Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen: Matteo
The compound buries its dead at dawn.
Three Bonaccorso soldiers died in the assault.
Two from the eastern breach, killed before Carmelo reached the wall, and one from the western corridor, caught in the initial blast when the explosives hit.
Leone says a few words, their names, what they did.
He says that the family will take care of their people.
Then the dirt goes in and the compound holds a few minutes of silence before moving on.
Antonia stands beside me at the graves, just staring at the dirt.
Her father wasn’t buried here and he won’t be.
He will be shipped to the Castillo compound, and she hasn’t decided if she wants to be there for his funeral, or if she wants to let it go.
She didn't sleep last night. Neither did I.
We lay in the bed in our new room on the third floor, and we stared at the ceiling and breathed.
No words were needed, we were just existing in the same space trying to process everything that happened.
The briefing happens at nine. Leone's office, full attendance minus Charlotte who is coordinating the structural repairs on the eastern wall, and minus Giada who is in the kitchen making lunch. Apparently she wants to ‘take the load’ off our staff while we regroup.
"Status," Leone says. "Claudio."
"Eastern wall breach is secured and under temporary repair. Full reconstruction takes a week. Western corridor damage is cosmetic, no structural compromise. Perimeter cameras are back online. All entry points are manned with doubled rotations through the end of the week."
"Casualties?"
"Three dead, seven wounded. Two of the wounded are critical but stable with Russo. The Castillo prisoners, four soldiers, are secured in the basement holding area. They're cooperating because their Don is dead and the chain of command has dissolved."
The chain of command has dissolved. Nine words that describe the collapse of the Castillo organization as a functioning military entity. Without Marco, the Castillo soldiers are men without orders, and men without orders either find new leadership or scatter.
"The Castillo remnants," Leone says, looking at Antonia. "They're yours to manage. The soldiers who were loyal to you before the marriage will be looking for direction. The ones who were loyal to Marco will be looking for an exit. I'll give you resources to sort them, but the sorting is your work."
"I'll handle it," Antonia says, and the sentence carries no hesitation, no qualification, no request for guidance. She's stepping into the power vacuum her father's death created with the assumption that the room belongs to her and anyone who disagrees can take it up with Vita.
"Matteo," Leone says. "The amendment has been filed. The Harrisons confirmed receipt through the secure channel. The Binding Protocol has been formally rejected by both families, and the Custodian Board has been notified. The legal firewall is in place."
"Good. The Silent will push back through intermediaries, but the legal structure holds. They can't enforce a clause that both signatory families have repudiated, regardless of whether one of the signatures was forged by a woman who learned penmanship through fraud."
Leone taps his pen on the table in thought.
"Your role going forward. I've been thinking about what this family needs and what you bring to it.
You're not a soldier. You're not an operator.
You're a lawyer with a knowledge of the Silent's financial infrastructure that nobody else in this building possesses, and you've demonstrated a willingness to use that knowledge for the family's benefit rather than your own positioning. "
"I've also demonstrated a willingness to withhold information for strategic advantage. Claudio reminded me of that in a corridor."
"Claudio reminds everyone of everything.
That's what Claudio does." Leone leans back.
"I'm offering you a formal position. Legal counsel to the Bonaccorso family.
You handle the financial architecture, the treaty compliance, the interface with the Harrisons and the Custodian Board.
You protect us from the institutional threats that my soldiers can't shoot and my analysts can't decode.
The seat remains mine. The family remains mine.
But the legal infrastructure becomes yours, and the role carries the full authority of the family behind it. "
I look at Antonia and she smiles, allowing me space to figure out if that’s good enough.
"I accept," I say.
"Good." Leone stands. "Emilio, put the word out that the compound is secure and the Castillo threat is contained.
Claudio, maintain the doubled rotations through the week.
Alex, I want a full intelligence assessment on the Castillo organization's current operational status by end of day.
Carmelo—" He looks at the corner where Carmelo usually stands, but the corner is empty.
Carmelo isn't in the briefing. He hasn't been in the compound since this morning, and nobody seems to know where he went.
"Find Carmelo and tell him I want a debrief on the perimeter situation. "
"Carmelo's running something," Emilio says. "He told Torres he had a lead to follow. Didn't say what."
Graziella. Carmelo is following the lead on Ferrara's daughter, the one he told me about. Guess Leone didn’t get the memo and part of me wonders why he’d trust me and not the Don. Maybe it is another test.
The briefing ends and as people leave, Emilio stops at the door, turns to me, and grins.
"Hell of a wedding," he says. "In my professional opinion as a man whose own wedding hasn’t happened yet, yours was significantly more explosive than anything I could even plan for myself. Literally fire."
"Have you even proposed."
"I suppose that would be the first step." He claps my good shoulder, his brows furrowed together as if I just solved the most complicated puzzle in the world. "Welcome to the family, Billone. For real this time."
Savannah appears in the doorway with two glasses of whiskey, hands one to me and one to Antonia, and says "nine AM whiskey is a tradition in this compound for days that deserve it, and yesterday deserved it more than most, but today’s a good second." She leaves without waiting for a response.
Antonia and I drink, the whiskey is warm and the morning is quiet and the compound is rebuilding around us, and for the first time since I arrived, the building doesn't feel like enemy territory.
It feels like home.
The day passes without event, and finally I’m in our room, clean, no gunshots ringing out, no drama, or death. Our true first night as husband and wife.
Antonia comes out of the bathroom in one of my t-shirts and nothing else.
Her hair is wet from the shower, hanging down her back, and her legs are bare.
The t-shirt hits her mid-thigh and the sight of her walking toward the bed in my clothes does something to my brain that bypasses every rational circuit I own.
"Stop staring," she says.
"No."
"It's just a t-shirt."
"It's my t-shirt on your body and that's… phew… sexy as fuck."
She climbs onto the bed and kneels in front of me, and the t-shirt rides up and I can see the curve of her ass where the fabric ends and the bare skin begins. She's not wearing underwear and that just makes me all the more feral for her.
"We should talk about what happened," she says.
"We should."
"I killed my father yesterday."
"You did."
"And then we fucked in his blood."
"We did."
"And I'm not sorry about either of those things and I don't know if that makes me a monster or just a Castillo."
I reach for her and pull her toward me, and she comes, straddling my lap, her thighs on either side of mine, the t-shirt bunching at her waist. My hands find her hips, squeezing, and the combination of softness and strength is the specific texture of Antonia’s body that I'm becoming addicted to.
"You're not a monster," I say. "Monsters don't grieve.
You're grieving. I can see it in the way you hold the blades and the way you didn't spin today and the way you stood at those graves this morning looking at men you didn't know with the face of a woman who's counting losses. You may feel like a monster for fucking me right after, but the fact remains, grief is not rational, it’s not supposed to make sense and you’re just starting to figure that out. "
"I told you not to observe me."
"I told you I can't."
She puts her hands on my chest. The same position as the first night she came to my room, palms flat, fingers spread, my heartbeat against her skin.
Except this time she's not testing me. She's not running a dare.
She's a woman who killed her father yesterday and needs the heartbeat under her hands to confirm that the living world is still there.
"I don't want to talk," she says. "I want you to fuck me until I can't think about it anymore."
"I can do that."
"I want it rough."
"I can do that too."
"I want you to make me forget my own name."
I grin, “How about I make you remember that you’re now a Billone, instead?”
I grab the hem of the t-shirt and pull it over her head in one motion. She's naked and the sight of her bare on my lap with her hair wet and her eyes dark and her body open to me is enough to make my cock strain against my shorts so hard it hurts.
One quick motion and I flip her, her back on the mattress, me above her, my hips between her thighs, my hands pinning her wrists above her head. She wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me down and the friction of my clothed cock against her bare pussy makes her gasp and grind against me.
"You want rough," I say against her ear. "I'll give you rough, but you need to tell me if it's too much."
"Give me everything you got.”