Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Matteo
The war room in my estate has seen countless meetings, but none quite like this. Blood from the ambush still stains my shirt cuff—a reminder of how close we came to losing our most valuable asset. How close I came to losing her.
I push that thought away as my inner circle files in.
Enzo moves with his usual predatory grace, serpent tattoo visible beneath his rolled sleeves.
Rafael follows, carrying with him the scent of gunpowder from the firefight, his green eyes bright with the kind of satisfaction that only comes from surviving violence.
Dante, my capo, adjusts his perfect cufflinks, looking more like a senator than a killer despite the blood spatter on his collar.
Luca brings up the rear, his eyes already calculating the implications of what just happened.
These are my brothers in blood if not all in birth. The men I trust with my life, my empire, my secrets. But as I study each face, I can't shake the nagging certainty that one of them isn't who he appears to be.
"Sit," I command, taking my position at the head of the table. The chair has been in my family for three generations—dark wood and Italian leather, worn smooth by the hands of dead men who understood that power is never given, only taken.
Enzo speaks first, as always. "Clean exit. No casualties on our side. The Moretti hitters were amateur hour—desperate, sloppy, more concerned with speed than precision."
"How many?" I ask, though I already know the answer. I counted the bodies myself.
"Seven dead, one captured alive," Rafael reports, cracking his knuckles. "The survivor's sedated in the basement. He'll be ready to talk when you are."
I nod, filing that information away. A live prisoner means intelligence, but it also means risk. The Morettis will know we have one of their own, and they'll be planning accordingly.
"The breach concerns me more than the attack itself," Dante says, his politician's voice carrying the kind of measured gravity that makes senators confess their sins. "They knew exactly when we'd be moving her. Knew the route, the timing, the security complement."
The silence that follows cuts through the room like a blade.
We've all been thinking it, but hearing it spoken aloud makes it real. Makes it dangerous.
"Inside information," Luca confirms, his voice tight with barely contained fury. "Someone fed them everything they needed to plan this ambush."
My jaw tightens. I grip the table until the wood creaks. The air in the room goes still. Someone close to me has sold us out, and I’ll deal with it the only way I know—blood for blood.
"Immediate measures," I say, my voice carrying the weight of absolute authority.
"Double the perimeter. Rotate all access codes.
Isolate communication channels until we identify the leak.
" I pause, letting each word settle into their bones.
"I want a full internal investigation. Everyone with access to operational intelligence. Everyone who knew about the transport."
"That's a lot of people, boss," Rafael observes, but there's no challenge in his tone. Just acknowledgment of the scope of what we're facing.
"Then we cast a wide net." I lean forward, placing my hands flat on the table. "Disloyalty is a cancer. If we don't cut it out completely, it spreads until it kills the host."
The silence that follows carries the weight of shared history. They all know what betrayal cost my family seventeen years ago. They know what I did to the man who sold my father's life for Moretti gold.
My uncle Arian. The man who raised me after my mother died, who taught me to shoot, who sat at this very table planning the "peace meeting" that would end the Romano-Moretti war. The man whose throat I crushed with my bare hands when I discovered he'd orchestrated my father's murder.
I was seventeen. He begged for mercy, claimed family blood should count for something. I showed him exactly what family blood meant to a dead man's son.
"We find the traitor," I continue, my voice carrying the promise of violence. "We make an example. And we ensure this never happens again."
"What about the woman?" Enzo asks, and there's something careful in his tone that makes me look at him more closely. "How much does she know about our security protocols?"
"Nothing actionable," I reply. "She's been unconscious or under guard since we took her. But I want her kept close. No unnecessary exposure to operational details."
Before anyone can respond, the door opens without a knock. Only one person in this house would dare interrupt a strategic meeting without permission.
My sister.
Isabella steps into the room wearing a summer dress and the kind of determined expression that has gotten her into trouble since she was old enough to walk. Her dark hair falls around her shoulders like a curtain, and her hazel eyes—our mother’s eyes—blaze with righteous fury.
"Isabella." Luca’s voice carries both affection and warning. "This isn’t the place—"
"I know exactly where I am," she snaps, her gaze fixed on me. "I also know what you’ve done, Matteo. How could you?"
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees. My men exchange glances, sensing the danger in a Romano family dispute playing out before them. Isabella never cared about appearances when her principles were at stake.
I set down the papers I was holding, finally giving her my full attention. "This is a business meeting. Not the place for sentiment."
"You kidnapped a woman," my sister insists, stepping forward despite my warning. "After what happened to me… how could you do that?"
Her words slice through the air. Enzo’s jaw tightens, his eyes going dark at the reminder of what we’d endured to get her back.
If it wasn’t for him, she would not be here right now and this is one of the reasons why he’s one of my closest people and my underboss.
I will be forever grateful and in debt to him for saving my little sister.
"Isabella," I say evenly, calm but edged with steel. "Your feelings are not irrelevant, but they do not dictate Romano business. Please, leave now—we’ll talk privately later."
Her hands tremble, but she doesn’t back down completely. "She’s terrified, alone—just like I was. Men with guns deciding her life—"
"Enough." The word cuts across her tirade, quiet but final. I stand, letting silence and presence do what anger never could. "This conversation ends here."
For a long moment, her eyes blaze at me, but then she exhales sharply and backs toward the door. "This isn’t over." She slams it behind her hard enough to rattle the frames.
I sit again, unruffled, my attention returning to the table. "Gentlemen. Where were we?"
The first thing I notice when I open my bedroom door is the chaos.
Clothes scattered across every surface. Papers strewn like confetti. My perfectly organized world turned upside down. It's a deliberate destruction—not the work of someone having a breakdown, but someone making a point.
The second thing I notice is Alessia herself.
She sits in my leather chair wearing nothing but my black dress shirt, her bare legs crossed with casual elegance. The silk falls to mid-thigh, and I know—know—that she's wearing nothing underneath. The knowledge sends heat through my veins that has nothing to do with anger.
Her chin, once again, is lifted in defiance and her eyes meet mine without a trace of apology.
"Welcome home," she says, her voice carrying just enough mockery to make my jaw tighten. "I hope you don't mind, I made myself… comfortable."
The way she draws out the word 'comfortable' makes something primal coil in my chest. I close the door behind me with precision, my gaze never leaving her face.
She's testing me, pushing boundaries to see how I'll react.
It's a dangerous game, especially when she's sitting there looking like every dark fantasy, I've never allowed myself to have.
"Where are my clothes?" she asks, her voice carrying that familiar note of challenge.
"Burned," I reply without hesitation and take a step closer, watching her pupils dilate. "You'll have to make do with what I give you."
Her breath catches slightly—fear or excitement, impossible to tell. "How thorough of you."
"I'm nothing if not complete in my methods." Another step. "When I take something, I make sure it becomes entirely mine."
"So, what am I supposed to wear?"
I let my gaze travel deliberately from her face to her bare legs, taking my time with the view, letting her see exactly what I'm thinking. "You seem to have figured something out."
She shifts in the chair, and I catch the slight tremor in her hands before she steadies them. But she doesn't break eye contact, doesn't back down. "This is your shirt."
"It looks better on you than it does on me." I move closer still, close enough now to catch the scent of my soap on her skin. "Then again, I think you'd look even better without it."
Color floods her cheeks, but her chin stays lifted in defiance. There's heat in her eyes now, unmistakable and intoxicating.
"You destroyed my room," I observe, moving closer, feeling a bit too much like a predator.
"I redecorated," she corrects, deliberately uncrossing and recrossing her legs—a movement that draws my attention exactly where she intends it to and sends blood rushing south. "Don't you like it?"
I stop directly in front of her chair, close enough that she has to tilt her head back to meet my eyes. Close enough to see her agitation. Close enough that when I lean forward slightly, my hands braced on the arms of the chair, she's caged.
"It's very... creative," I murmur, letting my voice drop to something barely above a whisper. My face is inches from hers now, and I watch her lips part slightly as her breathing quickens. "Though I have to wonder what you were trying to accomplish."