Chapter 11 Pathetic
PATHETIC
Matteo
The Velvet Vault is quieter tonight which should settle my nerves, but it doesn’t.
I can’t seem to stay away from the club lately.
Just being here reminds me of her… As fucked up as it is, I can’t wait for the next time Trigger shows up.
I stare at one of the grainy computer screens in front of me, deviating from the task at hand for just a moment.
Ale is perched at the VIP bar with a glass of bourbon, pretending to smile as he talks to the arrogant asshole of a mayor.
I’m hesitant to loop him in on my latest discovery, but from the looks of it, I’ll be doing him a favor. So I pick up my phone and shoot him a quick text.
I’m holed up in the office staring at two other computer monitors that won’t stop screaming red at me. “Cazzo,” I mutter, dragging a hand through my hair.
It started subtly enough. It was just a hiccup in the Gemini firewall, a lag in the Vault’s security feed, but it was enough to set off warning bells.
When I came to check it out, I assumed it was just a glitch until I traced the source.
Someone’s been poking around in our systems. Probing the weak spots.
To me, it’s like a knife against my throat.
Someone’s testing us. And if they can slip past me, they can slip past everyone.
It’s the kind of thing only a real hacker would notice. The kind of thing I should have noticed earlier. But I’ve been so damned preoccupied with my femme fatale I missed it.
“What now?” Ale’s voice cuts through the haze as he barrels into my office. He pushes the door shut with his shoulder and leans against the frame, all calm menace. The scarred side of his face is shadowed, unreadable.
I swivel toward him, jaw tight. “We’ve been breached.”
His eyes narrow. “Breached how?”
“Not all the way in. It’s more like knocking at the door or trying to pick the lock.
But it’s deliberate. Coordinated. And not amateur shit either.
” I point at the code scrolling across the middle screen.
“See those signatures? They’re bouncing through proxy servers in Milan.
South Brooklyn. Hell, even Marseille. But the base code? ”
Ale shakes his head. “In English, Matty.”
“La Spada Nera,” I say flatly.
Ale’s jaw ticks, just once. The name is still a fresh wound for both of us. “I thought we handled that.”
“You handled it all right,” I remind him, spinning back to the screen. “You put a bullet in half their crew after Christmas. But maybe, just maybe, they didn’t take it well. Since they weren’t the ones who shot at you and Rory.”
The silence stretches. Ale doesn’t like being reminded that he made a call in the heat of blood that might come back to bite us all in the ass. He’d rather carry the weight himself than admit the fallout touches all of Gemini Corp.
Finally, he exhales through his nose. “So what do they want?”
“Revenge, maybe. Leverage, more likely. If they’re inside my system, they can see everything: shipments, payroll, hell, even the rosters for Vault security. They don’t need to storm the gates if they can make us blind from the inside.”
Ale comes closer, plants both hands on the desk, and stares at the scrolling data like he can muscle the code into submission. “How long until you shut it down?”
“I already did. But the thing about a hydra…” I tap the keyboard, pulling up another breach attempt. “Is that you cut off one head and two more grow back.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning they’ll be back. And next time, they won’t just scratch the surface.”
Ale mutters a curse under his breath, straightening. “So we tighten shit up. Let’s double the guards, again. We can rotate passwords. Sienna’s off tonight but I’ll speak to her in the morning. Maybe we can finally get some use out of her.”
“You think that’s wise? Your waitress isn’t exactly mole material.”
“She owes us for feeding her low-life boyfriend and La Spada Nera information last year.” He draws in a breath. “I’ll talk to Papà about pulling resources from Gemini if that’s what it takes. With Rory pregnant now, everything’s changed.”
“Right… like you wouldn’t have gutted them before just for looking at her funny.”
A dark chuckle parts his lips. “Fuck yes, of course I would have. You’ll get it when it’s your turn, Matty. When it’s not just about protecting her body but protecting everything growing inside her too.”
I nod, but unease twists in my gut. Not just because Ale has no idea that I do know exactly what he’s talking about, but also because this doesn’t feel like just another enemy testing the fences. This feels targeted. Personal.
And for a split second, I can’t shake the thought that it’s all connected.
What if I’ve really just lost my shit and this has nothing to do with Cat?
What if the masked blonde haunting me, the ladder that snapped under my weight, and the ghost I can’t bring myself to kill is all about La Spada Nera?
They could be working with the Quinlans…
But I don’t say that to Ale. Not yet.
I just drag the tumbler of whiskey closer and take a big gulp, my reflection fractured in the dark screen. “Looks like the devil’s dance just got a hell of a lot more crowded.”
The elevator doors slide open on the thirty-seventh floor, and the hush of my luxurious Upper West Side building at just past midnight greets me like a punch. No pounding bass, no laughter, and no cousins bickering in half a dozen accents. Just silence.
I swipe my keycard and step into the apartment. Too big. Too polished. Floor-to-ceiling windows spill moonlight over sleek marble counters and cold leather furniture. From here, Central Park stretches like a dark ocean under the city glow, but even that doesn’t take the edge off.
I toss my jacket over the arm of the couch and toe off my shoes, letting them land wherever.
The place feels sterile without anyone else in it.
Ale’s unit is a few floors up, and I can almost imagine Rory’s laughter spilling into the hall.
I bet they’re curled up together right now, her head on his scarred shoulder and his hand on her belly like he already feels the kid growing inside. Like I once had.
Up there, life is multiplying. Down here, it’s just me and the silence. Something dark, bitter and unexpected twists in my gut at the vivid image the thought conjures.
Meanwhile, I’m here. Alone.
Stalking to the wet bar in the great room, I grab a glass and pour two fingers of whiskey and sink into the couch. The silence presses harder. Too loud.
I need a distraction, preferably of the female variety. Cazzo, when was the last time I got laid? Clearly, it’s been too long. I fish my phone from my pocket and scroll through my contacts.
There’s no shortage of names. Models, dancers, influencers, half of them saved with emojis I can’t even remember assigning.
, , . Hell, most of the women in this city are in my phone, all waiting for me to light the match.
Normally, I’d spark one and burn the night away without thinking twice.
But tonight? Every name feels wrong. Every smile is the wrong shade of red.
Every laugh, too hollow compared to hers.
I hover over a random name, then tap out a message before I stop cold, my thumb over the send button.
Me: You up?
The thought of meaningless sex, of some stranger in my bed, leaves a sour taste in my mouth. My stomach twists tighter. Normally, it would be easy. Quick, dirty, and forgettable. But not now. Not with her damned constant presence haunting me.
Cat.
Her name is poison and salvation all at once. I close my eyes, and it all comes rushing back.
The Sicilian sun bleeds gold over the cliffs, her strawberry-blonde hair tangled in my fingers as she laughs, that low, husky sound that doesn’t belong to an eighteen-year-old girl.
We’re tangled in each other just a few yards out, the water deep enough to cover the breast I’ve freed from her bikini.
Saltwater drips down her neck as I kiss it, and she whispers my name against my ear like it’s a secret she is scared to keep but refuses to let go.
“Kitty Cat,” I murmur as I run my tongue down her neck.
A moan catches in her throat, and cazzo, I’m so fucking hard I think I’ll explode if I don’t get out of this bathing suit.
But we’re taking it slow, a word I’m completely unfamiliar with, because she’s a god-damned virgin.
I didn’t even know those existed at eighteen anymore.
And I’m already so fucking gone for her, I’m willing to wait as long as it takes.
Her head tips back, her skin smelling like coconut oil and sea breeze and another groan spills out as I toy with her nipple.
“You don’t even know what you’re doing to me,” I whisper, my voice ragged and husky.
She looks up, blue eyes shimmering. “Maybe I do.”
I swallow hard, dragging myself back to the present. The glass sweats against my palm, my phone heavy in the other. The message draft blinks at me, I’m just two words away from a meaningless night of sex.
I delete them with a curse.
What the hell is wrong with me? I could have any woman in this city, but none of them are her. None of them make my chest tight just thinking about their smile. None of them haunt me so completely that I hesitate with my finger on a trigger.
I toss the phone onto the coffee table and scrub a hand over my face. The apartment is still too quiet. And the only thing louder than the silence is the memory of her laugh echoing in my head.
So I do the only thing a respectable, and possibly insane, man can.
I shove my hand down my pants, strangle my cock, eyes squeezed shut and chase ghosts.
It’s her I see with every stroke, her warm, tight pussy I feel wrapped around me, and her laugh bubbling against my throat as she straddles me on a sun-warmed stone jetty.
Her hair is a halo of fire and salt, her freckles kissed by starlight.
My body remembers every inch of her, every taste, and every damned promise I broke.
But no matter how tight I clench my fist, and no matter how hard I try to drown in the physical, it’s never enough.
Fire roars through my veins, the orgasm already within sight.
No one made me come like Cat. Maybe it was the newness of it all, her eagerness, her desire to please but even now, just the thought of her has me skirting the edge of sanity.
I hold on tight to the images that live rent free in my mind.
Because when the release finally comes, it’s hollow. Empty.
Just like me.
The glass throws my reflection back at me, sweaty, raw, and pathetic. All I see is a man jerking off to a ghost, wondering why the only woman who’s ever mattered is the one I lost.