Chapter 6 Enemy Territory #2
"I think you've never once in your life fought this hard for something you actually just wanted to own.
" Sienna's voice dropped, quieter, more direct than her earlier bravado had suggested she'd get.
"I think you fight this hard for things you're scared of losing before you've even admitted you want them.
And my aunt's the first thing in this district that's ever made you look scared, Mr. Cristea.
So. Whatever this actually is, you should probably figure it out before it costs both of you something you'll actually regret. "
She didn't wait for a response, just gave him one last assessing look and turned back toward her aunt's table, leaving Matteo standing near the bar with a drink he hadn't touched and a sentence he had no intention of admitting had landed exactly where she'd aimed it.
"She's not wrong, you know," Ronan said quietly, appearing at his shoulder again.
"I'm aware."
"You going to do anything about it, or just stand here nursing a drink and pretending the last three weeks haven't been the most interesting stretch of your entire career?"
Matteo didn't answer, because across the ballroom, Del had risen from her table, moving toward the terrace doors with the specific posture of someone who needed air more than she needed another conversation about business rivalries that had stopped being purely business weeks ago.
He watched her go, watched the green of her dress disappear through the doors into the humid Miami night, and felt every rational argument he'd constructed against this entire situation lose ground he wasn't sure he wanted back.
He heard scattered conversation drift past him as he crossed the room, the specific texture of underworld small talk that never quite stayed on the surface for long.
Two men near the dessert table discussing a shipment delay out of the port that had cost someone real money.
A woman complaining, low and careful, about a supplier who'd gone quiet without explanation in the last month, the kind of silence in this business that usually meant something worse than a missed phone call.
Nobody said names. Nobody needed to. The undercurrent moved through the room the same way it always did at these events, business conducted in glances and half-sentences beneath the string quartet's careful, oblivious music.
Matteo tucked the detail into the back of his mind without fully registering why it mattered yet, the vague sense of unrest threading through conversations that had nothing directly to do with him, and pushed through the terrace doors into the night air.
Del stood at the railing, back to him, the city's skyline spread out beneath the terrace in a wash of light that made her look briefly, uncharacteristically small against the scale of it.
"Sienna cornered you," she said, without turning around.
"She did."
"She does that. Don't take it personally."
"I didn't." Matteo crossed to the railing, close enough to stand beside her without quite touching, close enough that the space between them had become its own kind of conversation. "She's perceptive."
"She's twenty three and thinks she's figured out everyone she meets within five minutes." Del's voice carried something wry, fond, the particular affection of someone who loved a person enough to be exasperated by them. "She's usually right, though. That's the annoying part."
"What did she figure out about me?"
Del finally turned to look at him, the city lights catching the sharp line of her jaw, and didn't answer right away, something careful and unguarded both moving across her expression at once. "I don't know. What did she say to you?"
"That I fight hardest for things I'm scared of losing before I've admitted I want them."
Something shifted in Del's face, quick and involuntary, gone before she could fully mask it. "That's oddly specific for a twenty three year old bartender."
"She's not wrong."
The admission left him before he'd fully decided to make it, quiet and honest in a way he rarely allowed himself to be with anyone, and Del's breath caught audibly enough that he heard it over the distant hum of the string quartet through the terrace doors.
Neither of them moved to close the last few feet of distance between them. Neither of them moved away either.
"Matteo."
His name in her mouth landed different than his last name ever had, softer, more dangerous, and he found himself watching her lips shape it like the word itself was the most interesting thing happening in this entire ballroom full of Miami's most dangerous people.
"Don't," he said, though he wasn't entirely sure what he was warning either of them against.
"Don't what?"
"Don't say my name like that again unless you mean whatever comes after it."
Del held his gaze, something fierce and unguarded burning behind her eyes that had nothing to do with the district war they'd both been pretending was the only thing between them for three straight weeks, and for a long moment neither of them said anything at all, the silence doing more work than either of them seemed willing to attempt with words.
Then, from inside, Beatriz's voice carried through the terrace doors, calling the room to attention for the evening's toast, and the moment fractured as quickly as it had built, both of them stepping back with the practiced ease of people who'd spent years learning how to recover composure in front of an audience.
"We should go back in," Del said.
"We should."
Neither of them moved for a second longer than the excuse required.
They walked back into the ballroom separately, a careful few feet apart, and Matteo took his seat at table four watching Del settle back into hers across from him, both of them performing normalcy for a room full of people who'd already stopped believing the performance an hour ago.
Beatriz's toast unfolded in the background, something about resilience and community that Matteo barely registered, his attention fixed instead on the woman across the table who kept glancing up at him every few minutes like she couldn't quite help herself despite every effort otherwise.
Their eyes met again near the end of the toast, held a beat longer than either of them could have written off as accidental, and this time Matteo didn't look away first. He watched her decide not to either, watched something settle between them that felt considerably more permanent than a truce, and understood, with the particular clarity that only ever arrived when it was already too late to do anything useful with it, that whatever Ronan and Sienna had both already clocked about him tonight, he had officially stopped being able to argue against it himself.
The look held. Neither of them broke it first.