Chapter 19
CAT AND MOUSE
Matteo
I could feel Cat following me for the last few blocks.
Still, I kept walking, going about my daily routine on my way to Gemini Tower.
I even got her a damned coffee. Because somehow, I knew.
I knew she wouldn’t shoot me in the back.
Not when I’ve given her every opportunity to pull the trigger right in my face.
But I’m not stupid, and I know this game of cat and mouse can’t go on forever.
So I lead her into a quiet alley, torn in two, between loyalty for my family and the woman who could have been.
I have no plan, no idea what I’ll do next.
My gun rests in its holster at my hip, but I know I won’t use it. Not against her.
When I finally spin around to face her, my world crumbles all over again.
She’s there with her hood up and hair escaping in damp copper threads, the rain bringing out the familiar golden hue.
The sight of her hits me lower than the ribs.
She looks wrecked. Hollowed. Eyes bruised by a night that didn’t let her blink.
There’s something about the way she’s holding herself like she’s keeping her own bones together by will alone that breaks me in a place I didn’t know was still soft.
“Kitty Cat,” I whisper, and it lands like a prayer I’m not proud of. Then I offer the cup because I don’t know what else to do. “Coffee?”
“Don’t,” she mutters. Her voice is as sharp as glass. “And don’t call me that.”
We stare at each other across ten feet of damp concrete and four years of ruin. I slowly place the two cups of coffee on the ground, then straighten. My hand is close to the gun at my hip, but it may as well be welded to the wall. I’m not drawing on her. Not today. Not ever.
“Say whatever it is you came to say,” I finally murmur.
Her throat works. The wind grabs a paper bag and skates it between us, nearly knocking down the coffee. “My brother’s coming for you.”
I blink. That’s not what I expected. I didn’t expect mercy again, but a warning is close enough to make something in my chest lurch. “Donal,” I mutter, his name resurfacing from the depths of my memory. “When?”
“He just landed at JFK.” Her mouth twists. “He’ll come straight for you. He doesn’t play games. I failed so he’ll clean up my mess.”
There’s no tremor on the word failed, but I hear the cut underneath. Her anger flares, stupid and misdirected, because the world that made her say that is the same one that keeps pointing her at my heart.
A shadow shifts at the mouth of the alley.
Black hoodie, black mask, and gun already up.
Pointed at her. My body answers before my brain.
I draw and sight over Cat’s shoulder, the barrel steady through the notch of her hood.
For half a second, she thinks I’m aiming at her.
I can see it in her eyes, and fuck, it hurts.
Her breath hitches. I tip the muzzle a hair and squeeze.
Brick spits dust over her shoulder and an inch from the intruder’s temple. He jerks back, staggers, and I line up the real shot.
“Touch her and I put you in the ground,” I hiss, calm as a clock. “Try me, asshole.”
The man freezes, eyes slitting through the mask. The set of his shoulders is familiar in a way I cannot place. Is he a Gemini? Alessandro is going to have my ass for this if it is. But I can’t… I can’t let him kill her. Merda, I won’t let anyone touch her.
“Get out of here,” I growl. “I’ve got this.”
The man cocks his head, eyeing me then Cat. Then he bolts, slapping a hand against the corner, feet hammering into daylight.
Maybe he’s not Gemini?
I go after him, three strides, then four, with no idea what I’ll do if I actually catch him, until Cat’s fingers hook around my wrist. “Don’t,” she snaps, voice low and fierce. “If it’s one of Quinlan’s men—”
“He had a gun on you.”
“And you scared him off. If you chase him, you bring the whole city down on us.” Her grip tightens. “Please.”
I hold her gaze, breathing hard, then holster. The alley hums with sirens far off and the coffee cooling at our feet. Somewhere beyond the corner a door slams, and the shooter is gone.
“I guess we’re both out of time then.” I watch her eyes narrow the slightest bit. “That coglione will only be the first.”
She waits.
I heave out a breath. “Alessandro has every Gemini, every friend, every favor combing Manhattan. They’re all looking for you.”
Her shoulders lift, a tight, quiet flinch. “Of course he does.”
“You shot at his wife,” I grind out, purposely leaving out the pregnant part this time. “What did you expect, Cat?”
She takes that like a slap, and it makes me hate my own mouth. She looks past me for a breath, up at the sliver of washed-out sky. When her gaze returns, it’s clean and dangerous. “I expected to be dead by now,” she says simply, pressing her hand over her heart. “Either by your hand or theirs.”
“Never by mine,” I fire back.
Something complicated moves through her face, a twist of skepticism, pain, and maybe memory.
“I hate you, remember? You should have drawn on me by now.” She steps one pace closer.
The alley seems to shrink to match her. “You should have put me against that wall and put a bullet between my eyes. That’s what people like us do. ”
“I’m not putting you against anything hard that you don’t ask me for,” I blurt before I can stop myself.
Her breath catches. Mine does too. Dio, I’m an idiot.
“Matteo...” Just my name, but it drags that summer up by the roots.
Sea air, warm hands, and promises we were too young to understand.
She takes another step. The distance between us is seven feet, then five.
I can see the chapped place on her lower lip, the web-fine tremor at the corner of her left eye.
She smells like cold air, laundromat soap and a hint of gun oil.
It tangles with the cedar on my coat and goes straight to my head.
“Get out of here, Cat,” I whisper, my voice not my own. “I’ll tell Ale I lost you. I’ll make them look uptown while you go downriver.” And damn, the traitorous words alone nearly kill me. They cost me everything but still I keep talking. “Take a ferry to Jersey, rent a car under a dead name—”
“Stop.” She shakes her head, closer again, close enough that my body goes hot just from the idea of her heat.
“You can’t save me from your family any more than you can save me from my own.
” She pauses a beat and the truth of her words sink in.
“And you certainly can’t save yourself by lying to yours. ” Another stab of guilt.
“I can try.” Trying is the only thing I’ve ever been good at when it comes to her.
She snorts on a laugh.
“Then we’ll come up with something else,” I snap. “Come with me to talk to Ale. We’ll make him listen. I’ll—” Even as the words dribble from my mouth, I know how stupid they are. My cousin is out for blood, and no amount of pleading will change that.
“And tell him what?” she cuts in, soft as a blade. “That I spared you? That I didn’t mean to shoot at his wife? That I belong to the man who ordered your death?”
The words land like gravel in my mouth. I don’t have an answer that isn’t war.
In seconds, we end up breathing the same cold air. Only three feet apart now. Two. Her pupils are blown, but not from fear. My pulse is a drum I can’t quiet. I should back away, but I don’t. I can’t. Every instinct that kept me alive all these years goes dim when she’s close.
“Tell me why you missed.” The words erupt from my mouth without my approval. “Why didn’t you pull the trigger when you had the chance in the alley?” Or in my office or out on the streets…
She swallows, and for a second, I think she’ll give me the truth. Then her chin lifts a fraction. “Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
A sound escapes her, half laugh, half wounded thing. “That’s your problem,” she hisses, and the wet shine in her eyes nearly ruins me.
She’s right in front of me now, boots toeing mine.
Her breath ghosts my cheek. The world narrows to the curve of her mouth and the million times I’ve dreamed of tasting it just one more time.
Her hand comes up like she’s going to touch my jaw, thumb hovering an inch from the faint scar that cuts across my left cheek when I jumped off the cliff in Sicily and landed too close to the rocks.
I lean in despite every rule I wrote for myself. Heat crackles down my spine. Her lips brush mine. Almost. The suggestion of a kiss, electricity and grief and four years of bad decisions coiled tight.
“Kitty Cat,” I murmur, and it’s a surrender.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers back. “Kitty Cat doesn’t get to be stupid twice.”
The apology hits a half-second before the blow. Something hard, metal, probably the butt of her gun, cracks the base of my skull. White pops at the edge of my vision, bright as a camera flash. My knees go soft, and the alley lurches sideways.
Her breath is suddenly at my ear, the words a rush. “Don’t follow me, and don’t let them find me first.”
I must be hallucinating because I could swear I feel her hand cupping my ass. I try to catch her coat, her wrist, anything, but my fingers don’t listen. The world tunnels.
“Cazzo,” I breathe, or think I do. Then there’s only the cold bite of wet concrete at my cheek and her scent sifting away down the alley, and then nothing.
Two hours later and I’m sitting in my apartment with an ice pack pressed against the golf ball-sized lump on the back of my head. I can’t believe my little Kitty Cat knocked me out. The hint of a smile curves the corner of my lip.
I’m proud of her.
She was trembling in that alley, dark crescents under her eyes, and still she moved like a blade. The girl who once swore she wanted no part of her father’s world has learned how to survive in it. Hell, thrive. But how did she get from there to here?
The answer lands low and mean.
You did it, coglione.
You walked away. You let her carry the wreckage alone. You took a soft-hearted girl and taught her that love is a weapon with a safety you can’t find. And yet, even after being turned into the Quinlans’ instrument, and even with a clean shot, she didn’t finish me.
So no, she’s not a cold-blooded killer all the way through. Not where I still live inside her.
And that softness could prove to be her ultimate undoing.
And mine. The Quinlans don’t fuck around.
If she failed, they’ll send someone who won’t.
Her brother, I suppose. And they’ll make her pay for mercy.
Dread unwinds through me, slow and relentless, as the knot on my head drums out the truth: my Kitty Cat can take care of herself, but she is still in their crosshairs.
My phone buzzes across the coffee table.
Ale: Anything on the shooter?
A spike of guilt punches through the fog. I was supposed to be at Gemini this morning again, neck-deep in city feeds, scraping plate numbers and camera angles until a pattern emerged. Instead, I’m icing a concussion and replaying the way her breath brushed my mouth before the lights went out.
Dio, I wanted to taste her. I’m still dying to.
I drum my fingers once, twice. I can’t keep Ale blind, not with Donal in Manhattan. But how do I beg for the life of the woman who aimed at his wife and their baby?
You don’t beg. You fix it, coglione. The voice in my head sounds an awful lot like my father.
I tap back a single reply.
Me: On a lead. Give me an hour.
Then I drop the phone on the couch like it burns.
I know exactly what has to happen. I’ll turn every camera south and build a ghost out of her.
I’ll create fake pings, ferry footage, and a borrowed face heading for Staten Island.
I’ll feed Ale a trail that keeps the family hunting a ghost while I make myself visible to the only Quinlan that matters.
Let Donal find me first.
Bait the cleaner and buy her time.
If I can’t bail her out of this myself, I can at least step between her and the blade I put in motion.