Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Matteo
Keeping my cool was impossible, but I knew I had to. One wrong move, even one wrong look, and he would catch on to my plan.
And that was the last thing I wanted.
The men I had left outside knew what they had to do. And it wasn’t just my men as well. It was amazing how much his own men hated Gio, especially when they were told the truth.
He was the one who had killed their parents, and now he was going to kill his sister and niece.
Bad men we might be, but family was family.
That had been Gio’s first mistake…not taking men with him. I didn’t even know why he had come here alone, but I hadn’t.
The job was simple: get Sophia and Lily out. If things went bad and they were going to go bad, as soon as they heard gunshots, they were to get my family out and to safety.
That was my only objective.
Killing my old best friend was just going to be a bonus.
“Let them go, Gio. You have what you wanted. You have power,” I said finally, tearing my eyes away from Sophia and the small crying figure of my daughter behind her.
It was hard, though. I wanted to rush to them and bundle them into my arms so I could personally get them to safety.
Except Gio stood between me and them, so I leveled my eyes at him instead and took a deep breath.
“I’ll only give you this one warning, old friend.” It took everything I had to keep my voice level and not reach for my gun.
My fingers itched to grab it and put a bullet in his brain.
Almost like he could read my mind, he swung the gun toward Sophia again, aiming it at her chest.
“Just try it, Matteo. A gut shot might not kill her, but if I aim just right, it will blow her uterus to shreds.” He shook his head. “I should have had her womb ripped out when she had the bastard.”
“She isn’t…” I stopped mid-sentence. He was trying to goad me.
“Maybe if I had killed her first. My sister, that is. None of this would happened and I wouldn’t have had to…”
“Kill your parents for power and try to blame it on me?”
From across the room, Sophia hissed. “That’s who you killed that you loved? You killed Mom and Dad?” Sophia’s voice rose with anger.
It was justified, but it wouldn’t help now. I willed her to rein it in, and in true Sophia fashion she did the exact opposite.
Rushing forward, she began to batter at him with her hands. Her small hands were flying like she didn’t see the gun pointed at her.
“You son of a bitch,” she screamed at him. Her hands were making contact with his shoulders and head over and over again. “Why kill them? They loved you. You were their son. Their oldest child. It would have been all yours anyway. You just had to wait.”
Brave, stupid, beautiful Sophia.
He pressed the gun into her stomach, and at point-blank range, it would be a kill shot. I wouldn’t be able to get to them in time.
Sophia fell silent. Her eyes widened in the darkness, so all I could see was white.
“Gio,” she whispered, and her voice broke.
Did she think she could reason with him?
“Why Gio?” There were tears in her voice now, a hitch to it that said she was trying not to cry.
“Because,” I said evenly. “Your parents wanted us to marry.”
Her mouth fell open in a gasp. “What?” She lifted her eyes to mine. The questions in them were clear.
“Isn’t that right, Gio? Your parents might have loved you, but they knew you weren’t good enough to take over.
Not strong or clever enough. Sophia was, and they knew it.
All she needed was an equal by her side.
Someone who would cherish and look after.
They wanted me to be that man. The son they really wanted.
But you couldn’t let that happen, could you?
It would unite two powerful families. It would make me the most powerful man in the city, and it would make… ”
“I was never going to allow her to be your whore, Matteo. It was easy to begin with. You never looked at her, so it was easy to talk Mom and Dad out of the match. I made them believe you wouldn’t look after her and that they needed…
” He shook his head wildly and pressed the gun even harder into her gut.
Sophia grunted in pain.
“And then…” he growled out.
“I saw her at the party,” I finished for him because that had been the night it had all changed. That was the night I had fallen in love, even if I hadn’t known it at the time.
“Yeah, I saw the way your eyes followed her. Suddenly, she wasn’t just my little sister anymore. So I put forward a name I could control. He didn’t want to marry Sophia. He didn’t want to marry any woman, but he agreed because I told him she wouldn’t tell anyone his secrets. You ended…”
His eyes met mine unblinkingly, and there was a hint of madness to them.
It wasn’t drugs or even drink.
Gio was crazy.
“You walked away like you were supposed to, but you didn’t stay away. And then he ended up dead and…” Gio shook his head. “You killed a man to be with her.”
“I loved her.”
Sophia’s eyes widened.
“I still love her,” I corrected. “Nothing you will ever say or do will change that.”
“No?” Gio cocked his head to the side, moving faster than I thought he could. He wrapped his arm around Sophia’s throat and pressed the gun to her temple.
“Don’t you get it, Matteo? This is your fault.
All of it. If you had let her go, I wouldn’t have had to do it.
My parents would be alive. But nooo,” he snarled.
“You had to put your happiness before mine. So I did what I had to do to get you apart. I killed them and I made her believe you were involved. She believed me so easily. Especially when I told her that you had planned that night to keep her away.” He chuckled.
“To get her alone and that you were going to murder her too.”
I couldn’t help it. I glanced at Sophia. Her face was so pale, like all the blood had drained from her face.
He was telling the truth.
How many lies had he filled her head with?
No wonder she had run. She must have feared for her life and the life of her child, and Gio had fed those fears.
“You’re sick,” Sophia hissed.
I wanted to smile at her bravery, but she had a gun pointed at her head and was still antagonizing him.
“Maybe.” He shrugged. And in the darkness, I heard the safety click off. “Or maybe I’m just ruthless enough to go after what I want. He isn’t right for you, little sister. He didn’t fight for you. He just let you leave.”
No one spoke. Even the sound of Lily’s crying seemed to dim. There wasn’t even a room around us anymore. There was nothing but her wide tear-filled eyes and the grey-black muzzle of the gun pressing into her skin.
It was all I could see.
“I love you,” I mouthed it to her silently and watched as her eyes widened in realization. She began to shake her head, but didn’t manage to do more as I yanked the gun from the small of my back and aimed it at her brother.
A gunshot went off, not mine, his, and it missed me by an inch, rebounding off the wall with a sound that echoed around the quiet British countryside.
Behind Sophia, Lily screamed.
Several things happened at once. Men burst through the doors and headed straight toward Sophia. One grabbed the child from the floor, and using his body as a shield, ran from the room.
Sophia screamed. I wasn’t sure if it was for her child, who was being carried away by a man she didn’t know, or at her brother, but really it didn’t matter.
Gio’s gun swung around and fired in that direction, and again, it went wide. She clung to his arm, fighting with everything she had to disarm him.
And I couldn’t get a shot at him because she was in the way.
Another booming shot went off, and the world around me seemed to slow down. I had one second to look down at the blood bubbling from my chest, and then I fell forward.
“Matteo.” Sophia’s scream was agonized. Through my lashes, I watched as she tried to rush forward.
Gio caught her around the waist and dragged her back. “It’s over, little sister.” Grinning, he pressed his gun to her head again. “It’s all over. I’ve won and you…”
He was going to shoot her, right in front of my eyes. He was going to murder his own flesh and blood, and with me bleeding out on the floor, he would then go after my daughter.
Gritting my teeth against the pain, I tried to push myself up, but my hands slipped on my blood, and I fell down again.
It couldn’t end like this. Not now that I knew the truth. Not now that I had a chance to have her back. A chance to get both of them back in my life.
From my place prone on the floor, I met her eyes. “I love you,” I whispered.
Sophia’s smile was sad.
“I love you too.”
My heart sped up, pumping even more blood onto the floor. I only had seconds before I lost consciousness.
“Close your eyes, my love.”
She nodded once. She took a deep breath, almost like she was accepting her fate. And I had never seen anyone look so beautiful or so brave.
Sophia’s eyes closed, and the moment they did, I pulled the trigger.
Her brother's head snapped back, his eyes wide with shock, and fell backward without even a sound. A small, round hole was in the center of his forehead.
He hit the floor with a dull thump and didn’t move again.
Sophia stood. A look of pure confusion was on her blood-splattered face.
“Sophia,” I called her, even as my eyes closed. It was getting harder and harder to keep them open. “Sophia, it’s over…it’s…”
She fell to her knees and crawled through the blood toward me. “You killed him,” she sobbed over and over again, her voice rising in hysterics.
“I know.” Closing my eyes, I reached for her face, smoothing my fingers over it. If I was dying, I wanted the last thing I felt to be her skin.
“I’m sorry.”
More noise filled the room. Men, people trying to save me, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything but her face hovering above mine.
I was dying, and that was fine because she was safe.
She and Lily could have the life they deserved, and I would die seeing her face and knowing I had finally done the right thing.
There were worse ways to go.
“I love you.” Her voice was ragged. “I love you, Matteo.”
“I love you too,” I tried to say, but nothing but a gargle came out. Hot blood fell down my chin. No actual sound came out, just more wet, bloody sounds.
“Do something.” Even Sophia’s screams sounded like they were coming from far away. “Save him.” My cheek was slapped, but I didn’t feel that either.
“Don’t you dare leave me, Matteo. Don’t you dare.”