Chapter 17
HEAVY AS SIN
Matteo
I end up at the hospital just after midnight after a solid two hours of stalking across upper Manhattan. I couldn’t not come. As broken, shattered and fucked up in the head as I am right now, I couldn’t do that to Ale. Or Rory.
Then there was that scathing text message from Serena threatening to cut off my balls if I didn’t get my ass over here immediately.
I inhale a deep breath and try to still the manic thrumming of my heart. The emergency room smells the same no matter the city, a mix of antiseptic and burnt coffee, with that fluorescent light buzzing overhead. The cousins are clustered in the waiting area, much too quiet.
Serena’s on the far side of the couch with her phone in hand, the neon light making her cheekbones glower.
Antonio sits silently beside her, arm slung across her shoulders, absentmindedly stroking her arm.
Bella is curled into Raf, nails digging crescent moons into her palms. Alessia paces by the double doors.
They all look up when I slide into a chair, and both girls immediately notice because how could they not?
I look like I haven’t slept in a week, and I haven’t.
The dark under my eyes is heavy as sin. My hands are still shaking from the drive.
“Matteo,” Serena whispers before I even have my jacket off. Her voice is all sharp worry and something else I can’t name. “You look like hell. What happened? Are you okay?”
I pull the tired, practiced grin down over my face and set it like a mask.
“Hungover.” I shrug. “Late night, hookup. You know.” The lie tastes like poison in my mouth, but it sits closer to something honest than the alternative.
I have no idea how to explain that the woman who tried to kill me, the woman whose face is already carved into the part of my mind I can’t reach around, is the same woman I can’t stop thinking about.
Serena rolls her eyes. “And you picked the night after my bridal shower to go hard?” She doesn’t believe me. Neither does Bella.
“You don’t have to be a coglione, Matty,” Bella says. “Talk to us. Whatever is going on, we can help.”
I want to tell them. I want to tell them everything… about the alley, the crosshairs, the thing I didn’t let myself do, the way Cat’s fingers trembled when she missed, the way I found out she’s the assassin and the way that knowledge feels like a fist inside my ribs.
I tell them everything. I always have. Keeping silent feels like a betrayal.
But there’s Rory on the other side of that wall with a baby in her belly that the doctors are still fussing over, and Alessandro shouldn’t have to overhear it all right now when he’s already being ripped apart by the rest of it.
So I fold the truth in and press it under my tongue like a shard of glass.
Raf slides to the end of the chair and stares pointedly at me. “Any leads from the shooting?”
“Alessandro is going to raze the whole damned city if that asshole isn’t found,” Antonio adds.
My gut twists.
“Well?” Alessia stops her pacing just long enough to ask.
“It’s…complicated,” I mutter. “Apparently, someone’s got a vendetta.”
“La Spada Nera?” Her eyes go wide.
“No, it’s connected to the Quinlans.”
All conversation freezes a second too long. Serena’s jaw drops and Bella’s hand flies to her mouth. Even the Ferrara brothers look stunned.
No one has forgotten that name. It’s only been a few months and it’s still too fresh in our minds.
“What?” Serena hisses. “How do you know?”
“This wasn’t the first attempt…”
Serena swats at me, her smack landing hard against my stomach. “Are you fucking kidding me, Matty? You knew the Quinlans were back, and you didn’t say anything?”
“It’s not that simple,” I grind out. “It was your bridal shower. I was trying to—” My voice breaks like I’ve bitten down on a bad tooth. “I was trying to keep it on the downlow. Keep everyone from panicking.”
“How could we not? After everything Ale and Rory went through—”
“They knew,” I blurt.
“Great, so we were the only ones kept in the dark about the return of the Quinlans?” Bella looks genuinely insulted, and that damned guilt rises again.
They all start to shout at once, about the Quinlans, old scores, who could benefit, who was the target, who would want to see the Rossi line bloodied.
But all I can hear is the soft, repeating beep of the monitor playing over and over again in my head and the one thought that won’t leave my mind: Cat.
Cat getting away. Cat breathing. Cat out there alone.
For a second, I consider telling them the truth again, a clean yank of the bandage.
But the truth is a different animal. Telling them means exposing Cat.
It means exposing what she is and where she came from and, fuck, what she means to me now.
It means a war I don’t want to see happen, but one I may have already set in motion.
But I have to tell them something. “According to intel, the shooter might be someone connected to Eoin Quinlan. He was Conall’s cousin, and apparently, I killed him in the bloodbath at the estate. I had no idea who he was.”
Serena doesn’t wait for more. She stands and paces, hands clenching. “You should’ve told us, Matty. We could’ve watched the Vault. We could’ve—” She stops because Antonio’s hand tightens around hers.
I swallow hard. “I know,” I murmur. “I know I should’ve. I’m sorry. I fucked up and put everyone at risk.” Cazzo, they don’t even know Rory is pregnant. That is one secret that’s not mine to spill.
“So the shooter came for you?” Bella looks at me in that way only she can, like she’s cataloguing every possible way I can break and assessing which parts are salvageable.
I nod, teeth grinding. “More than once.”
“Merda,” Raf growls.
“Does Ale know that?” Bella asks quietly.
I shake my head like a total coglione. “He only knows about the first time.”
“Holy shit, Matty, why didn’t you tell him?” Alessia barks.
Because. Because the thing I know is not something I can hand to him and expect him to keep.
Because if I tell him Cat is the shooter, the first thing he’ll do is hunt her like he hunts anything that moves against our people.
And I can’t let that happen. Not if there’s any chance of…
of what? Living happily ever after with her?
Dio, I’m such a fucking idiot. But what if there’s a chance she missed on purpose? Does it really matter anyway?
“Because I didn’t want to put him through all the Quinlan shit all over again,” I finally hiss, which is both lie and truth.
I didn’t want to put him through it, but I also didn’t want to put Cat through everything that would follow.
I don’t say the rest: that the woman on the other side of that barrel felt like a ghost of some other life I might have had, like a fuse I’m terrified to light.
Serena’s laugh is a raw, humorless sound. “Of course you didn’t want to put him through it. It’s Matteo-saves-the-day season. Except you didn’t save anything.”
Her words are fair. They’re knives, but they’re also right. I should’ve told them, all of them. I failed my family by staying quiet.
The doctor walks out, scrubbed and weary. His calm voice sucks the oxygen out of the room. “Mrs. Rossi is stable for now, but we’ll continue to observe her overnight. She has a minor concussion, but nothing seems too concerning.”
A chorus of thank Dio’s erupts all around.
And the baby?
The question burns at the back of my throat.
My head slots down. The word baby ricochets through my skull like a bullet and there’s a heat under my skin like whiskey poured over an open flame. My chest tightens so hard I think I’m going to crack.
I want to stand and say, Cat tried to kill me, but she missed on purpose.
Cat is alone and dangerous. I want to say that I saw her eyes and something in them didn’t belong to the girl I was in love with all those years ago.
I want to say that I can’t, I won’t, let Ale walk into a fight he can’t handle.
Instead, I just sit, the plastic chair creaking under me, and breathe like the air is a thing to be rationed.
Serena’s hand finds mine. For a second it feels like an anchor. “You fucked up, cuz,” she says low, “but we all do, sometimes. So going forward, just don’t keep shit from us.”
I look at her. At Bella. At the Ferraras.
Then I picture Ale and the desperation in his eyes before he got into the ambulance.
He looked completely hollowed out. Then I picture Rory on the stretcher, forehead sweaty, breath shallow, a halo of tubes and a life that’s suddenly so fragile I want to vomit.
“I will,” I promise. It’s the safest vow I can make right now because it buys me time. Time to find Cat. Time to decide if I can bring myself to betray whatever I feel when I think of her finger on the trigger and the way she didn’t pull it clean.
“You can come in one at a time to see her shortly,” the doctor announces. For a second, I completely forgot he was there. “But you can’t stay long. She needs to rest.” Then the doctor steps closer to me. “Are you Matteo?”
I nod.
“Your cousin asked to see you first.”
Merda.
“Come with me.”
The soles of my boots stick to the tiles, my legs unwilling to follow the man through those swinging double doors.
“Go on,” Serena calls out before giving me a little shove.
“And hurry up,” Alessia adds. “We all want to get in there too.”
I force my feet forward, the sterile halls passing by in a blur. A minute or maybe ten later, the doctor stops in front of a door. Offering a half smile, I dip my head and let myself in.
Alessandro is at Rory’s side; his shoulders are a low, low thing I’ve never seen on him before. He looks…small. Vulnerable. It twists something inside me until I want to gouge my own chest out just to stop the ache.
His gaze finally lifts to mine, and the depth of fury surging beneath the dark surface is palpable. “Did you find the assassin?”
“No,” I mutter, head down, guilt lashing at my insides. Somehow, I’ve failed them all. Glancing between him and Rory, I finally force my numb lips to form the words. “The baby?”
“The doctors are monitoring both of them closely. There’s no immediate cause for concern, but it’s too soon to say—”
My head dips again because I can’t swallow past the enormous lump that’s lodged itself there. So instead, I spin on my heel without a word, like a total coglione. I vaguely hear my cousins calling my name as I pass the waiting room and dart out into the night.
As my feet pound the pavement in a manic beat, I think of a woman who could vanish in an alley and live, and of a family I would do anything to protect. And I must find a way to ensure they both survive this.