Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Matteo
I close the distance in four long strides.
My hand shoots out and fists in his collar before his brain can catch up to what's happening.
The fabric bunches in my grip and I use the leverage to slam him backward into the wall so hard the impact sends a painting nearby rattling in its frame and, Dio mio, that feels good.
"You threatening her?" My voice comes out low and dangerous. "In my fucking casino?"
Marco's eyes go wide and his hands come up automatically, palms out in a gesture that's half surrender and half defense. "Don Romano, I wasn't threatening her, I was just making observations—"
"Making observations." I repeat the words slowly, letting him hear how little I believe that bullshit. "Is that what you call what I just saw?"
"I was just doing my job, I was keeping an eye on her like you ordered—" Marco's trying to talk his way out of this, words tumbling over each other in his rush to explain, and it just pisses me off more.
I don't let him finish. I drag him away from the wall and shove him hard, putting real force behind it.
Marco stumbles backward, his feet tangling, and he crashes into the opposite wall with enough impact that I hear the air whoosh out of his lungs.
He slides down slightly, catching himself with both hands against the marble, breathing hard.
"Your job," I say, moving toward him with deliberate steps that echo in the hallway, "is to watch her. Not make her uncomfortable. Not touch your fucking weapon while you're alone with her in a hallway. Do you understand the difference, Marco, or do I need to explain it slower?"
He straightens up slowly, still pressed against the wall, and I can see him trying to decide whether to keep defending himself or shut the hell up. He chooses wrong.
"Don Romano, with all due respect, she's causing problems in the house. The men are distracted, Romeo lost a finger, and I thought you should know—"
My fist connects with his jaw before he can finish the sentence, and the impact sends his head snapping to the side with a crack that I feel all the way up my arm.
Marco reels from the blow, his hand coming up to his face automatically, and when he pulls it away there's already blood on his fingers from where my ring caught his lip and split it open.
"You thought I should know?" My voice has gone quieter now. "You thought it was your fucking place to judge her, to threaten her?"
Marco spits blood onto the marble and then—stupidly—the idiot swings at me.
His fist comes up in a wide arc aimed at my face, but it's sloppy and telegraphed, the kind of punch thrown by someone who's panicking rather than thinking, and I see it coming from a mile away.
I lean back and his fist passes through empty air where my head was a second ago, and the momentum of the missed swing throws him off balance.
Before he can recover, I grab the front of his shirt and drive my fist into his face.
Once, twice, three times in rapid succession, and each impact sends satisfaction shooting through my veins like a drug.
His nose breaks under the second punch with a crunch, and blood explodes across his face, running down his chin and dripping onto his shirt collar in dark splatters.
Marco's hands come up trying to protect his face, but it's too little too fucking late. I hit him in the ribs hard enough to crack something, and he doubles over with a choked sound that might be a gasp or might be the beginning of a scream, and either way I don't give a shit.
"Matteo!" Alessia's voice cuts through the red haze, but I'm not done yet, not even close.
I grab Marco by the hair and pull his head back, forcing him to look at me through eyes that are already swelling shut, and I want him to see my face when I do this.
I hit him again, this time catching his cheekbone, and his head snaps back against the marble wall with a sickening crack that echoes down the hallway.
"Matteo, stop!"
Then hands grab my arm mid-swing. Small hands—Alessia's hands.
She drops to her knees beside me on the blood-slick marble, and I can feel her trembling as her fingers wrap around my wrist. "Stop! Matteo, please, you'll kill him!"
My arm trembles in her grip, every muscle still locked and ready to finish what I started. Blood drips from my knuckles—Marco's or mine, I can't tell anymore and don't really care. The rage pulses hot and insistent in my veins, demanding I finish what he started.
Then her other hand touches my face, turning my head toward her.
"Matteo, look at me. Please look at me."
I do and her eyes are wide, golden and bright with unshed tears. Her chest heaves with rapid breaths, and there's blood on her skirt from kneeling in it, but she doesn't let go of me.
"Please," she whispers. "Please stop. He's not worth it."
The word cuts through everything else and suddenly I'm not just seeing Marco's face anymore, I'm seeing hers, and shit, when did that become more important?
The rage doesn't vanish, but it... shifts.
It focuses on her instead of Marco, on the way her hands are shaking as they hold my wrist, on the fact that she put herself between me and violence even though she's seen what I'm capable of, even though she knows I could turn on her just as easily if I lost control completely.
I uncurl my fist slowly and the tension bleeds out of my shoulders one muscle group at a time, leaving behind exhaustion and an ache in my knuckles that I know will last for days, maybe weeks if I broke something, and I probably did.
I stand up slowly, my legs unsteady beneath me, and pull away from her touch before I do something stupid like kiss her in front of whoever might be watching from the main floor.
Then I let go of Marco's shirt and he collapses to the floor immediately, crumpling like a puppet with cut strings.
He's still breathing but barely conscious, coughing blood, his face already swelling into something grotesque that his own mother wouldn't recognize.
"Romeo!" I call out, my voice rough and strained from the adrenaline and exertion.
Romeo appears from around the corner and his face goes pale when he sees Marco's condition.
But he doesn't ask questions, just moves forward and hauls Marco up, slinging one of Marco's arms over his shoulders and half-carrying, half-dragging him toward the back exit.
"Get him out of here," I tell Romeo, and my voice sounds strange in my own ears—too calm, too controlled after what just happened, like I didn't just beat a man half to death.
Romeo nods once, his expression carefully blank, though I catch the way his eyes flick toward Alessia for just a second before he looks away. "Yes, Don Romano."
As they disappear around the corner, I can hear Marco's wet, ragged breathing and the drag of his feet against the marble, leaving a thin trail of blood drops behind them.
I turn back to find Alessia still kneeling on the floor, staring at her hands like she's never seen blood before, even though I know she has—she lived with Lorenzo long enough to see plenty of it.
The hallway is eerily quiet now, just the distant sounds of the casino filtering through from the main floor, all of it seeming obscene and completely out of place after what just happened here.
I look toward the main floor and realize that we're far enough back in this hallway that nobody from the casino proper could have seen what happened, but my men are all standing near the entrance to this corridor, clearly drawn by the noise of the fight, and they probably all saw everything.
I meet Enzo's gaze across the distance separating us, and he holds my stare for a long moment that feels loaded with questions and assessments and probably judgments before nodding once, slow and deliberate and unmistakable.
It's approval, or as close as I'm going to get from him right now, and I feel something in my chest loosen just slightly because whatever just happened, whatever they all witnessed in this hallway, Enzo understands why I did it and why I had to do it the way I did.
Marco threatened what's under my protection, questioned his position, and needed to be reminded of his place in a way that everyone else would see and never fucking forget.
The others will follow Enzo's lead on this, like they always do. That's all I need right now.
I reach down and grab Alessia's arm, pulling her to her feet gently. My hands shake slightly with leftover adrenaline. She sways when she stands, and I have to steady her with both hands on her elbows.
There's blood on her hands now too, dark red against her pale skin where she touched me, and somehow that bothers me more than all the blood covering my own hands.
"We're leaving," I tell her, and my voice comes out rougher and more commanding than I intended, but I need to get her out of here before the adrenaline crash hits me fully.
She doesn't argue, just nods once and lets me guide her forward, and thank Christ for that, because I don't think I could handle resistance right now.
I guide her toward the exit, my hand firm but not rough at her elbow, and as we pass my men standing at the corridor entrance, they all step aside to let us through without a word. Luca follows us with his eyes but doesn't move from his position, doesn't speak.
The air hits me when we step outside, cool and clean after the smoke and blood and stale recycled casino air that suddenly feels like it was suffocating me.
Alessia's breathing hard beside me, her body trembling with what I recognize as the aftermath of an adrenaline dump, the shakes that come after violence when your body finally realizes you're not in danger anymore and decides to fall apart all at once.
I can feel it in the way she leans into my grip, like her knees might give out if I let go.
The car waits at the curb, door already open. I help her inside, sliding in after her and pulling the door shut.
My knuckles throb with every heartbeat, the pain getting sharper and more insistent now that the adrenaline is starting to wear off and my body is remembering that punching someone in the face repeatedly actually hurts like a bitch.
Tomorrow they'll be purple and swollen and I probably won't be able to make a proper fist for a week at least.
But it was so worth it.