Chapter 20
MATTEO
As if getting chained up in service to her family wasn’t enough, now I can’t fucking get her out of my mind. I still can’t sleep, eat, or do anything much except seethe in anger at the cruel fate of it all, but now, when I do manage to sleep, I dream of her.
The softness of her lips. Her warm, velvety skin as I pulled her out of the cold water.
The way life rushed into her, turning her pale skin gold, as I breathed life into her.
The way she smiles and fidgets and talks in a fast, hurried voice when she speaks to me, playing with her hair, swaying in place, nervous.
Excited. Innocent. Perfect for the taking.
I’m thinking more about her than I do about my family. About the revenge. Even about the ruin that rules my life.
And that’s not good.
I even as good as told her I want her the other day, figuring I’d at least get her if I can’t have my freedom. But that was an insane impulse, and I’ve managed not to act on it so far. But how long will the self-restraint work? If all I do is think of her?
I’ve been bitching and moaning to my cousin Nico so much that I think he’s ready to throw me out of his place. But I can’t stop. And he’s always there, always up. Doing lines and lines of coke and nodding along to everything I have to say.
Maybe that’s because I’m acting crazed and he doesn’t want to disagree with me.
Like right now.
I’m pacing around his living room, squeezing a tumbler of vodka so hard it’s a miracle it doesn’t shatter, my shirt buttons undone, my hair a mess and my eyes very bright and crazed. Every time I see my reflection in one of the huge windows, the deranged look on my face frightens even me.
I should shut up for a while. Try to find some calm. So I down the vodka and sit on the sofa, sliding the empty tumbler onto the glass coffee table, leaving a trail in the snow-like dusting of coke on it.
Nico is looking at me in a way that suggests he’s seeing me for the first time. Great. Now I’ve managed to alienate the one friend I have here.
“All right,” he finally says, slapping his knees and leaning back. “Get cleaned up. We’re going somewhere.”
I shake my head. “I’m in no mood to go party.”
Plus, the last time I went out with him, I ended up an indentured servant to Goldie’s father. A life sentence. Just as these wet dreams I’m having of her might prove to be. Pure torture.
“We’re not going to a party,” Nico says. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“I don’t got time for women either,” I say and reach for the bottle of vodka in the middle of the marble table.
“Not a woman,” he says.
“I don’t want to meet no guy either,” I say and pour myself a quadruple vodka.
“You want to meet this guy,” Nico says. “He can give you what you want… and make all your other dreams come true.”
“You make him sound like Santa Claus, or something,” I say. “But he doesn’t exist.”
“Stop fucking around, Matteo. This is serious.”
And I can hear it in his voice that it really is. He’s usually a lighthearted, breezy sort of guy, more like a Californian than a New Yorker where mannerisms are concerned, but his whole face is a mask of stone right now.
“Who is it?”
“He’s someone that wants to take down the bosses,” Nico says. “And if you prove useful to him, he’s also someone who can lift you up.”
Now that sounds all kinds of ominous. Nico has given me no sign that he wasn’t loyal to the organization and the status quo until now.
And I don’t know what exactly he’s talking about, but I don’t waste any time asking questions.
I just get ready as fast as I can. I’m ready to meet this man of my dreams. Even if he fails to deliver, it’s still better than wallowing in useless rage. At least it’s a step forward.
* * *
A fast car ride later in Nico’s Lamborghini and we’re parked in front of an imposing old mansion in Long Island.
The garden around it is overgrown, the house is dark, and I can hear the ocean all around me, waves crashing against rock.
The place reminds me of Dante Moretti’s house back in LA so much that a part of me wants to turn around and run.
And keep running until everything that has anything to do with this life is so far behind me, I barely remember it anymore.
Instead, I follow Nico to the front door, the creaking wooden steps leading to it renewing my urge to get the hell out of here and never look back.
I stuff it down with all the other things that will never happen.
If this is my ticket to getting back everything my family lost, then I’m grabbing it with both hands.
Two guards, one on either side of the porch briefly appear out of the shadows as the light over the front door comes on.
They’re armed with Uzis. Another sign that this is as serious as it gets.
I wish Nico had told me a little more about what we’re walking into here, but he wouldn’t answer any of my questions on the way over and it’s too late for questions now.
The door opens and an older man, wearing a white shirt and suspenders opens the door. He’s at least my father’s age when he died, but still looks like he could take a few men half his age. My father looked like that too, but looks were deceptive in his case.
“Come in, Mr. Ferro is expecting you,” the man says and walks off into the darkness across the circular foyer, his dress shoes clicking on the black and white tile floor.
We’re led into a study with dark wood paneling on the walls, black leather sofas, and a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling.
Cigar and cigarette smoke hangs heavy in the air, and the room is lit only by a few table lamps, so I have trouble estimating how many people are actually in the room.
Turns out it’s just Ferro. As we enter, he stands up from one of the leather sofas, a cigar hanging from his fingers.
He doesn’t need much light to be illuminated perfectly, even though he’s all dark, from his eyes and hair to the suit he’s wearing.
His eyes glow in the darkness, worse than even my own crazed ones did earlier.
“Is this the guy you told me about?” Ferro asks Nico, while giving me a once over. The expression in his eyes suggests he expected more.
“Yes, this is Matteo Rovina,” Nico says. “And this is Angelo Ferro, the head of the Ferro family.”
He steps from around the sofa and more into the light. He seemed older before, now I see he can’t be much older than me, maybe thirty-five tops. Young to be the head of his family. But then again, so am I.
I shake his hand as he offers it, but otherwise say nothing.
A part of me still wants to run from this house and the handshake just solidified that notion as something I must do.
But another thing came through too. The grinding of things falling into place, like when you switch gears of a car to go faster and the car just flies.
I’m in the right place. Whether by ruin’s design or by that little bit of luck I can sometimes count on is anyone’s guess though.
“Nico tells me you’re working for Codelli,” Angelo says as he sits back down on the sofa and motions for us to join him.
I sit in the armchair across from him. It’s much firmer than I expected it to be given all that padding.
“I’m the bodyguard to his daughters.”
“And I also hear you don’t like it,” Angelo says, smirking.
“I came to New York to raise an army and take back what was stolen from my family out West,” I say. “I don’t got time to babysit a bunch of women.”
I still have no idea what’s actually going on here, or what this meeting is actually about. So I better stick to what I do know—the only thing I really know—my need to avenge my family.
Angelo smirks again. It makes his face look a little less hard, but his eyes shine even brighter because of it. More deranged. Positively burning.
“I can give you that army,” Angelo says and my heart leaps for joy like it hadn’t since I was a little kid. It’s like getting everything I wanted, including my dead horse Jack back. Totally unsubstantiated, because this is nothing but an empty promise at this point, but there it is.
“As soon as you help me overthrow Codelli, that is,” he adds and the balloon of joy deflates faster than it erupted.
I didn’t come here to enter another man’s war. I have my own to fight.
“And how would I do that?” I ask, my throat suddenly parched. I wish he’d offer us some of that whisky sitting in his tumbler, but he’s not.
“You’re close to the guy and I’m close to having the numbers I need to take him down.”
I glance at Nico who is looking at me with a very set expression on his face.
I know exactly what he’s thinking because we look and think so much alike.
The look on his face now is exactly what I see when I’m telling myself I must not fuck this up in the mirror.
I just wish he’d told me more about what I was getting myself into before we came here.
But does it even matter? I need an army, and this guy is offering it. That’s all I really need to know.
“I’m in,” I say. “Tell me what you need from me.”
This time Angelo’s smirk extends all the way into a smile. It makes his eyes glow with even brighter insanity. Or is it just drive and not insanity? Just motivation to finally reach for and snatch the deepest desire of your heart?
“I need you to stay close to him and get him to trust you,” he says. “Then you’ll be perfectly placed to strike him down when the time comes.”
“I saved his daughter’s life twice now,” I say. “I think he’s well on his way to trusting me completely.”
I can understand Angelo’s burning desire; it’s the same type I wake up with each morning and go to sleep with each night. Get justice. Get revenge. Get it all back.
“That’s right, his cursed daughter is your best way in,” Angelo adds.
“Cursed? Which one?” I ask.
“Gianna,” he says. “The one he can’t marry off because every guy he gets her engaged to ends up dying soon after.”
Warning sirens are blaring in my head, my muscles tense up with the urge to run and keep running far away from here. But I nod. Why didn’t Nico tell me about this curse? Probably because I’m so obsessed with my own and didn’t want to add to it.
“She already has a thing for me,” I say. “It won’t be hard.”
That makes Angelo chuckle as he leans forward to clap me on the back. “You really are a gift sent from the angels… the city of angels, but still.”
Nico cracks a grin too. “I told you he was the asset we’ve been waiting for.”
An asset? I haven’t been called that in ages.
But the number one question going through my head is: Do two curses cancel each other out? Or will they combine and bring an even bigger tragedy than each would separately?
I’m cursed to always seek and find ruin. She’s cursed to kill every man who gets close to her. What happens when we collide? Is my death by her curse just an extension of my curse to find ruin?
Who the fuck cares?
I came here to get an army and this is the way I get it.
“I’m your guy,” I tell them.
Because the sooner this is done, the sooner I get to go back home. And watch Dante bleed to death at my feet like I watched my brother and father bleed at his hand.
Then the curse will be broken. Or the curse will take me. It won’t matter which of those happens. Because my work will be done.