Chapter Twenty-Eight
Valentina
E motion constricts my windpipe at his words. I could never have imagined standing here one day, with one Leone lying dead at my feet and another swearing to help me, no matter the personal cost to him.
“I don’t even know where to look from here, Matteo.” I extend my palm towards him. “All I have is this photo of her.”
He takes it, fingers closing carefully around it like it’s something precious. It’s a small thing, but it doesn’t escape my notice. “Where did you find it?”
“In a drawer in his office. There are dozens more, all of different girls.”
Matteo frowns, looking deep in thought. After a couple of minutes, he says, “I might have an idea.”
I perk up at that. “What?”
“There’s no way he could have murdered this many girls without being discovered. To talk purely logistically, the disposal of bodies alone would have been a nightmare.” Matteo rubs a hand over his jaw. “It’s possible that Rocco got himself involved in some dark revenue streams these last few months.” He hesitates for a second before adding, “Things like human trafficking. Sex trafficking to be specific.”
I instantly feel sick to my stomach. “Jesus.”
“He must have sold some of these girls. Photos like these are typically used to market that a new girl is available.”
I knew when I found them that there was something seriously wrong with these photos.
Matteo’s lips part before pressing together again.
“What is it?”
“I’m sorry for the blunt question, cara , but how do you know Adriana is dead?”
A violent rush of nausea climbs up my throat. I push it back down, speaking past it, and tip my chin in Rocco’s direction. “He cut off her finger and sent it as proof.”
Matteo stills. A muscle ticks in his jaw. “He what?”
“He included the ring she always wore and a note saying her body would never be found.”
Matteo whips his gun out and fires two shots into Rocco. His dead body jerks as the bullets rip through his chest.
“Dick,” Matteo grits in a fury-soaked whisper.
It’s such a surprising reaction that I can’t help but laugh.
Standing where we are, it’s impossible not to think about how much has changed since the last time he and I stood in this alley together.
“Rocco couldn’t have worked the sex trafficking ring alone. Whoever his partners are, they’ll likely know what he did with the bodies of the girls who didn’t make it.”
Red mists my vision like blood splatter at his words.
“Can I have your gun?” I ask.
Matteo hands it to me without questioning why I need it, and I walk over to Rocco’s body. He’s a mess, his corpse riddled with holes and surrounded by pools of blood. But his face is untouched and that’s a shame. It’s the face of a monster. His features are stuck in a scornful sneer, looking contemptuously down upon the world, even in death.
When I aim, I think of the horrors he must have put Adri through. I think of the photos of those dozens of terrified girls.
But when I pull the trigger, it’s the letter R and perfect skin warped raw by his rage that I see.
I fire, and I keep firing, until there are no bullets left in the chamber and his face doesn’t look much like a face any more.
When I glance over my shoulder at him, Matteo quirks an amused brow at me.
I lift a shoulder in a shrug. “I want him entering Hell looking on the outside exactly the way he did on the inside.”
“Mission accomplished.” Matteo’s lips twitch. “How’d it feel?”
“Fantastic.”
He walks over to me, his hand closing possessively around the back of my neck. “Good girl.”
The warmth of his body calls to me. I lean into him, enjoying the press of his broad chest against my back. His hand moves around to my throat and he tilts my head back against his shoulder so that I’m looking up into his face. He cups my cheek, his thumb brushing lightly over the bruises.
My skin pebbles at his gentle touch, at his even gentler voice. “Let’s get you home,” he says.
???
Matteo drives me to my apartment. Instead of simply dropping me off, he announces he’s coming in with me. Letting him burrow himself deeper into my life after the conversation we had about his engagement is a terrible idea, but just for tonight, I need him.
He calls Enzo for cleanup while I take a long, hot shower. I take my time scrubbing every available inch of my body raw until it feels like I’ve removed the top layer of skin entirely and there are no traces of Rocco’s touch left on me.
When I come out into the living room, Matteo is standing by the mantel and clutching something firmly between his fingers. My breath hitches in my chest when I realize what it is. He found it where it’s always been—in a bowl by the door where I keep my keys, a lipgloss, a photo of Adri, and what he now holds in his left hand. I should have hidden it.
Matteo turns when he hears me. A rough curse rips from low within his throat when he sees me standing in nothing but a bath towel. He eats the distance between us in two steps, pulling me into him by my waist with desperate, needy hands.
“ Fuck ,” he mutters, burying his face in my neck and inhaling deeply. “You smell incredible.” I shiver and he growls. “You don’t know how fucking distracting it is. I’ll be at the club and a hint of your scent will waft over to me and my nostrils will flare like some kind of animal’s.” His fingers dig into my flesh through the towel, drawing it dangerously high on my ass as he presses me into his throbbing cock. “I’ve never smelled it this strong, right out of the shower and clinging to your body like a second skin. It’s driving me crazy— you’re driving me crazy.”
“It’s a fig and vanilla scented body wash,” I gasp, arching into him.
“Yum,” he groans. He nibbles at my neck, lips moving languidly over my skin like he’s trying to eat the body wash off me. “Delicious.”
My head spins, raw lust making me dizzy. My heart is pounding wildly in my chest, beating for him more than it is for me. I can’t make sense of anything, least of all how he’s able to pull such reactions out of my mind and body, and has been since that very first night.
With a frustrated snarl, he pulls his face away. “I want nothing more than to rip this towel off you and fuck you right here, but I have to go. I have to help Enzo with the cleanup,” he explains, raking an annoyed hand over his jaw. “But before I leave, we need to talk.” He reveals what he has held firmly in the palm he previously had clutching my waist. His expression is composed but beneath it his gaze burns, making my stomach clench. “What is this, cara ?” he demands.
It feels like a secret part of me has been violently exposed and forcibly pushed into the open. I glance away, incapable of meeting the intensity of his gaze.
Matteo’s fingers close around my chin. He tips it back up and forces me to meet his stare. “Why won’t you answer me?”
“Because you already know.”
“I do,” he murmurs, eyes roaming my face for the truth. “It’s a room key for the penthouse suite at the Raffles. It’s the one I gave you the night we met. The night you didn’t come to the hotel.” He deftly flips the colorful plastic card between two fingers. “So why did you keep it?”
I’ve asked myself the same question more times than I’m willing to admit over the past two years and I’ve yet to come up with an answer that makes any sense to me, so how can he expect I give him one?
“Tell me why,” he presses insistently.
“Maybe for the same reason you framed those feathers,” I blurt out, immediately digging my teeth into my lower lip as if to try and stop the words that are already long gone.
A look of primal possession flares so violently to life in his eyes, the sheer force of it makes me take a step back. Matteo pulls me back by my throat.
“Masochism?” he asks.
I look up at him from beneath my lashes, nodding once, slowly. “Masochism.”
He murmurs happily and the tension ratchets up slowly between us until the air feels thick and the oxygen dangerously thin. I’m standing close enough to feel the warmth of his breath, to see his pupils dilate, to watch as his tongue peeks out and he wets his lips.
My heart beats loudly, almost too loudly in the silence. It tries to give me away.
“I’ve never understood it, the hold you’ve had on me from that very first moment,” he rasps, voice low and rough. “You’ve held me clutched tightly in your fist, yours to wield, yours to command, yours to do with as you wish, and I’ve had absolutely no hope of getting out.” His hand slides to the back of my neck, his fingers digging demandingly into my hair. There’s a spark of something in his eyes when I look up into them. Something scorching and destructive. “Do you intend to ever free me from this torment?”
No .
“I plan to,” I say instead.
“When?” he murmurs hoarsely. “When will you free me from your thrall?”
I turn heavy, loaded eyes towards him. “As soon as you free me from yours, Phantom.”
A slow, arrogant smile spreads across Matteo’s mouth. He bends and I’m sighing before our mouths connect, like my body releases ten tonnes of pressure just knowing he’s about to kiss me.
I expect aggression or the frenzied passion that’s usually present whenever we kiss. Instead, his mouth closes softly over mine and stays there. He sucks on my lower lip languidly, slowly, taking his time like we have all of it in the world, like this moment can last forever.
His fingers thread through my hair and pull me closer. His tongue parts my lips and slips in lazily. Everything about the kiss is unhurried and smooth, somehow driving me crazier than when he’s pushing me against a wall and shoving his tongue into my mouth. He kisses me like he owns me, like he’s trying to stamp a part of himself into every single one of my cells so he can rewrite my DNA to say his name.
I don’t know how long we stay like that for. All I know is that when Matteo finally pulls his face away, the only thing keeping my towel up is the press of his chest against mine. That my hair is a mess of tangles from where his hands buried themselves in it. That he’s breathing roughly, nearly panting with rampant lust.
And that I’m forever changed by a kiss I know I’ll never forget and a man who can never be mine.
Matteo drops his forehead against mine. “Earlier, you said that I couldn’t understand your dedication to finding out what happened to Adriana because I don’t have a weakness,” he rasps huskily. “Which is laughable, really, because it seems obvious to everyone but you exactly where my weakness lies, and just how far I would go to protect it, cara .”
My pulse skips. Emotion whips inside me, leaving behind an ache that echoes longingly through my chest. With just a few words, Matteo gives me my first good memory in this apartment since Adriana died.
“How far?”
“To the very ends of the Earth. Until my feet were raw and bloodied, until the last ounce of strength left my body, until I died ,” he vows, clasping my face like I might fly away. “And still I’d find a way to come back from the afterlife if you needed me.”
How many times am I going to need to tell him before he understands? Before he listens?
“I don’t need anything from you.” Matteo’s gaze falters slightly, the green losing its color like leaves wilting at the turn of fall. My hands slide up his abdomen, moving searchingly over his chest, until I feel the comforting beat of his heart beneath my palms. “Nothing except for you not to die, Phantom.”
The green slips back into his gaze until it’s shining as brightly as emeralds. A cocky smirk tugs at the corner of his lips, his gaze turning languidly possessive on me. Based on the way my heart soars in my chest, I know that the inevitable pain I’m going to feel when we walk away from each other is going to be crippling.
It’s another thing I’m going to need to learn to survive.