Chapter 25 Matteo
MATTEO
With our guns prepped and loaded, we head out the front door and meet Lucio head-on. There’s no fucking way I’ll let him barge into my house like this. He messed with the wrong mafioso.
I position myself behind my car and wait for them to break through the gates before I signal to my men. Everyone knows their position, and it doesn’t take long for everyone to get ready, guns pointed at the cars driving closer to the mansion.
“Fire on target!” I call out. “Leave Lucio for me.”
My men aim at their tires, and some cars swerve when hit, but others keep driving until they’re in position too. My men shoot bullets through their windows, but some of Lucio’s men avoid the shots and jump out, using the doors as shields while they aim and shoot.
BANG! BANG!
Gunfire erupts all around us, and I focus on protecting my men as best as I can, while also searching for the car that contains Lucio, but I can’t seem to find him anywhere.
Dozens of cars are strewn about the destroyed front yard, and men come pouring out of each vehicle.
BANG!
One of my men goes down behind me, his body bleeding out on the concrete floor of my garage.
Fuck.
I shoot at the man who gunned him down and hit him in the head, his body flopping down onto the pavement near my fountain.
“Lucio, you motherfucker, show yourself!” I bark, trying to draw him out of his hiding place.
BANG! BANG!
One of his men shoots at me, and I jump behind the car to make sure I don’t get hit.
I wait until the shots are fired before turning around and shooting back at him, hitting him in the knee.
He goes down, and I stand and aim from the top of my car, gunning down anyone in my sight until my chamber is empty and I have to go for a new round.
BANG! BANG!
Another one of my men falls down the steps to my house.
Fuck, I have to get rid of these assholes quickly before they kill every last one of my men.
A new car drives up the road with the windows rolled down, a machine gun hacking away. I duck for cover and watch my men do the same behind the cars next to me. Cries of agony fill the air, and I’m pretty sure one of my men just got blasted somewhere down the road.
“He’s in there,” I growl. “Of course, that fucker would bring a machine gun.”
“I’ll flank you, sir.” One of my men crawls toward me.
I nod. “Take down the sides, focus on exhausting their ammo. Shoot the tires so they can’t run like dogs with their tails between their legs. Whatever it takes, make it happen. Don’t let them get away with this.”
When the gunshots relax a little, we both lean up and fire away, aiming for their tires and their drivers to make sure no one is getting out of this ambush alive. The only one I want to capture is Lucio himself. Fuck the rest.
The machine gun blasts away again, and my man next to me gets shot in the ribs, then collapses.
“You’ll fucking pay for what you did!” Lucio shouts. “We’ve got you surrounded. There’s nowhere to run, little bitch!”
Ignorant rat. I’ll slice off his tongue next.
A few more gunshots are heard, and then nothing.
They might be all out of ammo. Perfect.
I glance at my man. “Now.”
He nods and pulls out his gun while walking toward the cars, shooting anyone on sight. Lucio’s men pull out their knives instead and start a fistfight with my men. Blood squirts everywhere. It’s a full-on massacre happening right in front of my house, while I’m homing in on finding Lucio.
The car with the automatic gun finally opens its doors. Lucio steps out while one of his men protects him and shoots one of my men point-blank in the head. I aim and shoot for his guy’s gun and blast it out of his hands. Then try to shoot at Lucio himself, but my chamber’s empty once more.
Shit, I’m all out as well. We’re left to our knives now. I guess this is going to be a dirty fistfight.
Suddenly, a car veers out from the right side of my mansion, from the road where I sent Franco off, and my eyes immediately widen in panic.
Oh no. Stella.
The car comes to a screeching halt near the dead bodies, but I have no second to check what’s going on because Lucio charges right at me with his knife aimed at my heart.
“You’re going down now!” he says.
I pull out my knife too and fend him off while my men behind me are fighting his men, trying to gain control over the battlefield.
BANG!
The sudden gunshot catches me off guard as it hits the ground right beside Lucio’s feet.
“What the…?”
We both glance at the person stepping out of the car, gun raised.
Stella. Oh, fuck no. What is she doing here? I told Franco to grab her and run. She’s not even supposed to…
“Stella?” Lucio says with furrowed brows.
I swipe at him with my knife while he’s too distracted by her presence and slice him right in the shoulder. He roars out in pain, then stabs me too, but he misses, barely. The knife cuts through my shirt, scraping my chest, leaving a bloody trail in its wake.
He strikes at me again while I misstep.
Fuck, he’s going to cut me for real this time.
BANG!
Another shot is fired. “Stay away from Matteo!” she yells.
She’s protecting me.
“That bitch,” Lucio says. “You dare to shoot me?”
His knee comes up and hits me in the stomach, and I groan and buckle forward from the pain, after which he stomps me in my face with a fist. I fall back on my ass, dizzy as hell, while he storms off toward Stella.
“Don’t you fucking hurt Matteo!” Stella shouts back.
“Stella, run!” I yell.
“No, I’m not fucking leaving you!”
How did she return? Did Franco disobey me?
He steps out of the car too while I scramble to my feet. Franco runs to her side as Lucio marches at her, knife at the ready. Franco shields her, but Lucio knifes him down, hitting him directly in the stomach.
“Franco, no!” I yelp.
Stella aims and shoots.
BANG!
The bullet grazes Lucio’s shoulder. She tries to fire again, but she’s all out of rounds, and he easily grabs her.
Fuck.
“Get your hands off my wife!” I growl as I bolt toward them, but he’s already thrown her over his shoulder and marches right back to his car.
One of Lucio’s men pulls out a new gun from the trunk, and the bullet ricochets off the ground beneath my feet. I hide behind one of the car doors and wait until he’s all out of bullets before chasing them again, and I snatch a gun off a corpse and fire it at him, missing every shot.
Lucio rounds up his men, and they all run back to their cars.
“Face me, you coward,” I yell at him.
He got what he came here for. Goddammit.
“Go, go, go!” I shout at my leftover men, and they all jump into action, throwing their knives at whoever they can target. But the cars drive off again, haphazardly racing over my terrain until they’re out of sight.
And my wife is gone.
“FUCK!” I yell out loud, falling to my knees in horror as Lucio stole my wife right underneath my nose.
Why didn’t she fucking stay away when I told her to?
Why would she come back for me?
I rush toward my own car, where Franco lies motionless on the muddy ground in a pool of his own blood. I go to my knees and rip up my own shirt, so I can wrap it around him and stop the bleeding.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m so sorry.”
He hiccups blood and spits it out.
He keeps saying it over and over again like it’s going to help.
“Don’t waste your breath on apologizing.”
“She stole my gun,” he says.
My brows draw together. “What, why?”
“She didn’t want to leave, not without you. She was afraid you’d die. And I swear she would have killed me if I didn’t do what she asked. I’m sorry,” he says.
I swallow and tighten the knot to secure the fabric around his wound. “We gotta get you to a hospital, fast.”
One of my men runs up to me. “There’s a ton of dead. What do we do, sir?”
“Call the clinic, and have them bring their off-site personnel to take care of our wounded. I don’t care about the cost, just make it happen,” I respond. “Then gather everyone and empty the gun vault. Arm everyone. We’re taking whatever cars we’ve got left.”
“Yes, sir, he says, and he runs off again, pulling out his phone to make some calls, while I focus on Franco.
“I tried to protect her, sir,” he says. “But I didn’t want to die. And I’m pretty sure she would have shot me if I didn’t listen to her.”
I shake my head. “Yep, that sounds like my wife, alright.”
“What do we do?” He coughs up more blood.
“You? Nothing. You wait here until the clinic comes to help you, and they’ll get you patched up.”
He grabs my arm. “You have to save her.”
Even though he didn’t listen to my commands, and he should be reprimanded, I can’t help but feel guilty because he’s been wounded in a battle I wanted to keep him and my wife away from.
This was my mess to deal with, and I involved the two of them because I couldn't let go of a grudge, and now they’re the ones who paid the price.
He squeezes me. “Leave me. Go get her.”
I nod. “Don’t die on me.”
He shakes his head. “I won’t. I swear on it.”
“You’d better keep that promise.”
I get up and walk to the back of the car. Opening the trunk, I grab a bunch of leftover guns that I gave Franco in a case of emergency. I couldn’t let him drive off with my wife in there without a contingency plan.
I’m not gonna let Lucio run away with Stella and do fuck-knows to her. I’ll fucking follow him into the depths of hell if need be, and get back my wife.