Chapter 23 Matteo
MATTEO
Eight years later…
Time is a strange creature. It devours years in silence while you’re busy fighting, defending, surviving—head down, teeth bared, convinced that the only direction is forward.
That’s the life I chose, the life that shaped me, but I would bleed for it again without hesitation, because every brutal turn of it brought me to her.
“So I can’t get a girlfriend yet?” Daniele’s voice rises from the back seat, full of innocence and misplaced confidence.
My wife twists in her seat with a frown. “Danny, you’re eight. You don’t need a girlfriend.”
I watch him through the rearview mirror as the Faravelli gates draw nearer.
“But Uncle Valerio says you need to start young.”
Beatrice gasps. “He said what?”
A low chuckle slips out of me. Of course Valerio would decide my son needed Casanova lessons before mastering basic arithmetic.
“Danny, what did we say about listening to Uncle Valerio?” He meets my eyes in the mirror, looks away, then looks back, guilt and mischief tangled together.
“Daniele?”
He sighs dramatically and crosses his arms. “Only when it’s life or death.”
“Exactly.” I nod, then glance at my wife. Her expression is pinched, her lips pressed tight, her worry etched deeper than she realizes. “Come, bella,” I murmur, reaching for her hand. “It’s all in good fun.”
She blows out a breath, pushing her bangs from her eyes, trying to hide the tremor in her exhale. “I know. It’s just… he’s growing so fast. And now he’s asking questions—big boy questions.”
Her lashes flutter, trying to cage tears that have lived too close to the surface these past months. Her body has been through hell, and I can’t touch the pain that lives beneath her skin. I can only stand guard, helpless to anything but the world outside.
The gate guards wave us through, and the gravel cracks beneath the tires as we enter Marcello’s vineyard.
Sunlight spills across the rolling green hills, the fir trees rising like quiet sentinels at the edges of the land.
There is a kind of peace here—gentle, unthreatening, untouched by the wars we’ve waged.
A family day is exactly what she needs. A soft place to land. A place where no one will speak sharply or look too long. One miscarriage breaks a woman; three nearly shatter her entirely. I’ve watched her fight battles in silence that would have crushed lesser souls.
I squeeze her hand, forcing her to turn from the window. She gives me a small smile, thin as paper, brave as steel. The dark circles beneath her eyes hide under careful makeup, but nothing hides them from me.
Not after everything we’ve survived. Not after everything she’s lost.
“You okay, bella?”
She nods—too quickly, too lightly—because that’s what she does now, softens the edges of her pain so no one feels cut by it.
But I know her better than that. I hear her in the shower when she thinks the water will drown out the sound.
I hear the broken pieces of her heart hit the tile, night after night, and every damn time I wish I could take all of it and burn it in my hands so she never has to feel it again.
“We’re here, love bug,” she murmurs, turning toward our son with a smile so gentle it nearly hides the exhaustion tightening her eyes. “You can see Antonio and Maria.”
“Yay!”
Daniele launches himself out of the car before I’ve even pulled the key from the ignition.
“Danny, slow down!” Beatrice calls after him, exasperation warming her voice. “If we take our eyes off him for one second, he bolts.”
A low laugh rumbles out of me as I round the car and open her door. I take her hand, threading our fingers together, anchoring her to me with the smallest gesture. I feel the sadness lingering inside her like a shadow behind glass—quiet, patient, unspoken.
“You okay?” I try again, softer.
She nods. “Just a little winded, that’s all. It’s been a long week.”
Another lie disguised as normalcy. She’s been carrying grief in her bones for months, and the weight of it has reshaped her in small, devastating ways. But she needs time, not pressure, so I let the lie sit between us without touching it.
Marcello meets us at the front steps, beard peppered with gray, the inevitable tax of this life. His posture, though, is as it always was—shoulders squared, spine like something forged in the war-torn streets that raised us all. He kisses Beatrice on both cheeks, nods to me, ruffles Daniele’s hair.
“Davacalli family,” he says with a familiar gruff warmth. “Always prompt. I expect nothing less with a drill sergeant like Matteo at the helm. Come in. Marta has been waiting for you, Bea.”
“Maria and Antonio?” Danny shouts before Marcello can even finish.
Marcello laughs. “Antonio is in the game room, my boy.”
And that’s all Daniele needs; he’s already sprinting down the hallway, a blur of limbs and joy echoing through the quiet house.
The scent of rosemary and roasted meat wraps around us as we step inside. The contemporary farmhouse kitchen glows with late afternoon light, and Marta stands at the stove, commanding three pots at once like only she can, cooking as if she’s feeding a battalion.
“Ahh! Bea, you’re here!” she squeals, wiping her flour-covered hands on her apron before engulfing my wife in a hug. They laugh together, a sound so full and bright it feels like the first real breath Beatrice has taken in days.
“You look good, girl—you’re glowing. I swear you disappear for ages.”
Beatrice pulls back, smiling wider than she has all week. “It’s good to see you again, Marta.”
I walk beside my wife and press a kiss to her cheek.
She leans into me without thinking, her body softening against mine in a way that tells me more than any words could.
She’s exhausted—hollowed out by months of grief—but the moment my mouth touches her skin, some of the tension unspools from her shoulders.
Good. Let me be the one thing in this world she doesn’t have to brace herself against.
From the corner of my eye, I catch a small shape hovering at the edge of the kitchen doorway—a thin little frame half-hidden behind the wall. Maria. Marcello’s jewel, his world, the living reminder of how quickly innocence can be snatched away.
“Looks like you have a little admirer,” Beatrice murmurs, nudging me gently. She tilts her chin toward the tiny brown head. “Ciao, bella.”
I lift my hand and give the little girl a small wave, offering the softest smile I can manage. She ducks back behind the wall so fast that her pigtails whip through the air, then she peeks out again, watching Beatrice and me with that mixture of curiosity and wary calculation.
“Amore?” Marcello calls, turning toward her. “Do you want to come say hi?”
Maria shakes her head hard, pigtails flapping, and sprints away from the kitchen before anyone can coax her into the light.
A faint tug pulls at my chest, one I’ve been feeling for a while now. I glance at Beatrice. The thought of another little one with her eyes, her spirit, her defiance… one I could protect from the world instead of avenge inside it…
It hits harder than I expect.
“Though I love seeing you, Matteo,” Marta calls out, already circling the counter like a woman on a mission, “I need some girl talk with my friend.” She loops an arm through Beatrice’s and tugs her away from me. “You two go… discuss your business things.”
I follow Marcello into the sunroom at the far end of the house.
“Drink?” he asks.
“A whiskey, please.”
I sink into the chair, letting my gaze drift through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The vineyard rolls out behind the house in long green rows, sloping gently toward a lake that glitters under the afternoon sun. It’s quiet here. Still. Almost untouched.
Peace. A word I’ve never trusted, yet somehow crave more now than I ever have.
The estate I built was supposed to give me this—distance from the world, safety carved from stone—but even that fortress is beginning to feel like a gilded cage closing around the people I love most.
Movement flickers in my peripheral vision.
I turn my head and find the same pair of pigtails from earlier, hovering just inside the room. Maria stands half-shadowed, half-brazen, watching me with those wide eyes.
I lean forward but don’t approach her.
“Ciao, bella,” I say softly.
She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t run either. She just watches.
“I think you’ve grown a whole five centimeters since I saw you last,” I add, lowering my voice, smoothing the edges. “Don’t you want to come and show me how tall you are now?”
She shakes her head, as if even the thought of stepping closer might crack something fragile inside her.
“You wound me, M,” I murmur, clutching my chest in mock agony. “You don’t want to be my friend anymore?”
Another violent shake of her head—and then she disappears again, bolting from the doorway like my shadow alone is enough to frighten her.
Marcello returns with my drink, lowering himself into the armchair opposite me. I take a slow sip, letting the cold burn settle deep in my stomach. It’s not the whiskey that leaves an ache behind; it’s the ghost of that little girl’s fear still hanging in the doorway she abandoned.
“Since when is Maria so… quiet?” I ask, eyes drifting back to the empty space where she stood minutes ago.
Marcello’s gaze sharpens immediately. “You’re telling me you didn’t hear?”
I stay silent. He tilts his head, truly studying me now, and something shifts in his expression—confusion curling into disbelief.
“You don’t know,” he says, more statement than question.
I shake my head. “Marcello, I run an entire syndicate. I don’t get updates unless you give them. If something happened to your family, how the hell would I know unless you lifted the phone?”
A silence stretches between us, heavy, loaded, the kind that only exists between men who’ve bled side-by-side. For a moment he looks almost… lost. Then he speaks.
“My daughter was kidnapped two weeks ago.”