Chapter 17 Matteo #2
“This could start a war,” she breathes, her palms resting over my heart.
“I know,” I murmur into her hair. “And I’ll win it. For you. For us.”
We talk quietly after that—plans, contingencies, the first steps of the impossible thing we’re about to do. Eventually her voice softens, her lashes lower, and she yawns.
I guide her into my bed, settling her beneath the sheets. She sinks into the mattress, exhaustion pulling her under. I stay long enough to feel her breathing steady against the pillow, to watch her face smooth into sleep for the first time in God knows how long.
Only then do I slip out from beside her.
This is the moment everything changes.
And I know—I will burn down the world before I let her be taken from me again.
I pause at the doorway, hand on the frame, looking back at her wrapped in my sheets. Something about it feels dangerously right.
She was always meant to be mine.
The realization hits me with the force of a two-ton truck, flattening everything that came before it. I need to protect her. And that baby. At all costs, without hesitation, without mercy for anyone who stands in my way.
I step out of the room and close the door quietly, sealing her inside the only sanctuary I can give her for now.
The living room is dim, shadows stretching long across the floor as I walk to the counter where her bag rests.
The ultrasound photo lies beside it. I pick it up and stare at the black-and-white blur.
The baby doesn’t even resemble a person yet—just a tiny, curled shape, a smudge of possibility. A strange, almost fragile thing.
And still, something fierce coils in my chest, sharp and immediate. A possessive instinct I didn’t know I was capable of feeling.
“You will be mine,” I murmur to the image, quiet but certain. “I will raise you as my own. I will guard you. Cherish you. Because your mother matters to me more than anything in this world… and so do you.”
I never spent much time imagining children. In my world, an heir is a strategy, a legacy. A continuation of power.
But this wasn’t planned. And somehow it feels less like an accident and more like fate reshaping itself around us.
“Not how I imagined any of this,” I say under my breath, my voice swallowed by the room’s stillness. “But you will be a Davacalli. And you will carry my name.”
Madness. All of it. From the moment I asked her to marry me to the moment she whispered yes. I haven’t had a chance to breathe, to process, to think about the avalanche we just set off.
But now—standing here with her sleeping in my bed and her child’s first form trembling in my hand—it all settles into place.
She said yes.
Not because she loves me. Not yet.
But because she is fighting to survive. Because she refuses to bow. And now it’s my turn to show her what a real man is made of—what it means to be claimed, guarded, protected without question.
I take out my phone, ultrasound still between my fingers, and step onto the balcony. The cold night air hits me hard, grounding me. The city stretches beneath me, indifferent, unaware of the war that has just been declared.
I dial the number I need.
He answers on the first ring.
“The passports will be done within the next hour or two,” he says immediately, skipping any greeting. “The jet is fueled and ready to pick her parents up.”
I don’t speak. Not yet. My eyes are fixed on the swollen little shape in my hand.
“Boss?” he prompts.
I blink hard, forcing my mind back into the present. “We need to send a message to Giacomo.”
Silence stretches on the other end. Then, slowly: “A message? I thought we were only helping the girl escape.”
“Change of plans.”
Another pause—longer this time, heavy with suspicion. “What change?”
“I’m going to marry her.”
The line goes dead for a beat. Then Valerio lets out a breath that sounds like disbelief wrapped in resignation.
“Please tell me this was her idea and not yours. Because surely you understand what marrying her will ignite, Matteo Andrea Davacalli.”
I expected the reprimand. I’m ready for it.
“I do,” I say, looking out over the city—my city. “And I’m ready to face it. She needs protection, and there’s no safer place for her than at my side, carrying my name.”
“He will start a war.”
“Then we go to war.”
Valerio tuts under his breath. “You would risk war for a woman?”
“I would risk my empire for her.” The truth tears itself out of me before I can control it. “I am marrying her, Valerio. My mind is set. And she’s pregnant.”
A low curse spills across the line. “Yours?”
“In all the ways that matter, yes.”
“Dio mio…” he mutters. “Sarai la mia morte.” You’ll be the death of me.
A sigh, then a shift—acceptance, loyalty locking into place. “Fine. I don’t agree with any of this. But you’re my boss, and my gun is yours. What do you need?”
This is why I trust him. No matter how catastrophic the path becomes, Valerio follows me straight into the fire.
“One of Giacomo’s brothels,” I say, my voice dropping into something cold enough to freeze the night air around me. “I want it gone. Tonight. Quiet if possible, loud if necessary. Something that reminds him exactly who he’s dealing with.”
“And what message are we sending?”
“That he will never lay a hand on Beatrice again.” My grip tightens around the ultrasound. “She belongs to me now.”
The wind rises, slapping cold against my face—but inside, the fire only burns hotter.
“He’s got a corner on 15th and Mirabella,” Valerio says. “Just renovated it. Moved new girls in last month. Supposed to be one of his biggest earners. If you want to send a message, that’s the one.”
Perfect.
“Get it done.”
Three simple words—enough to light the fuse on a war that’s been years in the making. “And make sure no one is harmed.”
“On it, boss.”
The line goes dead.
I stay where I am, standing on the balcony with the city stretched beneath me like a kingdom waiting for its reckoning. The sun bleeds into the skyline, sinking behind concrete and glass, casting the world in shades of gold and fire.
There’s a strange calm up here. A stillness that settles right before the earth splits open. But I know—once Giacomo realizes what I’ve taken from him, what I’m claiming as mine—this peace will shatter.
War will come.
And when blood hits the streets of this city, it won’t be mine.