Chapter 3 Clara #2
I take another bite to keep my mouth busy. I need to keep him talking. Silence with this man is dangerous. Silence breeds tension. "Why does a mafia underboss bake at two in the morning?"
Matteo watches me chew. His gaze tracks the movement of my throat when I swallow. "The process is precise. You follow the rules, the chemistry works. You ignore the rules, the dough breaks. It's control. It requires quiet."
"And your life lacks quiet?"
A dark shadow crosses his features. It is a fleeting, deeply ingrained grimace that ages him instantly. "My mind has been a war room for twenty years, Clara. There is no quiet."
The raw honesty in the statement catches me off guard. I expect a mobster to lie. I expect evasion, arrogance, and threats. I do not expect the heavily guarded vulnerability of a man admitting to a twenty-year mental war.
"Twenty years," I repeat softly. "Since your parents."
His massive jaw tightens. The thick muscles in his neck flex. "Since my father."
The correction hangs heavy in the air. The Costa family history is a bloody legend in Chicago. Two hits in one night. The parents ambushed in a car. The father, Carlo Costa, lured to a warehouse and executed. Matteo was Carlo's son. He was twenty-four.
"You found him." The words slip out of my mouth before my filter catches them.
Matteo's eyes go completely flat. The warmth vanishes, replaced by a cold, lethal emptiness that sends a spike of genuine terror down my spine. "You read the news clippings."
"My father is in debt to your family. I did my research." I keep my chin up, refusing to back down from the sudden frost in his stare. "I know about the alley in the rain. I know about the morgue the next morning."
"You know nothing." The words are a low, guttural warning.
He pushes off the counter. The sheer mass of his body rising to its full height is an intimidation tactic all on its own.
"You know the sanitized police reports. You know the newspaper ink.
You do not know the smell of the alley. You do not know the sound the rain made hitting his coat. "
The pain in his voice is a raw, bleeding wound. It is not healed. It is barely bandaged.
I set the bread down. My appetite vanishes, replaced by a strange, heavy ache in the center of my chest. "I'm sorry."
"I don't want your pity, Clara." He turns back to the dough. He grabs the ball of flour and begins to shape it with sharp, aggressive movements. The gentle rhythm from earlier is gone. "I want the Bellantis erased from this earth. Your father stole the logs that will allow me to do that."
"My father is a coward." The anger flares back to life, hot and bright. "He has a gambling addiction. He makes terrible choices. But he is still an accountant. He isn't a killer. How did he even get his hands on Bellanti shipping routes?"
Matteo stops. He braces his hands heavily on the counter, his broad back facing me.
"Arthur Reeves lost a fortune in underground card games on the South Side.
The Bellantis hold his markers. Arthur got desperate.
When they threatened him, he panicked. He stole a master ledger to use as a bargaining chip. "
"And instead of bargaining with them, he brought it to you."
Matteo turns around. The dark brooding in his eyes is back, heavy and possessive. "He came to me. Arthur begged for protection. He offered the ledger in exchange for wiping a million-dollar marker he owed the Bellantis."
"And Dominic said yes."
"Dominic said Arthur was a liability." Matteo's deep voice drops an octave. He walks slowly around the side of the massive kitchen island. He moves like a predator closing a trap. "Dominic was going to let the Bellantis peel your father apart."
My breath catches. I press my back against the edge of the leather stool. "Then why am I here?"
Matteo stops directly in front of me. He is too close. The heat radiating off his massive chest physically warms the cool air between us. "Because I stepped in. I bought the debt. I took the ledger."
I stare up at him. The sheer size difference between us is absurd. My bare feet dangle above the hardwood while his heavy boots plant firmly into the floor, an immovable force of nature. "Why?"
"Because the ledger burns the Bellantis to the ground. It gives us the exact times, locations, and shipments of every illicit crate moving through the South Side docks. We can bankrupt them in a month."
"That doesn't explain me." I refuse to let him deflect.
I tip my head back to hold his dark gaze.
"If you have the ledger, you don't need collateral.
You don't need a third-grade teacher locked in your penthouse.
I have fifty-two dollars in my checking account.
I own a Honda Civic with a broken tail light. I am not a bargaining chip."
Matteo leans down, crowding into my personal space.
He traps me.
The movement is fluid. There is nowhere to retreat as he grips the edge of the counter right beside my hip with one massive hand, angling his brutally heavy frame to block my escape.
The scent of toasted flour and dark rum envelops me, making my head spin.
I grip the edge of the leather seat to keep from tumbling backward.
"The Bellantis know Arthur took the ledger," Matteo rumbles.
His face is inches from mine. The coarse hairs of his beard catch the light.
The gold chain dangles forward, the heavy medallion brushing lightly against the fabric of my cardigan.
"They know he gave it to the Costas. They are bleeding money by the hour trying to reroute those shipments. "
"So they kill my father," I whisper. The words taste like ash.
"They will kill your father." Matteo does not flinch from the reality. "But the Bellantis don't just kill the man who stole from them. They make an example. They sever the bloodline. They go after the family."
The floor drops out from under me. A cold, terrifying void opens in my stomach.
Me.
Matteo's jaw tightens. His pitch-black eyes lock onto mine with feral, terrifying possessiveness. "They sent a hit squad to your apartment complex at six o'clock tonight, Clara. Three men. Silenced weapons. They kicked in your door."
My hands begin to shake. The trembling travels violently up my arms. Six o'clock. I usually grade papers at the kitchen table at six o'clock. I usually drink chamomile tea and listen to true crime podcasts.
"I picked you up at four-thirty," Matteo says quietly. The rough gravel in his voice softens, just a fraction. "I pulled you out of that parking lot an hour and a half before they tore your life apart."
Tears burn the back of my throat. I swallow them down with sheer, desperate pride. "You didn't rescue me. You bought my debt. You claimed me as collateral."
"I did both." Matteo leans closer. The heat of his breath drags across my cheek.
"If you are on the street, you are a dead woman.
If you try to go to work on Monday morning, they will slaughter you in the parking lot of that elementary school.
The only place in this entire city where you are breathing the air is inside this cage. "
"I don't want to be in a cage." My voice cracks. The sassy, defiant teacher facade crumbles, leaving behind the terrifying reality of a woman whose life is out of her control.
"I don't care what you want." Matteo's voice is a dark, immovable vow.
The sheer size of him blocking my escape suddenly feels less like a threat and dangerously like a shield.
"You are mine to protect. The debt is leverage.
It gives me the right to lock that heavy steel door and keep the monsters out. "
"You are the monster," I whisper.
Matteo's dark eyes flare with heat. The dark ink on his arm flexes as his massive hands tighten on the marble counter.
"Yes. And I am the monster guarding the gate."
He holds my stare for three agonizing, heavy seconds. The tension stringing between us is pulled so tight it threatens to snap.
The absolute dominance radiating from his heavy frame wages a direct war against the stubborn independence in my chest.
Slowly, deliberately, he pushes off the counter. The cage vanishes. The sudden absence of his body heat leaves me shivering.
He turns back to the stove. He doesn't look at me again. "Finish your bread, Clara. Drink a glass of water. Go back to sleep."
"And if I can't sleep?"
Matteo grabs a heavy cast-iron pan. He sets it heavily on the burner. The loud clatter echoes through the pristine kitchen.
"Then sit there and watch me work." The command is absolute.
I do not move. I look at the steaming piece of focaccia bread on the small ceramic plate. I look at the dangerous, massively built killer methodically preparing another batch of dough.
The city of Chicago is a war zone. My father sold me out to save himself. A hit squad kicked in the door of my quiet, ordinary life. Everything I know is gone, burned to the ground by stolen shipping logs and mafia greed.
I pick up the piece of bread. I take another bite.
I sit in the quiet glow of the kitchen, trapped, ruined, and unable to look away from the beast who brought me here.
The mechanical rhythmic sound of the heavy-duty mixer starts up again, filling the silence of the Il Corvo penthouse. The toasted flour and rum scent wraps around me like a heavy blanket.
I am a prisoner. I am collateral.
But as I watch the dark ink of his tattoos shift under the kitchen lights, I know with absolute certainty that no one is getting through that steel door to hurt me.
The war room in Matteo Costa's mind is running at full speed, and right now, all of its heavily armed artillery is focused on keeping me alive.
I take another bite of the bread.
The night stretches out, dark and terrifying, but the kitchen remains warm.