively tilts in closer, wordlessly staking her claim. However, a ghostlike one tugs at my lips.
It’s barely visible, but Azra still notices it. “Wipe that off your face.”
“Can’t,” I murmur, deciding honesty should always be the route I take with her. “It’s stuck.” She rolls her eyes, tripling her sexiness. “You’re so fucking beautiful when you’re jealous.”
“And you’re infuriatingly stupid. I am not jealous.”
“Stupid for you,” I say, coasting closer. “Only for you.” This time, her eye roll freezes halfway around. “I didn’t touch the waitress, neither last night nor tonight. I couldn’t.” Her eyes snap to mine so fast I grow dizzy. “Even while thinking you picked him over me, I couldn’t touch anyone.”
A million questions stream through her eyes, but not a single one escapes her lips. She wants to call me a liar, and she has every right when my desperation to get her away from Antonio had me pulling out my biggest lie to date, but she can’t because she sees the truth in my eyes.
She knows right here and now that I’m not lying.
“Tell me what I need to do to make this right. I’ll do anything you ask.”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Tell them you lied and then annul our marriage.”
I ball my hands at her words, but my anger is cool enough to talk through it. “No.”
Her eyes widen. “No? You just said you’ll do anything I ask.”
“I will do anything you ask,” I repeat, firmer this time. “Anything but that.”
She doesn’t look at the guest she’s hugging farewell. Her eyes remain locked on mine as her anger boils over. “You don’t get to refuse.”
“I just did.”
She shakes her head. “You’re impossible.”
“Probably.”
“And selfish.”
“Definitely that.” My witty reply doesn’t even get a hint of a smile.
“You’re going to regret this.”
“Maybe,” I admit. “But I know what I want.”
“And what’s that? The closest woman willing to get on her knees—”
“You,” I interrupt, done playing games. “I want you.”
Pain filters through her eyes like my confession physically hurts her.
She stares up at me, unspeaking and blinking, before she eventually murmurs, “You don’t want me. You just don’t want Antonio to have me.”
“Then why did I marry you?”
Without looking at me, she snaps out, “Because you’re insane.”
“Not really building a solid case, micina.”
She crosses her arms before acting as if I never spoke. “And controlling.”
“That’s not a total lie.”
“But if I had to settle for one thing, I’d say it is because you wanted to ruin my life.”
“That was never my intention.”
She finally looks at me—annoyed, impatient, and done with my shit. “Then why, Matteo? Why did you do what you did? Why did you lie?”
My lips twitch, yet I make no sound. Instead, I take a breath before doing something I’ve never done in my life. I fall to my knees in front of her, the dozens of guests still lingering in the ballroom, and my brothers, who all freeze mid-conversation.
Gasps ripple through the room as Azra’s eyes widen. “What are you doing?”
“Do you want me on my knees?” I ask, voice steady. “I’ll get on my knees.”
Her jaw drops, but her silence announces I need to do more than plead for her forgiveness.
“Do you want me to crawl to you?” I scoot back before flattening my palms on the carpet. “I’ll crawl over broken glass and across continents to reach you.”
The room goes silent, and my brothers stare at me as if I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have lost my mind, but I don’t know how else to prove to her that this isn’t related to jealousy or revenge.
It’s about her and her alone.
“I’ll crawl to you even after you punish me by cutting off my limbs,” I say. “You are my wife. I will never be too good to bow at your feet. You just need to tell me what I have to do to prove that to you.”
She observes me like she’s seeing me for the first time, then whispers, “I want you to let me marry Antonio.” I almost lose my shit until she adds, “So I can make him pay for killing my best friend.”
“Hattie was Antonio’s first wife?”
I realize I vocalized my confusion out loud when Azra nods.
“Azra… she committed suicide.” The thought of defending that prick makes me sick to my stomach, but footage doesn’t lie. Antonio’s wife walked off the top floor of a multiple-story mansion like she had wings. There was no one else on the roof. Not a single soul.
Azra violently shakes her head. “No. He killed her. I know he did.”
I believe her without pause for deliberation, but it doesn’t make my confusion any less notable. I went so hard on my quest to cancel Azra’s wedding to Antonio because footage of her suicide wasn’t the only footage Elio plucked from Adami’s servers on the commute to the hotel hosting the wedding.
“I will get you answers. But I need you to be honest with me. I can’t help you if you don’t let me in.”
She gauges the authenticity of my pledge before her high shoulders finally lose their tautness. “Okay.”
“Yeah?” My smirk is far too playful for the circumstances, but that’s how stoked I am that she’s finally accepting my help.
Azra’s smile matches mine. “Yeah.”
I stand, taking her with me. Her squeal when I twirl her in a circle announces to our remaining guests that the festivities are over. They pile out with brief chin dips and wiggling fingers. The only ones who move in for a more formal goodbye are my brothers.
They welcome Azra into the family in true Caruso style, by making me furious with jealousy, before they tell me they’re only a phone call away if we need them.
“I’ve got it for now,” I assure them.
I’m still piecing the puzzle together, hence my eagerness to see out the last of our guests, but Azra is holding all the pieces, and I’m salivating to help her solve it.