Chapter 7 Matteo
MATTEO
The smell hits me first.
That sharp antiseptic burn that crawls up my nostrils and settles like acid in my chest. Hospitals. Christ, I hate these places.
My skin feels too tight as I walk beside my mother down the beige hallway. Every footstep echoes off sterile walls, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like angry wasps. The sound drills into my skull, mixing with the low hum of machines keeping people alive.
Death, I understand. Violence, I control. But this slow-motion suffering? This helpless waiting for poison to cure poison? This shit makes my teeth ache.
Ma’s fingers brush my arm as we approach the oncology check-in desk.
“You okay, sweetheart?”
I nod, swallowing the metallic taste coating my tongue. Can’t let her see how much this is destroying me. She’s got enough to worry about.
A nurse appears beside us with a gentle smile. “We’re ready for you, Mrs. Rossi.”
I follow them into a room lined with cushioned chairs. A dozen on each side. Half of them occupied by people in various stages of dying.
My throat closes up.
Some of them look normal. Healthy, even. Like my mom, who was only diagnosed a week ago and still has color in her cheeks and strength in her step. But others are bald, hollow-eyed, skin stretched thin over bones that seem to be giving up.
In the corner, an old man sleeps curled in his chair, so frail a strong wind might finish what the cancer started. My stomach drops to my boots. That could be Ma in six months. A year.
I yank my eyes away before the image burns into my brain permanently.
My mother has always been the strongest person I know. She survived my father’s death when I was six. Survived marrying a monster when I was eleven. Survived five years of hell that left us both scarred in ways that don’t show on the surface.
She’s solid. Steady. Unbreakable.
Except now she’s not.
Now she’s sitting in a chair while a nurse slides a needle into her arm, and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.
I drop into the hard plastic seat beside her, my knees brushing the armrest of her chair. The nurse finishes setting up the IV, explains the timeline, mentions something about side effects. I hear maybe half of it. The rest gets lost somewhere in the buzzing of those fucking lights.
“How do you feel?” I ask when we’re finally alone.
“Could be better.” She smiles at me. That soft, warm smile that’s gotten me through more dark nights than I can count. “With all the blood draws lately and now this, I’m starting to feel like a pincushion.”
I grab the soft blanket from her bag, draping it over her lap. My hands are too big, too clumsy for gentle gestures, but she hums approval anyway.
“Thanks for being here,” she says, squeezing my fingers. “I know you’re busy.”
“I’ll be here for every appointment.”
“Matteo, you don’t have to—”
“Lorenzo knows. Dario knows. Everyone knows.” I hold her gaze, making sure she understands. “Your chemo is every two weeks. I’ll be here. If something comes up and I can’t, someone else will sit with you. You’re not doing this alone.”
Her eyes go soft. Wet at the edges. She reaches up and pats my cheek like I’m still the scared five-year-old kid who used to climb into her bed during thunderstorms.
“You’re such a good boy.”
I almost laugh. She’s the only person on the planet who’d describe me that way. But I keep my mouth shut. She’s too stubborn to hear the truth, and I don’t have the energy to argue with a woman hooked up to an IV drip of poison.
“It’s just such a shame,” she continues, and I already know where this is going. “A man like you, alone. I know you’d take such good care of the right woman.”
My head falls back against the wall. “Not this again.”
“I’m just saying. My new neighbor, Mrs. Carmichael? She has a daughter. Twenty-eight. Lovely girl with black hair and pretty eyes. She teaches kindergarten.”
I stare at the ceiling tiles and count to five.
A kindergarten teacher. That’s who my mother thinks would be a good match for a man who burned a guy alive last month.
Sure, he deserved it. Kidnapping Alessio’s woman and his sick kid earned that particular death.
But somehow I don’t think someone who teaches finger-painting and alphabet songs would handle that information well.
“Not interested,” I say.
Mom’s face falls, disappointment clouding her features. “I worry about you, Matteo. You’ve never brought anyone home, never even mentioned dating. Don’t you want someone to share your life with? Someone to come home to?”
The words hit me wrong. Too familiar. Too close to something she said once, years ago, when she told me she’d found a man to take care of us.
Someone to share my life with.
Yeah. That worked out great.
I don’t say it. I don’t have to. The shadows that cross her face tell me her mind went to the same place.
“Don’t worry about me,” I say quietly. “I’m fine, Ma.”
“This is my fault, isn’t it?” Her voice cracks at the edges. “If Scott hadn’t been so—”
“Don’t.” The word comes out harder than I mean it to. But talking about him makes my skin crawl. Makes the old scars on my back ache like fresh burns. “Don’t blame yourself for what that bastard did to you. To us.”
She opens her mouth to argue, then closes it. Nods.
We sit in silence for a minute. The IV drips. Someone coughs in the corner. The fluorescent lights keep buzzing.
But her words keep circling in my head. Don’t you want someone to come home to? Someone to share your life with?
She’s going to find out soon enough. About Sierra. About the marriage I’ve proposed. If Sierra agrees to it, that is. And if Ma hears it from someone else, or worse, sees it on social media before I have a chance to explain, she’ll be hurt. She’ll assume I’ve been hiding things from her.
Which I have. But not the way she’d think.
Better to rip off the bandage now, while we’re already knee-deep in uncomfortable territory.
“I need to tell you something.” I keep my voice steady. Neutral. “I’m getting married.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Is that why you’re resisting my matchmaking? You already found someone?”
“It’s not like that.” I choose my words carefully. “I’m marrying someone who can help with my work.”
She knows what I do, even if we can’t talk about it in public.
“Lorenzo chose her for you?” she asks.
“Yes.”
A pause. Her face goes troubled, and I push down the guilt that threatens to creep in, that she won’t get the grandchildren she’s been vocal about wanting.
“Don’t worry about it.” I put my hand on her arm. “I don’t mind.”
That’s not entirely true. But she doesn’t need to know that.
“I don’t know how I feel about this,” she says slowly. Then she sighs. “I suppose I always hoped you’d have something different. Something real.”
“You don’t have to feel anything about it. It’s handled.” I hold her gaze, keeping my expression steady. Reassuring. “Right now, your only job is getting healthy. Nothing else matters.”
For a second, I think she might push back. But she was a mafia wife once. She knows how this works—sometimes arrangements get made and aren’t up for debate.
We spend the rest of the session working through her crossword puzzle. She’s better at the clever wordplay clues. I’m better at the straightforward ones. Between the two of us, we finish the whole thing by the time the nurse comes to unhook her IV.
When it’s over, exhaustion weighs down her shoulders. I drive her home in silence, the hospital smell clinging to my clothes like a curse. I help her get settled in bed and she’s asleep before her head hits the pillow.
I take one last look at her face, relaxed in sleep, before I slip out the door.
The sun is too bright when I step onto the porch. I stand there for a minute, letting the heat bake into my shoulders, burning away the cold that seems to have settled into my bones.
I take a breath. Then another.
All that fear, all that helplessness, all that sick, twisting grief I’ve been carrying for the past two hours. I box it up. Shove it down. Lock it away somewhere deep where it can’t touch me.
Time to handle some business.
The motel is on the other side of the city.
A shithole that the Andretti Hospitality company owns but doesn’t advertise.
No fancy lobby. Just a strip of doors opening onto a cracked parking lot, the kind of place where drug dealers rent rooms to avoid search warrants and prostitutes bring their johns by the hour.
I park my truck and walk to room 103.
Cash has been working for us about two years. He’s adequate, as far as street dealers go. Shows up every day. Moves product. Doesn’t cause trouble.
At least, he didn’t used to.
Lorenzo’s brother, Paolo, is the one who brought him in. And Paolo didn’t want to believe the guy was skimming. But we’ve been watching Cash for weeks now. The numbers don’t lie.
Stupid. Sloppy. And about to get painful.
I pound on the door. Footsteps shuffle inside. The chain rattles, and then the door opens a crack.
Cash’s face appears in the gap. Pale. Sweating. He knows why I’m here.
“What do you want?” His voice pitches high.
“Let me in.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he whines.
The door starts to close. My patience, already thread-thin after this morning, snaps completely. I kick hard, wood splintering as the chain rips free. Cash tumbles backward, landing hard on grimy carpet.
The room is a disaster. Pizza boxes everywhere. Beer cans scattered across the dresser. A pile of coke on the desk.
I shut the door behind me.
“I didn’t do anything, man,” Cash whimpers from the floor.
My eyes drop to his shoes. New Jordans. Couple hundred bucks, easy. Then to the chain glinting against his greasy t-shirt.
This asshole isn’t even smart enough not to flaunt his newfound wealth.
“Get up,” I order. “You stole from the Andrettis. Face your punishment like a man.”
He only makes it to his knees before terror freezes him in place. Fine by me. I grab his hands, wrapping my fingers around both thumbs.
“Remember this next time you get a smart idea.”
I jerk downward. Bone breaks with a wet snap.
Cash screams, high and raw, and crumples forward, cradling his ruined hands against his chest.
“You broke my thumbs!” he wails. “You broke my fucking thumbs!”
I look down at him. Feel nothing.
That’s not entirely true. Somewhere beneath the cold control, there’s an echo of something. The helplessness from the hospital, maybe. The fear I couldn’t do anything about. The rage that’s been building since I watched a needle slide into my mother’s arm.
This, at least, I can control.
“Steal from the Andrettis again,” I say flatly, “and you die.”
I leave him wailing on the floor.
The private room in the casino’s restaurant feels like a different world. Leather and mahogany and moody lighting. Lorenzo sits alone, scotch in hand, stress carved into every line of his face.
“What’s on your mind, boss?” I ask, settling into the chair across from him. “Anything you need?”
He drains his glass before answering. “Sent Mia to Mexico to stay with her family until things settle down.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “She’s six months along. Walking around with that belly like a slow, easy target. It was driving me out of my fucking mind.”
“You think Kozlov would go after her?”
“I wouldn’t put anything past that bastard. I can’t risk her. Or our little girl.”
“Understandable.” I lean back, waiting.
“But you’re not here for my problems,” he shakes off his worry. “Tell me about Cash.”
“Handled. He got the message.”
“Can he walk?”
I allow myself a small grin. “His legs work fine. His hands might be compromised for a while, but he can still sell.
Lorenzo nods approvingly. “And the girl? Any progress?”
My jaw tightens. “I floated the idea of marriage. She’s thinking about it.”
“Make her think faster.” Lorenzo’s voice hardens. “I want Viktor drawn out. If we can grab him, we might get intel on his cousin pushing Lightning again. I’m tired of chasing these Bratva fucks around the city. I want my wife home, Matteo.”
The pressure settles on my shoulders like lead weight. Lightning flooded the streets a few months ago and left bodies stacked up across the city. The Bratva partnered with a motorcycle club to distribute it, and Viktor and his cousin are at the center of the whole operation.
“I’ll make it happen.”
“Good. And don’t just marry her. Sell it. Play the happy couple. Viktor’s possessive enough that seeing her with another man might make him sloppy.”
“Whatever it takes,” I promise, then head for the door.
Now I just have to convince a woman I barely know to marry a monster.