7. Matteo
Chapter 7
Matteo
I drive through the streets slowly, searching for Renata. She still isn’t answering my calls, and I don’t know how to fix this. My phone alerts to a new notification, so I reach for it and open the text app as I pull off on the side of the road. I put the car in park and read the text again.
The text blurs in front of me as red-hot fury burns my veins.
Are you sure? I send in reply.
It takes a moment, then the reply from my friend Rico pings. Yes. I saw her getting out of his car and going into his house around twenty minutes ago. Duncan is at home with your girl, and if it were me, I’d want to know what the fuck was going on. Just don’t shoot the messenger.
I yell and throw my phone into the passenger seat. Only a few trusted friends knew about Renata and me. Rico is one of them, and if he says Renata is at Duncan’s house, then it must be true.
I’m going to kill him. As for her? I don’t know what I will do.
Fuck them both. I put the car in drive and floor the gas, heading right for Duncan’s house. It’s a short drive, and as I put the car in park across the street from his house, I notice my hands are shaking.
I don’t want to go in there. The minute I do, my life is going to change. Some premonition tells me that Renata and Duncan aren’t having a friendly chat in there. The warning bells have been ringing for weeks, and now they are roaring in my ears.
I pull the photograph she gave me from my wallet and stare at it. I still want her, but now I owe her nothing if she’s done this. She’s torn away any future we could have had because of Duncan, and I won’t ever be able to get the image of her with him out of my head.
My chest hurts, but I tell myself it’s nothing. I can deal with this.
For a twisted moment, I imagine killing Duncan, then screwing Renata right by his dead body, and ending her life as I look into her eyes, but I know I could never do that.
A world without Renata Andretti is not one I want to be in. She’s too bright and beautiful to be found discarded in the docks the way most of my family’s victims are.
Stepping out of my car, I jog across the road, swallowing down the bile threatening to rise. Heart pounding like a herd of horses stampeding in my chest, I hammer on the door.
When there’s no answer, and no noise from inside, I push the door open and stop when I see a naked Duncan on the other side, wearing only a robe tied hastily around his waist.
His eyes widen and his face goes deathly pale.
That is all I need to know. The fucker.
The utter piece of shit.
I reach for him and pull him out of the house by the sash of the robe. He stumbles, and I step back for a moment to look at him, to let him see the hate coursing like lava through my veins.
Glancing around him, eyes wide, he shuffles his feet.
He’s about to run.
In a robe? The cowardly piece of shit.
No fucking way.
I lunge for him and make purchase on his shoulders, slinging him against the brick of the house. Blind fury takes over, and my fists pummel his face, chest, and gut, reigning a relentless beating down on him.
He tries to fight back, but I go at him so hard and fast, he doesn’t have a chance.
“You’re a piece of shit for taking what’s mine,” I yell, my fist smashing him across the bridge of the nose.
“Fuck you, Matteo. You shouldn’t have let her go if you gave a damn.”
I hit him again and again. Rage coats everything in sticky red, like the blood pouring from his nose. As I raise my fist again, he cowers against the wall.
My senses come back online, and I realize I’m half killing him in a street full of houses, where anyone could see. The woman across the street at the window has a phone in her hands. She’ll be calling the police. With superpower levels of self-control, I release my hold on him.
“One day, Duncan, in the far future, when you’re least expecting it, you’ll meet a sticky end.”
He leans against the wall for support and swipes the blood across his face as he pants for breath.
“Don’t forget, friend ,” I growl in his ear. “One day, when you’re least expecting it.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No. Of course not. That would be illegal. Call it more of a premonition.” I bite down on his ear making him scream. “You will spend the rest of your miserable little life looking over your shoulder.”
“Seriously, over a girl?” He coughs and spits out some blood.
“ My girl.”
“Matteo, seriously. You are with the DeLuca girl now. Renata seemed pretty pissed. I gave her a ride, and she cried, so I invited her in. We got drunk. It meant nothing.” He glances at me. “I’m sorry, okay.”
“I could be holding hands with the Queen of fucking England and Renata would still be mine. You touched what is mine. No words can take that back.”
“She’s not a thing. You don’t own her,” he shouts.
“Oh, but I do,” I say, eerily calm.
He laughs. “Dude, she’s not going to look your way ever again, so good luck with that.”
“One day she will,” I assure him. “Just as one day you’ll meet your fate.”
I turn my back on him and stagger to my car. I hear her garbled words, her pleading, her shocked begging for me to come back, to turn around.
I do neither. I don’t let myself even look at her because if I do, God knows what I might do next. .
I get in my car, and eyes resolutely ahead, I drive home.
It’s time to start building an empire.