Chapter 15
Matteo
The taste of her still clings to my mouth when I tear through Cleveland in my haste to get to my destination.
Fuck.
Traffic lights blur past like afterimages of her—her pulse under my fingertips, the way she tasted when I kissed her outside her apartment. It lingers in my mouth, in my lungs, in the place between my ribs where I pretend nothing touches me.
If it weren’t for Raven, I would have been on my way quicker. But I couldn’t—wouldn’t—just leave her at the Leone Room or let anyone else take her home. And not just because it would leave a shitty impression after claiming her as mine.
But because… doesn’t fucking matter. Head in the game, Matteo. Besides, I had no issue leaving my driver on the side of the road and letting him find his own way home.
The tires screech as I take a corner so hard the car lifts onto two wheels. Streetlights smear gold across the windshield like war paint. The road out of the city dies fast—glass and neon giving way to cracked asphalt and skeletal trees.
This stretch of Cleveland always feels like a throat clearing. Like the city spits you out before the outskirts swallow you. I’ve done this drive a hundred times, but tonight my nerves have teeth.
My prosthetic aches under the skin, phantom pain crawling behind the socket like memory wants out. The ache isn’t physical. Not really.
It’s the kind that settles in the bone when your body remembers something your mind keeps trying to bury. Every blast site does this to me—turns the phantom pain into a living thing, tugging, pulsing, reminding.
I hate that it still has the power to move me. I hate that the past still reaches forward like it owns a piece of me.
“Fuck!” I roar, letting it all out. My rage. My fear. My fucking… whatever the third thing I’m feeling is.
When my phone keeps buzzing in the cupholder, I want to hurl it the fuck out of the window. It’s Vito’s name flashing each time. I already know he wants my ETA.
My blood runs hot as I recall the text he sent me. A small blast at the building at Ironvale Depot. What the fuck constitutes a small blast? Every time someone uses the word small about explosives, they’re lying. Either to themselves or to me.
The outline of Ironvale Depot rises ahead—a stretch of dead warehouses strangled by weeds and silence. Only one working light cuts through the fog, pulsing red like a warning.
As I get closer, I see one of my trucks sitting crooked across the access road, hazard lights blinking like a heartbeat. Vito’s silhouette waits in the glare, hands in his pockets, posture too still.
Vito never stands still unless something’s wrong. The man vibrates like a live wire on any normal day, pacing, muttering, doing twelve things at once. Seeing him like this—rooted, rigid, waiting—hits harder than the text message did.
Men like him only freeze when the situation is bad enough to make movement pointless.
Gravel pops under my tires when I finally roll to a stop. I kill the engine and step outside. The air has a faint scorched bite, the kind that lingers after a fire’s been put out. Not choking, just enough to hit the back of my throat.
Vito moves to meet me as I’m halfway to the entrance. His shirt is half-unbuttoned, ash caught in the fine lines around his eyes. “It was just a small charge,” he says. “We’ve already put the fire out.”
“Show me,” I demand.
The doorway groans when I push past it. The metal is warped, bent like something had pressed against it with deliberate force. Precision. Intent. Whoever did this didn’t want a collapse. They wanted symbolism. That alone makes my jaw clench so hard the muscles crack.
Inside, my men move quietly, sweeping up loose plaster and charred wiring. They won’t meet my eye. Not because they fear me—they’ve seen worse from me—but because they know what blast sites do to my head. I hate that they know it.
The concrete around the blast is damp from where they hit it with extinguishers, a small wet halo marking the spot.
As I move closer, I see the fucking cursed circle. Waist-high, burned deep into the wall. Black as ink and perfectly symmetrical. Not sprayed. Not drawn. Burned. Like the one from last year. The one that cost me good men and one eye.
I remember the sound more than the pain—the split-second scream of metal, the pressure wave turning the world white, the sensation of my face snapping sideways like it wasn’t mine. I remember the silence afterward.
Whoever left this symbol knows exactly what string they’re plucking in me.
The second thing I feel is the old pain behind my eye. Scar tissue tightens until it throbs with its own pulse as my mind takes me back to the explosion last year.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
Raven’s face flickers through my mind—too clear, too uninvited. I don’t want her anywhere near this shit. Not even when she’s just in my head.
“This wasn’t random,” Vito says quietly. “The charge was placed inside the junction box. Someone knew exactly where to hit without taking out the whole bay.”
I crouch, extend a gloved hand, stop just short of touching the ring. The air above it is still warm. “Are there any casualties?”
“One guard burned his arm. That’s it.”
“Then it’s a message.” My voice barely carries, but Vito hears it. I hate messages. They’re just threats dressed up as mystery.
Messages always mean the same thing; somebody wants a reaction. They want me rattled, diverted, off-balance. They want me to chase shadows instead of the truth. It worked last time. It sure as fuck won’t work now.
Vito nods once. “You think it’s connected to last year?”
“I think…” I begin to say, but then I stop myself and drag my fingers through the air just above the scorch line. “I think someone wants me to remember.” As if I could ever forget.
We stay there until the air settles, and the last of the cleanup is done. Vito excuses himself and goes to help his men while I just stand there, locked in a silent staring contest with the black fucking circle.
As the hours crawl past, the sky outside bleeds from ink to pewter. When dawn finally breaks, the fog drifts low over the depot, turning the puddles to mercury.
Dawn always makes blast sites look cleaner than they are. Softer. Forgivable. Like the night was just a nightmare instead of a warning someone carved into my fucking territory. But the circle doesn’t soften. It looks sharper in daylight—like a mouth waiting to open.
Vito comes up beside me again. “You want me to run the usual checks?”
“It won’t matter,” I reply, as pieces in my mind finally start making sense.
Grabbing his arm, I haul him back outside and as far away as we can get without actually leaving.
“What is it, boss?” he asks nervously.
I swallow thickly. “Rafe thinks I have a rat.”
Admitting it feels like cutting my own hand open. A rat inside my circle means betrayal close enough to breathe on me. And betrayal is always personal. Always. I can handle enemies. I can’t stand traitors. Traitors rot you from the inside.
“A rat?” he echoes. “As in—”
“Not the kind you catch with cheese,” I growl. “And he’s right. Tonight, I was meant to be here to count product. But Rafe did it last night because I had somewhere to be tonight.”
Vito shifts from one foot to the other. “No offense, but doesn’t that just make everyone lucky?”
I smile coldly. “Except, it doesn’t. If it’s a message, the timing wasn’t luck. They didn’t want me to be here.”
“And you weren’t,” he says, still not getting it.
“No,” I agree. “I was at the fucking Leone Room where any Tom, Dick, and motherfucking Harry could have seen me. I wasn’t alone, so I used the side entrance.”
At the time, I told myself it was to keep up the ruse. Now, I’m glad I did it. Because I’m pretty sure the only people to see us were employees.
I watch the realization hit him. “Fuck!” he roars. “So we have a motherfucking coward serving up information? Is that what you’re telling me? Who do I kill? Who, Matteo?”
“There’s no one to kill yet,” I reply, my hatred for the situation bleeding into my tone.
If there’s one thing I hate above all else, it’s not knowing what’s going on. And right now, I have no fucking idea. None. I bury the feeling of being helpless.
The old me would’ve flattened the building out of spite. The new me can’t afford to blow up the wrong fucking person. Not when someone out there thinks they can toy with me like I’m still bleeding on the concrete.
“You know who might be able to help,” Vito says cautiously.
My one remaining eye darts to him. “No,” I snarl.
He holds his hands up in surrender as he takes a step back. “Who else?” he argues when he’s several feet away.
I rake a hand down my face and curse under my breath. Asking for help always comes with a price, but with this particular individual, it’s always something I don’t want to pay. But he’s right. Unless I want to keep having my shit blown up, I have to man up.
After checking my pockets, I walk over to my car and grab my phone that’s still in the cupholder. I scroll through my contacts until I find Tony.
It rings twice before my call’s answered with a string of curses.
“Tony,” I interrupt, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I have something to discuss with you.”
Silence.
“What does a black circle mean to you? As a tattoo, symbol, anything—” That’s as far as I get before the line goes dead.
While I stare incredulously at my phone, a text comes in.
Tony: I’m not in Cleveland right now. Maybe next week. I’ll text you.
Typical Tony bullshit. Always dangling information like bait. And I always end up taking it. There’s no point in replying or even pretending I don’t need Tony’s help, which I do. Besides, Tony’s very clear on the rules; if you reach out, you’ve agreed to whatever fits Tony’s agenda.
Even if it takes weeks before we can meet and I’ve solved the problem in the meantime, I’ll still owe Tony a favor. That’s how Tony works.
I stare at the phone until the screen goes black, then I get into my car and toss the device onto the passenger seat. By now, I’m running on caffeine, burned air, and whatever adrenaline’s left in my system. Sleep isn’t a luxury, it’s a fucking necessity.
The drive home blurs past. When I reach the penthouse, the sun’s high enough to make the windows burn.
I strip down, wash the night off, and drop face-first onto the bed. When I wake, the city’s dipped back into gold. The fatigue hasn’t faded, but the intensity has softened. I grab my phone, type before I can talk myself out of it.
Me: Be ready at nine. We’re going to the Leone Room tonight.
Me: Wear something sinful.
While I lie in bed, I go over who saw me at the club last night. Only a few names come to mind, which is both a blessing and a curse. There’s no accounting for people talking, and news of me being there with Raven is bound to feed the rumor mill.
And rumors spread faster than the truth. Which means that by tonight, half the city will think she’s mine. A few will hope she’s leverage. One or two might even test that theory. Fuck… I really, really don’t like that thought.
She’s been seen with me, that’s enough. There’s no unringing that bell. No stopping that particular fire.