Chapter 6
MATTEO
MARCO TELLS ME THE boss wants to see me, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like me.
I follow him to Amalia’s office anyway, and I’m a little curious about what she wants, because she hasn’t called for me since the wedding.
Actually, once the guests left, she just had her men lead me to my room, and that was that.
At least I can go wherever I want in the house, but I’ll probably get bored soon.
When I enter the office, Amalia glances up at me from her desk. Yep, she definitely seems like a queen here, born to rule. She now has what I bet her father spent his whole life telling her would never be hers. I should know what it’s like to want something your father swore you’d never have.
I like that she took it anyway, probably more than I should, since it’s not like we’re friends or anything.
“Have a seat,” she says, and I settle in the chair across from her.
“What’s the occasion? You don’t usually call me to your throne room.”
Her dark eyes hold mine for a moment, her lips not even twitching, and then she leans forward a little. “Have you heard of Dominic Bianchi?”
Huh. Not what I expected. I figured she’d want to go over some boring thing, like telling me where to stand at the next dinner so the right people see my face.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve heard of him.”
My father used to bring his name up. Dominic’s got fingers in everything, from what I gathered. Shipping, money, half the families up north owing him favors they’ll never pay off... He doesn’t stay in one place long enough to get pinned down, and everybody knows somebody who works for him.
“My father talked about him,” I add. “He operates everywhere. He’s got people in places you wouldn’t expect.”
She nods, as if I’ve passed some small test. “Good. That saves me explaining it.”
“Why are we talking about Dominic?”
“Because I’m going after him.”
I blink at her. That’s a bold thing to say out loud, even to me. You don’t pick a man like Dominic when you’re a few weeks into running a family and half your men still don’t trust you.
“Going after him, how?” I lean back in the chair. “Because if you mean what I think you do, that’s not a small thing. He watches his back. He’s got eyes everywhere, and he doesn’t make the sort of mistakes that get a man killed.”
“I know exactly what he is.”
“Then you know it’s hard.” I tilt my head at her. “People have tried. My father wouldn’t have touched him, and he wasn’t shy about much.”
She taps one finger against the desk, her face serious. “Dominic is the reason Tomasso is dead.”
I don’t know who Tomasso is, but it sounds like it’s someone important to her. I bet he mattered to her more than the man whose chair she’s sitting in right now. “Who’s Tomasso?”
“My father’s second.” She holds my gaze. “He’s the one who taught me everything I know about my family business. My father thought a daughter only needed to smile and stay out of the way, but Tomasso knew better and showed me the rest. He treated me like an actual person.”
“And Dominic killed him.”
“Yeah, put a bullet in him.” Her jaw tightens. “So now I’m going to take Dominic apart, piece by piece, and I’m going to enjoy it.”
I should probably tell her this is a terrible idea.
The smart play would be to let Dominic keep doing his thing far away while she settles in here.
But she’s not asking for my opinion on whether to do it.
She’s already decided. I can see it in the way she’s holding herself, and actually, I kind of like it.
I would’ve probably done the same in her place.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask. “You can’t exactly march up to his door with the men you’ve got.”
“No.” A faint smile pulls at her lips. “And that’s the part I want to talk to you about.”
“Me?” My eyebrows shoot up.
“You.” She leans her arms on the desk. “Here’s the thing about Dominic. He isn’t my enemy. Not yet. He doesn’t know I’m coming for him, and there’s no old grudge between him and me personally. To him, I’m just a Petrelli, and he’s curious, like everyone else.”
I think I can see where she’s going, and I have to admit it’s clever. “You want to get close to him.”
“I want to learn about him from the inside,” she says. “His operation, his people, where the cracks are... You don’t destroy a man like Dominic from the outside. You get in close enough to see where he’s soft, and then you push.”
“And how do we get close to a man who trusts no one?”
Her eyes glint. “We go to him as an ambitious young couple who just took over a family and wants more. We tell him we want to ally with him, work with him, or learn from him. We present our marriage exactly what it looks like from the outside. A partnership. Two strong people who decided they’re stronger together. ”
It’s not bad. Actually, it’s pretty good. The whole point of marrying me was so she could rule from the shadows, and now she wants to use me in front of Dominic too.
“He’d buy that,” I say. “A married couple looks different from a woman on her own. Less of a target. But you’d have to sell the strength. If we go in looking like we need him, he’ll know. Men like that want to deal with people who don’t need anything from them.”
“Exactly.” She points at me, a pleased smile on her face. “We come in strong and make him think we’re worth knowing, like allies who bring something to the table instead of begging for scraps.”
This is where I can actually be useful, and I want to be, which is a strange thing, since I shouldn’t even care. For most of my life, no one really needed me, and now Amalia does. It kind of feels good.
“There’s a problem with going in too strong, though,” I say.
Her eyebrows lift.
“A man like that values one thing above everything else, and that’s loyalty.
He’s been burned, probably more than once, so he doesn’t trust people who seem too eager or too ambitious.
Walk in there acting like you want his whole operation or like you might end up stronger than him, and he’ll see you as a threat. ”
She studies me, and I can tell she’s actually considering what I said, which is more than my father ever did.
“So we balance it,” she says.
I nod. “We can appear strong, sure, but we need to give him something to feel comfortable about. We should let him think he’s the bigger one in the room.
Ambitious enough to be useful to him, but not so ambitious that he starts wondering when we’ll come for his throat.
” I shrug. “Men like him want to feel respected. You give him a little deference, let him play the wise old hand showing the young couple how it’s done, and he’ll lower his guard. ”
“Strength and deference.” She bites down on her lip, and my gaze focuses on her mouth a little too much. “We need to make sure he’s aware we know our worth, but we also have to make it clear we know his too. We’re new, and he’s been doing this for decades, so we’d be fools not to learn from him.”
“Right. Make him feel like a teacher.” I grin. “Everybody likes being the smartest person in the room, even men who should know better.”
A smile spreads over her lips. “You’re better at this than I thought you’d be.”
“I had a lot of time to watch and learn.”
“Good. We have to figure out how to present ourselves to him. What we offer, what we ask for, how we play it when we’re in the room... Everything matters.”
“When are we doing this?”
“Soon.” She picks up a pen and rolls it between her fingers. “First we get the story straight. Every detail. He’ll poke at it, for sure, so there can’t be any holes.”
As I incline my head, I wonder what the fuck I’m doing here.
Wanting to be useful to a woman who told me straight out that I’m just a pretty face is dangerous.
But I’m starting to think I don’t mind the danger.
Besides, it sounds fun. Even if I want to get rid of my beautiful wife, I need time, and what will help me get to know her better if not this?
“Then let’s get it straight,” I say. “Tell me everything you know about him, and we’ll come up with something believable.”
She looks at me for a long moment, and then a smile stretches across her lips.