Chapter Twenty-Three
Matteo
P art of me had expected Valentina to back out. That she’d spend the night overthinking everything that happened at my place and choose to run from our agreement in the morning. So when I found her waiting by my car after the club closed the following evening, that same part of me was surprised.
I would have tracked her down regardless of what she wanted, but the fact that she came to me of her own volition had a frankly dangerous bone deep satisfaction slithering through my body and wrapping itself around every single one of my major organs.
She gave me a detached tip of her chin and, needing to regain some power, turned and grabbed the door handle. I was behind her and slapping her ass sharply before she could even attempt to pull it open.
“Do you ever do as you’re told?” I whispered hoarsely against the shell of her ear.
“No,” she murmured back breathily.
I chuckled. “Good.”
I pushed her into the back seat, pulled at her trousers and mine with hands shaking with anticipation and fucked her hard. The space was small and cramped, our efforts punctuated by bouts of laughter as we feverishly attempted to maneuver our bodies within it.
Then I’d taken her home and fucked her two more times. We’d fallen asleep for a couple hours before she snuck out and went home.
That was two weeks ago and every night since has been the same. Tonight, I have something different in mind.
I knew from Stefano, the bar manager, that she had the evening off so I’d texted her earlier.
Me: Meet me at this address at eight pm.
Valentina had seen the message. I’d watched the bubbles appear then disappear a couple of times, a weird tightness moving north in my chest as I waited for a reply.
One of our key suppliers had walked into my office so I’d been forced to put my phone down and meet with him. My eyes kept trailing back to the screen, waiting—maybe even willing it—to flash. My fingers tapped anxiously on the surface of my desk. I hummed in acknowledgement of whatever the supplier said, hoping that I wasn’t agreeing to anything foolish. When Enzo gave me a sharp look, I knew I had.
Turns out, I’d unwittingly agreed to margins on our next deal that would see me lose money. But my screen had finally, finally , flashed with a notification.
I apologized to the supplier and unlocked my phone, finding that Valentina had thumbsed up the message. You’d have thought she’d promised me a billion pounds in profits for how quickly it erased the thought of the lost revenue.
Now I’m waiting for her in a private room at La Sirena , an Italian restaurant in the city. I picked a place that isn’t owned or associated with the Famiglia so we wouldn’t be seen by anyone that could recognize me.
I’m wrapping up a call with Enzo when the doors open and Valentina sweeps in, all long brown hair, red lips, and killer curves. A stuttering sigh of relief rattles up my throat. I wonder if the constant anxiety I have that she’s going to disappear again is ever going to go away.
That breath tumbles erratically from my lips when my gaze rakes down the tight little black dress she has wrapped around her body. It’s far more conservative than other outfits I’ve seen her in, and yet it does something to me that those revealing dresses couldn’t. I can imagine her on my arm, pressed against me as we move about the room at a function, greeting my allies.
Dangerous, dangerous thought .
“About what you asked me to look into,” Enzo adds cautiously.
“Hmm?” I can’t look away from her.
Valentina’s hand clenches around the strap of her purse when she sees the lone table.
When Enzo remains quiet, the silence drawing out between us, I know he’s about to tell me something I don’t want to hear. That pulls my attention firmly back to our conversation.
“What is it?”
“ Fottuto bastardo ,” he curses. Even through the phone, I can hear the words hissed through his clenched jaw.
I stand and turn away from Valentina. “Tell me.”
“I think Rocco is dealing in women.”
My eyes close, my lids suddenly heavy like they’ve been pulled down by weights. “Are you sure?”
“Not yet. But he’s been meeting with the Armenians more frequently. Last night, I followed him to an auction.” Disgust curls around every single word out of Enzo’s mouth. “It would explain the additional cash flow.”
Unfortunately, sex trafficking is a recession proof business. Demand will always be there and high. But it’s a red fucking line. The Famiglia has never dealt in human trafficking of any kind, let alone the sexual exploitation of women.
“Get hard proof. We’ll take it to my father. He won’t be able to ignore this like he has in the past—Rocco will pay.”
“I will,” Enzo vows.
Hanging up, I turn in time to find the waiter reaching to take the coat off Valentina’s shoulders. He freezes when he catches the arctic glare I level at him, and backs away.
“Why did you want me to meet you here?” Valentina asks.
I round the table and take her coat off myself. After handing it to the waiter, I dismiss him with a wave.
“What does it look like?” I ask, pulling out her seat and looking expectantly at her.
She doesn’t move. “It looks like you want me to have dinner with you.”
“That’s correct.”
Valentina stares at me, her gaze unwavering. “We agreed that this would be fun only.”
“Are you planning on doing a hunger strike while we’re sleeping together?”
“No.”
“Fabulous, then you can eat with me.”
She eyes me warily, hesitating. Her body sways slightly, as if something inside her is pushing her to give in.
“It’s food between friends, not a marriage proposal, Leni.”
Something flashes through her eyes before she finally starts to close the distance between us with small, cautious steps. “Is that what we are?” she asks as she sits and I push her chair in. “Friends?”
I wait until I’m seated opposite her before I answer.
“Do you have any weapons on you?” I ask, pouring her a glass of red.
“Always.”
“Plan on using any of them on me?”
She takes an unhurried sip, assessing me with astute eyes above the rim of her glass. Her blood red lips rub together and her tongue peeks out of her mouth to lick at the residue. I’m about to blow in my trousers and I don’t think she’s even aware of what she’s doing to me.
“No,” she says, setting her glass down.
A slow smirk rolls across my lips, tugging at the corners. “Then I’d say that makes us friends.” My gaze catches on her ensnaring mouth once more. “Is that the cherry lipstick?”
Another sip. “You’ll have to find out for yourself.”
I smile at her. “You might be the best friend I’ve ever had.”
A faint blush appears on both her cheeks and her lips twitch, but she fights back her smile.
She’s like being addicted to cigarettes—you know they’re bad for your health, you know they might one day result in your death, but you keep coming back for the high. For that moment the nicotine hits your lungs and the anxiety and irritation disappear. For that moment it enters your bloodstream and the restlessness inside you settles, bringing with it a calming quiet.
I’ve quickly become addicted to it.
“Why do you hate your brother?”
I throw her a surprised look, caught off guard that she wants to discuss this. “What?”
“I mean, it’s pretty obvious to me why you would hate him. From what I can tell, he’s at best a narcissist, at worst a psychopath. But he’s hardly the only violent man in the mafia, let alone the Underworld, and you’re his brother.” She rips off a piece of bread and brings it to her mouth. “He must have done something to you personally for you to hate him this much. So why?”
“Many reasons.”
“Name one.”
Unlike her, I’m not being purposefully evasive because I don’t want to answer her questions. “The truth is ugly. Are you sure you can handle it?”
“Yes.”
“He murdered my first girlfriend.”
Valentina’s eyes close, a pained expression furrowing her features. Her lips part and a soft, surprised gasp slips out.
“You loved her,” she says.
Not a question, a statement.
I shake my head slowly. “No.” Her eyes fly open. “That’s the worst part, I didn’t,” I admit. “I was eighteen and we’d just started dating. I really liked her, but I hadn’t grown to love her yet. He killed her because he thought I did. She had her whole life ahead of her and she lost it because she was with me. I’ll feel guilty about that until the day I die.” My gaze slides back to Valentina. “Now you understand why I told him you were nothing, why I keep telling you to stay away from him. I won’t have that happen again, especially not with you.”
She fiddles with the stem of her glass, looking away from me. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she whispers. “I know a lot about that kind of guilt.”
I tiptoe carefully into the opening she offers. “From the soulmate you lost?”
She nods.
“Something happened to him—
“Her,” she corrects in a hushed whisper.
A knot loosens in my chest. She swore it wasn’t a past lover of hers, but she’d called him her soulmate and I realize that the jealousy that’d burned in my belly since had been slowly rotting my insides. Knowing it’s a woman soothes the abused flesh of my stomach, but knowing she trusts me enough with those small yet important bits of information heals it altogether.
“Something happened to her when you were with me?”
Valentina nods.
A piece of the puzzle finally slots in. “And that’s why you never came to the hotel that night?
Another nod.
A knot forms and settles deep in my stomach.
I finally know why.
Instead of feeling relief that she didn’t disappear because of me, there’s sorrow knowing the real reason caused her so much pain.
“Losing someone I loved that much has hardened me. I find it difficult to be vulnerable, it’s not something that comes naturally to me anymore. I’ve lost so many people — what’s the point of opening myself up to more pain?”
Grief pours off of her in waves. It’s obvious and I’m not sure how I didn’t see it before. What I previously interpreted as aloofness, I now understand is actually a kind of self-protective toughness. It’s bubble wrap encasing her, keeping additional pain from getting through to her.
“It’s not your fault.”
“You don’t know that.” Her gaze finally lifts back to mine. The raw vulnerability in them splits me open and calls to the protectiveness deep in my blood. “You don’t even know what happened.”
“I don’t need to have all the details to know it wasn’t your fault.” I want to tell her that I’m dying to know the details, that she can trust me, but I don’t want to spook her into saying pavona .
“It is. I… I—” she swallows thickly, her voice thickened by tears. Finally, she whispers so low I almost miss it, “I lied.” I don’t say anything, waiting for her to keep talking even as my stomach tightens at the obvious misery in her voice. “The night it happened, I told her I was going to the bathroom and that I’d be back soon. Instead, I met you and I–I was gone for over an hour. When I was asked where I was when she was taken, I couldn’t face telling the truth and admitting it was my fault, I said I was only gone for ten minutes. I was a coward .”
The confession tumbles rapidly out of her like she can’t stop it, almost as if her conscience is trying to unburden herself. She doesn’t cry, but somehow the hollowness in her voice is even worse.
“So you see, I’m very familiar with guilt. It’s been eating me alive every day for the past eighteen months.”
I want to reach across the table for her, but something tells me she doesn’t want to be physically comforted right now.
“It’s not your fault,” I say, the words tearing out of me with such vehemence that Valentina startles. “Whatever happened to her wasn’t your fault. If you had only been gone for ten minutes, then you might have been with her when it happened, and then what? The same would have happened to you and you’d have both been lost, did you ever think about that?” My fingers brush gently against hers where they rest on the base of her glass. “Then where would I be? I’m sorry for what happened to your friend, but I’m happy we met and I’m happy our meeting meant that you two were separated, because I can’t bear to think about the alternative if you weren’t. The only person responsible is whoever caused your friend harm. It’s not your fault, Leni.”
She gives me a wholly unguarded look that takes my breath away. She’s always breathtakingly beautiful, but there’s something about her when she’s vulnerable that makes her incandescent. In those moments, she’s almost like a firefly in the dark of night. Her light flickers on, teasing me, then disappears, leaving me bereft and chasing after her, desperately waiting for the next time her light will come on, hoping this’ll be the time I’ll catch her.
A crackling sound yanks me viciously from my thoughts. The waiter is back and reaching across the table to light a second candle. The first burns with a high, steady flame, the wooden wick amplifying the sound of its burning.
Panic rises inside me like a tidal wave and threatens to sweep me away. The assault is sudden, like it always is. I fight against the collapse of my airway, struggling to overpower my physical reaction but used to waging this internal battle while needing to externally appear in control. I tear my gaze away from the flame and desperately try to remember where we were in the conversation, my mind suddenly blank.
“Say the words,” I repeat.
I suppress the impulse to run, to escape. My skin starts to crawl and a cold sweat breaks out at the back of my neck.
Valentina’s eyes flick down to the candles, then back to me. She brings her glass to her mouth and takes a long sip, much longer than anyone should for a wine of this caliber. I try to focus on that, on the way she twirls the stem between her fingers, not setting the glass down.
“It’s not my fault,” she says tentatively.
My body fights my command to remain calm. I ball my hands into fists beneath the table, digging my nails into the sensitive skin of my palms and redirecting my brain to latch onto the pain instead.
“Say it like you believe it,” I say through clenched teeth. I’m always surprised by how steady I manage to make my voice sound. Mercifully, I don’t think she can tell what’s happening inside me.
I’m this close to stabbing my knife into the still healing wound in my arm. It feels like that’s the amount of pain it’s going to take to distract myself enough to sit here as if there isn’t full fledged destruction happening inside me.
Valentina ignores me. Something volatile shifts in her gaze and she drains her entire glass instead.
She grimaces in discomfort as she swallows the bitter liquid, then wipes her mouth clumsily with the back of her hand, smearing her red lipstick across her cheek.
Intense hazel eyes track my expression as she flips her wineglass over and traps one of the candles beneath it. Her palm covers the foot of the glass, pushing it into the surface of the table and cutting off all oxygen until the flame slowly fizzles out.
Simultaneously, she wets the tip of her thumb and index with her tongue and reaches for the second candle. I jerk forward when she closes her fingers around the lit wick, but she has no reaction. The second flame goes out as easily as the first.
When she’s done, she grabs a candle in each hand, turns and hurls them at the wall behind her. They shatter, bursting into dozens of pieces of wax and glass.
I stare at her, the bizarreness of her actions smothering my panic.
“If you don’t like the smell of lavender, you could simply have asked the waiter to swap them out,” I say, trying to inject a note of humor in my tone.
But the change in my body is abrupt. The tension immediately leaves my body like it’s been sucked out. My heart settles, my mind quiets, and a peace washes over me like the dread of only moments ago never existed.
With it, clear-headed thinking comes back.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I snatch her hand and inspect her fingers, both of us ignoring the faint touch of mania in my voice. I rub the traces of soot away with my thumbs, relieved to find that her skin isn’t red or calloused beneath it. “You should be more careful,” I reprimand. “What were you thinking?”
For long moments, Valentina simply watches me.
Her gaze roams silently over my entire face and picks me apart with unnatural ease. Gradually, her eyes soften in a way that I’ve never seen before.
“I have PTSD, Matteo.” When I say nothing, she adds, “Did you think I wouldn’t realize what was happening to you?” Her fingers close around mine. She grips me tightly, like she can’t let go. Or maybe I’m the one holding on for dear life. “Do you think I don’t see you?”
My heart lurches into my throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I try to yank my hand back, but she keeps it clutched in both of hers.
“Pyrophobia,” she says.
I stiffen. “No.”
“Yes.”
I growl at her. “Drop it, Valentina.”
She continues, undaunted. “You’re afraid of fire.”
I jerk to my feet. The door opens and the waiter appears. “Get out,” I explode. He pales and ducks back out, yanking the door closed behind him.
Valentina doesn’t turn or acknowledge the interruption. I’m pacing like a caged, feral animal, and she approaches, hardly cowed by the way I snarled at him.
“I’ve suspected it since I saw the way Rocco taunted you with the lighter when he forced me to dance. He was using it to keep you in check, to stop you from intervening when you wanted to. And when I auditioned, you told me specifically not to include pyrotechnics in my dancing,” she explains. “But it’s only now when I saw just how much you were struggling that I realized it’s a true phobia, not an aversion.” She reaches for the hand I’m raking savagely through my hair and pulls it gently down between us. I stare at our joined hands, mystified by how her touch alone has the power to soothe me. “So, yeah. Fuck those candles.”
The realization that she did what she did to help me is slow to permeate my brain. I blame the still receding fog for how long it takes me to process the information.
She’s looking expectantly at me but I can’t bring myself to admit the truth.
“You could have hurt yourself,” I say slowly. “Don’t do that shit again.”
“No.”
My gaze shifts to hers. “No?”
“No,” she repeats, calmly.
“Leni–”
“If another shooting happens at the club, will you let me stand there without trying to save me again?”
The memory of her frozen and terrified in the middle of gunfire flashes viciously through my brain. Fresh anger curdles in my stomach.
“Of course not.”
“Then, no. So long as you’ll do that for me, I’ll do this for you.” My mouth opens to argue, but she cuts me off with quietly whispered words. “I would never judge any part of you, Matteo, especially not this, and I would never tell anyone.” Her hand comes up to rest over my heart, her gaze shifting back and forth between my eyes, drawing me into the concerned depths of hers. “Are you alright? Your heart is still beating so fast.”
I stare at her, taken in by her beauty. Not how beautiful she is on the surface, although it’s certainly there, but how magnificent she is on the inside.
“That’s because you’re touching me, cara .”
She smiles softly, then asks, “Do you know what triggered your phobia?”
There’s a guilelessness in her gaze that pushes me to tell her a secret only few know about.
Valentina’s eyes darken when I begin to unbutton my shirt, slowly revealing the muscled planes of my chest. She backs away and takes her seat at the table once more.
“I know I’m asking you to be open and honest with me when I haven’t been. That I’m asking you to share when I’ve refused to. It’s unfair, I admit it. You don’t have to answer me if you don’t want to, Matteo, but there’s no need to distract me with sex—”
“You wanted to know why I hate my brother?” I interrupt.
She blinks. “Yes.”
I pull my shirttails out of my trousers and rip my shirt off my shoulders. “Here’s another reason.”
I turn and show her my back for the first time.
There’s shocked silence.
It stretches for long, torturous seconds, and then there’s the sound of her chair scraping violently against the wooden floor, no doubt leaving deep indentations. I swallow thickly, wondering if she’s going to run away in disgust.
Seconds later, I feel her behind me, feel her fingers reach up tentatively to brush over the scarred, mangled flesh of my back. “What is this?” she asks softly, horror coating every word.
“My brother’s handiwork.”
Valentina’s fingers tremble as she touches me, running down the long vertical line of scarring that anchors the large letter ‘R’ that’s been burned into my back.
“He…” She doesn’t seem to be able to finish her sentence so I do it for her. “He…”
“He branded me.”
A choked sound comes from behind me and I hate that she pities me. She traces the lettering back up, across my shoulder blades and to the right where it loops back down and joins the left side, only to jut once more out to the right. The ‘R’ covers almost the entirety of my back.
“He’s a real artist. He took his time with it,” I say acerbically. “Years of torture using many different instruments —cigarettes, cigars, blades, pokers, rods, anything he could get hot and burn me with, really. His favorite was the cigars. The skin would often get infected and he’d get to watch me struggle through that pain for weeks afterwards.”
“Y-your father—”
“My father helped.” A humorless chuckle escapes me. “You don’t get away with this type of torture without your parents knowing about it. They didn’t care. Rocco is the heir, I’m the spare. I was his to practice with if he wanted. He’d burn me, I’d heal, and he’d burn me again. It went on like that until he killed Susana and I finally left home.” Valentina’s hand moves silently along the mutilated flesh, her fingers unafraid to touch, her touch undoing years of festering bitterness and hatred I’ve held for my deformity. “I might have escaped, but he won in the end. That fear of fire burns inside me no matter how much I try to quell it. It’s a constant reminder that he has a hold over me.”
My stomach twists when she stays silent. I wish I could see her face. “You said scars didn’t scare y—”
Valentina is speaking before I’ve even finished.
“I’m going to kill him,” she hisses from behind me, the words carried with such venom that, for a second, I don’t believe she’s the one who’s said them.
I turn then and realize that it wasn’t pity I heard earlier, but anger. It burns bright and formidable in her gaze, so potent it’s as if I can see the very flames of her fury alive in her eyes.
She looks consumed by her rage, far beyond what I’d expect her to feel for me alone.
Behind the anger, I see in her gaze that she realizes how alike we are. Both of us haunted by pain, mine physical, hers emotional.
Her scars may not be visible, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. We’re two broken pieces that should never work, but that somehow came together in what’s starting to feel like an oddly perfect fit. I cup the side of her face, rubbing my thumb over the smeared lipstick on her cheek to wipe it away.
“His life is mine, cara .”
“You better hope I don’t get the opportunity then, because if I do, I promise you I’ll kill him myself.”
This time when I chuckle, there’s real humor in it. I sober when I see the determined expression on her face. She’s dead serious.
“It’s my fault Susana died. I should have left before he hurt her instead of letting him escalate—”
“You were eighteen!” she interjects.
“—I made a mistake.” My gaze hardens, my hand tightening on her face. I grab her waist and pull her close. “But I won’t make the same one with you, cara mia . I’ve warned you away from him in the past and you haven’t listened, but now you know what he’s capable of. Stay away from him, Leni. Stay away from his office. You’ve seen what he’s capable of doing to his own brother—if he catches you, he won’t just kill you, he’ll torture you and he’ll enjoy every single second of it, and this time I won’t be there to save you.”
My heart lurches in my chest at the thought of Valentina caught in Rocco’s clutches, suffering at his hands. Violence unlike anything I’ve ever felt before surges through me, bringing a red mist before my eyes and a bloodlust to my hands that needs sating.
“Promise me you won’t go looking for him,” I demand. “Promise me you’ll stay away.”
Valentina’s hand comes up to clutch the back of mine. She holds it firmly as she promises, “I’ll stay away from him.”
Her eyes stare deep into my soul, impressing upon me the vow she’s making and begging me to believe her. I bring my mouth to hers in a searing, cherry-flavored kiss.
When we separate, we smile at each other like we don’t both know she just lied to me.