Chapter 1 Vengeance
VENGEANCE
Caitríona
Matteo doesn’t recognize me. Not my voice. Not the name I just spat like venom.
Not even the part where I told him he murdered my fiancé.
How could he not remember me after everything? A pang of hurt slices through my chest, deep and unforgiving.
God, I hate him.
I watch the flicker of awareness cross his too-handsome face. The slow, calculated shift from cocky to controlled. His green eyes darken just a shade, like he’s filing away my words in that dangerous mind of his, ready to piece together the puzzle.
But I’m the missing piece. And he has no fucking clue.
“I said his name was Eoin,” I repeat, my voice sharper now. “You killed him in Belfast three months ago at Conall Quinlan’s estate. Is any of this ringing a bell?”
Matteo leans back against the edge of his desk, arms folding slowly like he’s lounging poolside instead of facing a woman with a gun. Cocky bastard.
“Right.” He drags the word out. “One of Quinlan’s guys. Tall, blond, bit of an attitude?”
My jaw tightens.
“He tried to kill my cousin’s wife. Did you know that about your precious fiancé?”
My teeth grind together. He’s only trying to distract me, just like he always could. I remain focused, the barrel poised at his head.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Trigger.” His voice dips, lazy and lethal. “I’ve ended a lot of bastards, but that one? That was business. You don’t mess with one of ours and live to tell the tale. Wrong place, wrong famiglia.”
“You arrogant son of a—”
He moves. Fast.
I squeeze the trigger, but he’s already inside the arc of my arm, knocking the gun sideways with one hand and spinning me into the desk with the other. The shot explodes into the ceiling, raining plaster. My breath catches, fury and panic colliding as his weight pins me back.
“Don’t—” I snarl, twisting and shoving against him, but he’s an immoveable wall, annoyingly strong.
“You done?” he murmurs into my ear, his warm breath sending goosebumps rippling down my arms. His grip is tight around my wrist as the gun clatters to the floor. He presses closer, his knee wedging between my thighs. I’m trapped between his disgustingly firm torso and the desk.
My breath catches. “Get off me,” I hiss.
“Not until I know you’re not about to shoot me again.”
His voice is low, teasing. Like this is a game. And maybe it is.
Because somehow, I’ve ended up pressed beneath him, my back to the desk, his body flush against mine. We’re hip to hip, chest to chest, and breath to breath.
Every cell in my body is screaming. Fight.
Run. But my skin betrays me, humming with awareness.
His scent, whiskey, cedar and heat, wraps around me like a memory even after all these years.
For an instant, I’m back in Sicily with the boy who held my face in his hands and made promises he never meant to keep.
He still smells exactly the same. And I hate that I know that.
“Let me go,” I grit out.
His eyes rake over me, something unreadable flashing across that heated gaze. As if he’s searching for something or someone. “Have we met?”
A laugh bursts from my throat, raw and bitter. “God, you really don’t remember, do you?”
He blinks, confused. “Should I? In case you’ve forgotten, you’re wearing a mask. It makes it kind of hard to see your face.”
“You looked me in the eye one night and swore you’d never forget me.”
He hesitates, mouth curving.
To how many women has he vowed the same?
I take the opening and twist hard, kneeing him in the thigh, and shove him off balance. He grunts but doesn’t let go and we tumble sideways onto the carpeted floor, a tangle of limbs and curses.
Matteo lands on his back. I’m straddling him, breathless and wild-eyed, strands of newly dyed blonde hair spilling from my ponytail. His hands are still on my hips, on the silk fabric that hugs my curves.
For a second, neither of us moves. His eyes lock onto mine, and something passes between us. Heat. Memory. Confusion. He might not recognize me, but his body does.
His pupils dilate. His fingers flex around my hips. And I feel it, too. The magnetic pull of something I never wanted to feel again.
Desire. Longing. Need.
Then I feel something else. His cock thickens between my legs, sending fiery heat racing up my core.
No, no, no. I slap his hands away, scramble to my feet, and snatch the gun from the floor.
Matteo watches me stand, still flat on his back, chest rising and falling. A goddamn crooked grin spreads across his lips. The same damned grin I used to dream about for years…
“You always this hands-on with your enemies?” he drawls.
I glare down at him. “You don’t get to flirt with me.”
“Hard not to when you were straddling me like that.”
I cock the gun again. “Try me.”
His smile fades.
“Next time,” I hiss, voice steady despite the war raging inside me, “I won’t miss.”
And with that, I dart out the door leaving him stunned, breathless, and entirely in the dark.
Just like he left me.
The brisk early spring air hits me like a slap when I race out of The Velvet Vault. I don’t stop. Not until I’ve rounded two corners and slipped into the shadowed mouth of a narrow alleyway in the Meatpacking District tucked between a shuttered café and a graffiti-smeared garage door.
His scent is still on me. In my hair. Under my skin.
My heart is still jackhammering in my chest. My breaths are ragged. My hand aches from gripping the gun so tight. My skin still tingles where his body pressed against mine.
Damn him.
I lean back against the damp brick wall and let out a low, guttural sound of frustration. A sound that might’ve once been a scream if I hadn’t spent the last four years learning how to swallow those whole.
I should’ve pulled the trigger.
I had my chance. I had him.
Matteo Rossi, right there. Arrogant. Unarmed. Completely within my control. And I froze.
Not because I was scared. Not because I couldn’t do it. Because for one stupid second, my body remembered what it felt like to be under him and not in a fight.
Because even now, after all the blood he spilled and after everything he stole from me, he still smells like the Sicilian beaches, cedar and aged whiskey. My treacherous brain is too slow to separate that scent from safety.
God. I’m pathetic. I slam the back of my head against the wall. Hard. Darkness edges into my vision as I grit out a curse.
All these years of training, of steeling myself, of working so damned hard to lose my accent and honing my body into a weapon for nothing. One look at him, and I’m that stupid, weak eighteen-year-old girl again.
“You’ll never get that close again,” I whisper to myself, my fingers itching to reach for the locket tucked under my shirt. “Never.”
He doesn’t even know who I am. Who knew a sexy black mask and a dye job could work such wonders?
The fact that he doesn’t remember me should make it easier, right? It doesn’t. It just makes it worse.
I reach up to tear the mask from my face, itching to breathe free, to stop pretending, to just be me again for one fucking second, but a rustle behind me makes my blood run cold.
“Don’t move.” The voice. Low, smooth and deadly. Matteo.
I freeze, pulse rocketing as I hear the metallic click of a gun behind me.
“I didn’t think you’d be ballsy enough to stick around, Trigger,” he murmurs, and I can practically feel his shit-eating grin. “Didn’t strike me as the sentimental type.”
My mind spins, calculating options. I could turn around and try to talk my way out. But that means giving him a better look at my face.
The mask. The lips. The voice. And then it’s over.
The worst thing is that a part of me wants him to remember. How can he not? How could I have meant so little to him?
I lunge forward.
“Shit—hey!” Matteo shouts.
Boots scrape behind me as I sprint down the alley, heart hammering. I vault over a toppled trash can, duck past a chained-up motorbike, and tear through the maze of concrete and shadows like the devil is on my heels.
Because he is. A wicked devil by the name of Matteo Rossi.
“Stop!” he shouts behind me. “Who the hell are you?”
I don’t answer. I don’t look back.
The sound of his footsteps is close, too close, but I’ve always been faster.
I duck through a side street and leap a low fence into a tiny courtyard, slipping between laundry lines and trash cans. My breath burns in my lungs. My legs ache. But I don’t stop until I hear nothing behind me but the distant hum of traffic.
And finally, endless minutes later, silence.
Only then do I collapse into a crouch behind a parked bicycle, panting and trembling. I peel off the mask slowly and let it fall into my lap.
The cool night air touches my skin, and it feels like a scar being exposed. It’s like a wound I’d stitched up years ago just got ripped open again.
I failed. Months of planning gone to shite.
And if I want another shot at him, I’ll have to be smarter. Colder.
Crueler.
Because Matteo Rossi won’t be caught off guard twice.
So I vow next time, I won’t miss.