Chapter 8 Matteo
Matteo
Her small fingers dig into the bare skin of my shoulders. Her clean, comforting scent cuts straight through the fading heat of adrenaline clinging to my body.
The endless screaming in my skull is completely silent.
Twenty years of screaming, twenty years of freezing rain and flashing ambulance lights and cold morgue steel. Gone. Burned away by the soft, curvy woman trembling against my chest.
She holds me. She holds me.
My massive arms wrap around her back, shielding her against my chest. I bury my face in the crook of her neck.
The contrast between us is brutal. I am heavy, coarse, covered in dark ink and the invisible weight of a slaughtered hit squad.
She is soft. She is light. She absorbed the poison of that rainy alley just by standing here in my secure office, reading a frayed police file, and wrapping her arms around the monster who found the body.
Silence. Absolute, ringing silence in my brain.
I pull back just enough to look at her face.
Her cheeks are tear-stained. Her wide eyes search mine, tracking the sharp silver at my temples, the rough line of my thick beard.
She does not look at me with fear. She looks at me with understanding.
The heavy gold chain around my neck presses into her collarbone, marking her skin with my metal.
I wipe a stray tear from her cheek with a rough thumb. My feral instincts claw at the inside of my ribs. Mine. She belongs to me. She is my peace. I will slaughter every breathing soul in this city before I let anyone take her out of this penthouse.
But the ledger in my safe mocks me.
She is here because her father, Arthur Reeves, sold her.
He handed over a million-dollar gambling debt and a stack of stolen Bellanti shipping logs, trading his own flesh and blood to save his pathetic life.
I claimed her as collateral. I bought the debt to keep her safe, to possess her, to force her into my world.
It is a dirty chain. It is a transaction.
Looking at her now, feeling the absolute devotion radiating from her soft body, the transaction makes me sick.
I cannot keep her with paper. I refuse to let her look around this fortress and see a cage built by her father's sins.
She needs to see a cage built by my absolute obsession. She needs to choose it.
I step back. The distance between us feels like a severed limb.
"Stay here," I command, my voice a low gravel rasp. "Lock the door behind me."
She blinks, confused by the sudden shift. "Matteo. Where are you going? The men downstairs—"
"The men downstairs are bagged meat," I tell her bluntly. "The perimeter is secure. I have family business to handle. I need to see Dominic. Ten minutes. Do not leave this room."
She crosses her arms, her sassy defiance returning just enough to prove she is not broken. "You think you can just drop a massive emotional bomb on me and then walk out to have a mob meeting? I am not a fragile little doll, Matteo. You don't have to lock me away every time the wind blows."
My jaw tightens. God, I love her mouth. I love the fire in her. "You are locking the door because I said so, Clara. Ten minutes."
I do not wait for her argument. I turn and stride out of the office, listening sharply until the heavy click of the deadbolt echoes down the hall.
Only then do I move toward the master suite.
I pull a clean black henley over my head, smoothing it over my damp chest and the dark tattoos on my left shoulder.
I walk to the wall safe hidden behind a framed mirror. I key in the biometric code. The heavy steel door pops open.
Inside sits the Arthur Reeves file.
I pull the thick manila folder out. It holds the original promissory note.
One million dollars. Signed in ink by a coward.
Attached to it are the Bellanti shipping logs.
The exact coordinates, dates, and manifests for illegal military-grade munitions pouring into the south side of Chicago.
This is the match that will light the twenty-year Costa-Bellanti war into an absolute inferno.
I take the folder. I walk to the private elevator at the end of the hall. I swipe my thumb on the scanner, and the steel doors slide open.
The descent to the restaurant level is quiet. The Il Corvo kitchen and main dining floor are locked down. The elevator doors part, revealing the aftermath of my violence.
The air smells of bleach, iron, and stale espresso. The Costa cleaners are already working with brutal efficiency. Black body bags are being hauled out through the reinforced alley doors. Mops push pink-stained water across the custom hardwood floors.
Dominic stands by the massive mahogany bar. My older cousin. The boss. He wears a tailored charcoal suit, perfectly composed despite the massacre that just occurred on his property.
Turi stands a few feet away, pouring two measures of scotch.
The older man's silver hair catches the dim emergency lighting.
His weathered face is tight with tension, his kind eyes scanning the blood on the floor.
He raised us after the hits twenty years ago.
He stepped into the void Carlo and Igor left behind.
Turi holds out a glass as I approach. "You took a massive risk tonight, figlio."
I ignore the glass. I stare directly at Dominic. I toss the manila folder onto the mahogany bar. The heavy thud cuts through the sound of the cleaners dragging weight across the floor.
"The shipping logs," I state. "Verified."
Dominic sets his drink down. He opens the folder. His dark eyes scan the manifests. The temperature in the room seems to drop as the boss of the Costa family calculates the exact damage we can inflict on our enemies.
"Munitions," Dominic murmurs. "Heavy artillery coming through the river ports. The Bellantis are gearing up for a siege. They want to finish what they started twenty years ago."
"They will die trying," I reply.
Dominic closes the folder. He taps his fingers on the cardboard. "These logs are worth millions in strategic leverage. We own the ports now. We sink these shipments, we cripple their infantry. Good work, Matteo. But there is a loose end."
"Name it."
"Arthur Reeves," Dominic says coldly. "He stole this data.
He owes the family one million dollars in gambling debts.
You took his daughter as collateral. She is sitting in my penthouse upstairs right now.
The girl is a liability. The Bellantis tracked her here. They blew my doors off to get to her."
My chest turns to granite. "No one touches her."
Dominic arches an eyebrow. "She is a ledger entry, Matteo. Collateral. We extract the value and we dispose of the problem. Or we trade her back to her father for his head."
Feral rage spikes hot and sharp in my blood. I step into my cousin's space. The size difference between us is negligible, but my build is heavier, built for brute force. The gold chain around my neck clinks against my collar.
"She is not a ledger entry," I snarl, my voice vibrating with absolute lethal intent. "She is mine. Do not speak of her as a transaction again. Do not ever suggest trading her."
Dominic does not flinch. He studies me. He sees the absolute madness in my eyes. He sees the obsession. "You are compromised. You are the underboss of this syndicate. You do not lose your head over a debtor's daughter."
"I am buying the debt," I say.
Silence stretches across the bar. Turi stops polishing a glass, his eyes widening slightly.
"What?" Dominic asks quietly.
I pull out my encrypted burner phone. I open my personal offshore accounts. "The family treasury is owed one million dollars by Arthur Reeves. I am transferring one point two million in liquid cash into the main syndicate account right now. The debt is paid. It is nullified."
Dominic watches my hands move across the screen. "You are paying a million dollars of your own money for a school teacher you met twenty-four hours ago."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because she does not belong to a contract," I state fiercely. "She does not belong to her father. She belongs to me. I will not have her looking at me like I am a debt collector holding a blade to her throat. She is my woman."
Dominic stares at me for a heavy moment. He understands the curse of our bloodline. When a Costa man claims a woman, the rest of the world ceases to exist. He sees the absolute unyielding truth in my posture.
He nods once. "The money is transferred. The syndicate is whole. The debt is yours to do with as you please."
I reach across the bar. I pull out the physical promissory note signed by Arthur Reeves. The piece of paper that chained Clara to the mafia. I grab a heavy silver ashtray and a silver lighter from the counter.
I flick the lighter. The flame catches the edge of the thick paper. I watch the signature of the man who sold his own daughter turn brown, then black, then curl into ash.
I drop the burning contract into the silver tray. I watch it disappear until there is nothing left but a grey mountain of debt. It is the most expensive fire I have ever built. And the most necessary.
Turi watches the fire consume the paper. "She will run, Matteo. If you take away the chain, she has no reason to stay in the dark with us."
I stare at the ashes. "If she runs, I will follow her. But she will not be kept here by a piece of paper."
I pick up the silver tray. The metal is warm against my palm. I leave the shipping logs with Dominic. I do not say another word. I turn my back on the cleaners and the blood and my cousin, walking straight back to the elevator.
The ride up to the penthouse is agonizing. My ribs rattle against my lungs. My pulse thuds heavily in my ears.
What if Turi is right? What if she takes the exit?