Chapter Twenty-Seven
Valentina
M atteo’s arms wrap around me, strong and steady, and he holds me as sobs I can’t control shake my whole body. I bury my face in his chest, seeking comfort as much as cover for my shame at how I fall apart. My tears soak through his shirt but he says nothing and he doesn’t pull away. He simply holds me even tighter and lets me cry.
Eventually, a roughly promised vow escapes him. “We’ll find Adriana another way, cara .”
His warm voice cuts through the numbness in my mind.
“We?” I question, my voice hollow.
His face falls when he sees the tears on my cheeks.
“Yes, we .” His hands close around my forearms and he pulls me to my feet, steadying me when I stumble. His voice is firm, tight with controlled emotion. “You’re still hiding things from me, Leni, and that’s fine, you’ll tell me when you’re ready, but you’re not doing this rogue investigative shit by yourself anymore.”
Something about his tone stiffens my spine.
He’s angry with me.
The thought is strangely hurtful.
“Why not?”
“You’ve nearly gotten yourself killed twice, and that’s only since I’ve known you. Who knows how many more times you’ve come inches from death.” His eyes simmer with slow burning fury. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that scar on your stomach, that it doesn’t keep me up at night, wondering what happened to you. I’d wager that’s another near death experience you got in this pursuit of yours.”
It pisses me off that he’s right, that I can’t deny it. Clenching my jaw angrily, I tip my chin up at him.
“Need I remind you that I just saved your life?” I point out. “Seems to me that you’re as much of a liability as I am.”
“That’s because I’d just seen my brother with his hands around your throat, seconds from squeezing the life out of you!” Matteo erupts, his temper exploding out of him. The force of his reply stuns me into silence. I take a step back but he matches it, refusing to put any distance between us. “You try experiencing that for yourself, Leni. Let me know if you give a shit about your own safety after you witness that.”
The angry words I had poised in response die on my lips at the emotion in his declaration. The anguish is as clear in his voice as it is on his face.
He’s not angry at me.
He’s scared .
Selfishly, I didn’t think about what witnessing that must have been like for him—even if we’re just casual, no one wants to see their lover killed before their eyes. Especially not him, given his history.
My shoulders drop as the fight drains out of me. When I step into his body and close my arms around his middle, he makes a soft, happy noise. I press my cheek into his chest and hold him. He blows out a frustrated breath, raking a hand through his disheveled hair, and then his palm finds the back of my neck. His thumb rubs comforting circles into my throat.
“You can’t keep putting yourself in harm’s way,” he murmurs. “What’s the point of finding out what happened to Adriana if you get yourself killed in the process?”
A painful knot forms in my throat, constricting the passageway. I release him and step away. He lets me go.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“I know I’m being reckless but that’s what having a weakness does to a person. You can’t understand, Matteo, because you don’t have one. Adriana is mine,” I confess, my gaze roaming over the hard edges of his face. His eyes are black and bottomless on mine, his expression unyielding. “I don’t want to die, but I’m ready to make that sacrifice if that’s what it’s going to take to bring her body home.”
Matteo moves so suddenly that I miss it. One moment he’s a couple steps away, the next his chest is bumping against mine, his hand wrapping around my throat.
“Over my dead fucking body, Valentina,” he snarls, his use of my full name like the punishing crack of a whip on my ass. “You didn’t listen to me when I told you to stay away from Rocco, but listen to me now. Let me help you. Let me be your partner in this instead of having to chase after you to catch up. I can’t bear to think about what would have happened tonight if I’d arrived a couple minutes later.”
I realize I have no idea how he knew where to find me, or that I needed finding at all. I’ve left in the middle of the night every time I’ve gone to his apartment.
“How did you even know where I was?”
Something hot and heavy unfurls in his eyes. My heart convulses painfully in response.
“I followed you. You think I’ve been letting you sneak out of my bed in the middle of the night without making sure you were getting home safe?” The hint of a smile slides off his face. “I didn’t see Rocco at Firenze . He must have been there before us. When you didn’t come out, I had a bad feeling and went looking for you. That’s how I found you.” A faraway look takes over his gaze before his eyes darken and narrow, and I know he’s reliving the moment he found Rocco on top of me.
His large hand grips the side of my neck in a possessive embrace. “I won’t stop you, I won’t get in your way, I won’t interfere, that’s the promise I’ll make back to you. But let me help, let me keep you safe so that I never have to see that again.” His thumb again rubs soothing circles on the pulse at my throat, sending a needy shiver raking through my body. “You have to know I’ve become unquestionably reliant on your survival for my own, cara mia ,” he murmurs softly.
Warmth blooms in my stomach and my heart clenches violently, the traitor.
“I can’t ask that of you, Matteo.”
He frowns. “To protect you?”
“To investigate your own family. You realize that’s what it means to help me, right?” I look over at Rocco’s dead body still laying ten meters from us. “He deserved to die, but he was still your blood and you should never have had to be involved. I can’t ask you to keep betraying your family for me, not when this thing between us is… what it is.”
Matteo holds my gaze steadily for long, silent moments. I’ve never met anyone who stares as intensely as he does, like he can detect the true measure of a person with his gaze alone. Suddenly, I’m desperate for him to find whatever he’s searching for in my face.
“You might not trust me, Leni, but I’ll trust you. I’ll trust you with the power to destroy me.”
He says I don’t trust him, but he must not realize how long it’s been since I last said Pavona .
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
His gaze is searing on me. “You already have it anyway.” He continues before I can question what he means by that. “You’re not asking me to do something I’m not already doing,” he explains, “Because I’ve spent the past ten years planning to overthrow my family to take over the Famiglia .”
I suck in a shocked breath, but Matteo keeps going.
“Unlike my brother, I was never handed a leadership position in the Famiglia . I had to earn everything, starting at the bottom and slowly rising up the ranks to the position I’m in now. Over the past year, I’ve sabotaged my family at every turn, I’ve turned loyalists of theirs into supporters of mine, and I’ve created allegiances to strengthen my position. Taking Rocco’s throne is my revenge for everything he’s done, Leni, but being Don is what I want most in the world. I was born to do this, even if my father never believed it.” His eyes soften and he cups my cheek. “Rocco was always going to die, cara . Maybe not today, but soon. He brought about his own execution by touching you tonight, so don’t spend another second worrying about my feelings as it relates to my family. Their reckoning has been a long time coming.”
Matteo basically just took a knife to his chest, cut out his heart and placed it in my hands for me to do with as I wish. That’s the power he’s just given me and I’m not sure what I’ve ever done to earn this level of trust from him.
“Why did you tell me?” I ask, stunned. “You might have just gambled your life away.”
“I told you I would work to earn your trust, cara . This is me doing that.”
My stomach clenches in response to his heated words.
My head is spinning from the information he just gave me, but concern for him trumps everything else. “Hold on. Won’t you be the number one suspect once Rocco’s body is found?”
He looks at his brother’s corpse. “Whoever has been killing my cousins is unknowingly playing right into my hand. Rocco’s murder will just be attributed to them and I’ll avoid suspicion. Whatever their reason may be, they’re clearing the way for me without realizing it.”
I choke down the lump in my throat, hoping that Matteo doesn’t notice my reaction. He can never find out that Thiago is the one behind those murders.
“The Famiglia is in such dire straits that we’re on the brink of civil war. I know I can save us, but I can’t do it alone. That’s why...” Matteo pauses. For the first time since he started speaking, he seems unsure. He swallows thickly and his eyes find mine one more, harder and more distant now. “That’s why I need to marry into Marina’s family.”
Marina .
She has a name. It’s pretty, probably as pretty as she is.
I hate it, just like I hate her.
He just told me he’s planning a coup—information that would be priceless if I were to take it to my brother—and all I can focus on is the name of his fiancée.
He’ll hate me when he finds out who I am, who my brother is, and the extent to which I’ve been lying to him since we met for the second time, so her name shouldn’t matter.
But it does.
“The Marchesanis run the second most powerful branch in the Mafia after mine and if we unite, then no one will be able to oppose us.” He shakes his head slowly. “I can’t become Don without that alliance.”
This time my heart clenches for an altogether different reason, something like disappointment. I understand now why he warned me not to fall in love with him. His fate and a revenge ten years in the making both rest on his engagement.
For a naive, foolish second, I allow myself to believe I hear a hollow undertone in his voice. Something that tells me if he could choose, it would be different.
But it’s just my imagination and his words serve as a sorely needed reminder that I need to come back to reality.
We’re on borrowed time, him and I.
No use pretending otherwise.
“I understand,” I finally say.
“You understand,” Matteo echoes stiffly. His eyes are heavy and demanding as they trace over my face, asking things of me which they shouldn’t, which they can’t .
I look anywhere but at him. “I do.”
Silence.
He huffs out a humorless laugh and jams his hands into his pockets. When I glance up at him, his eyes are dark and volatile on me.
He stares at me like he wants me to say something else.
It’s not like he gave me a choice.
The air is tense for a few seconds before he blows out a breath and seemingly pulls himself together.
“And I understand your need for revenge against my family, Leni. I feel it too. Our anger may come from different places, but the rage burns just as hotly within me as it does you. So let me help you.”
“What if my revenge gets in the way of yours?”
“I can be adaptable,” he shrugs. “Finding Adriana is the priority.”
“It’s my priority.”
He shakes his head slowly, a smile tugging at his lips. “It’s ours now.”