9. Matteo
Chapter 9
Matteo
Present Day
I stare at the woman walking down the street in front of me. I’d recognize that sway, those hips, and that ass anywhere. Renata Andretti.
I know she got divorced. She took her own name back. I know that she’s just been to France for a week. On a yacht with some woman who is her brother’s wife’s godmother.
The idea of Renata in that hedonistic playground had me grinding my teeth down.
What did I think, though? That we could break up as teenagers, and she’d stay preserved for me while I married a DeLuca? As a stupid eighteen-year-old that is exactly what I had thought.
I soon learned that wasn’t going to be the case. I hated it if I heard of her dating anyone. That she got married fucked me up for weeks. I raged . Still, I was the first to marry someone else, as I’m sure she was aware, so at least I won that little battle.
After she betrayed me and fucked my best friend, I went all in with Francesca DeLuca.
I fucking loathed her, but my family wanted an alliance with the DeLucas, and after Renata gave herself to Duncan like a cheap toy, I had no reason not to. It gave me what I wanted, power in the business, a say. My family doesn’t let unmarried sons rise to the top. Clifford wasn’t married, and as the old guard fell apart alarmingly quickly, I stepped in and took their place. Marrying Francesca was a giant public fuck you to Renata too. Then she said it right back and married some playboy.
How Renata could have done that still makes me want to break things.
I wanted her. She gave herself away to Duncan. A pathetic fuckboy.
I grind my teeth as I hang back and watch her. I still want her.
Renata Andretti is the one who got away. The only woman I’ve ever felt anything for. I’m not sure it was love, but it was something. Possessiveness. Lust. Desire. It turned to hate and a burning need for revenge.
I had to play it cool and make sure my family never suspected. They’d have locked me up for a year in the house if they had found out. Literally, not figuratively. They hated the Andrettis with passion like I’ve never known. I don’t. They mean nothing to me these days, the old rivalries gone with much of the old guard’s power. Now, I only hate one of them.
I want her too. To own her. Make her mine.
She turns and walks into a store. I look up at the name, and my cock twitches. It’s an expensive lingerie store. Does she have a date later?
I don’t think she’s fucked anyone for some time. I get regular reports on her. If she seems to be starting to date anyone, I make sure they are soon out of the picture. It doesn’t take a lot to scare them off. Renata seems to pick weak men. She isn’t a weak woman, and she needs someone strong.
Somehow, when I was younger, as time went on I had started to let the anger at her fade as I got caught up in the stress of taking over the business. I thought about her a lot, of course, but the conviction I held at eighteen that one day I’d get Renata back in my life grew distant. I began to think it wasn’t worth it and the past should stay in the past.
Then I saw her again.
In the flesh, in the city of London, and seeing her there, in what I considered my environment was a jolt.
A shock to the system. A ghost from my past that I thought didn’t mean much to me anymore, but my bodily reactions put that lie to rest.
My face burned hot. My stomach dipped. My breathing increased.
She didn’t know I was there. I was sitting in the dark recess of a bar, and it was a karaoke night. A group of women had arrived, and I recognized one of them as Renata’s friend, Jilly. I felt an odd pulling in my chest, something that made me think I was still alive somehow, instead of dead inside.
I watched Jilly, and memories of the past rushed in. Of Renata, the pretty girl I’d wanted and somehow lost. The one who got away.
My wife had died. A rare post plastic surgery infection, which antibiotics couldn’t cure. I’d told her not to get her tits done for the second time. She didn’t listen, and she died. I stood at her grave and didn’t shed one tear.
The door to the bar opened, and she walked in.
That ghost from my past, except if I expected her to fade she hadn’t. She was hot then, but she was shining as bright as the sun now.
Every single male head turned her way. Most of the women looked too. Renata Andretti walked through that room, and everyone noticed. She cut through the air as if she owned it. Her red dress clung to her curves, and her dark hair shone.
I always knew she’d turn out like this. Even as a teenager, I knew that Renata Andretti was a rare beauty and she’d only get better with age. Even I didn’t understand truly how much of a one-in-a-million bombshell she’d turn into.
I watched her for an hour, and then it happened. She got on stage to sing a song, and pretty much everyone had sounded terrible up to that point. I sat back in my seat, smirking, waiting for her to murder the song. But instead, she opened her mouth and belted out Son of a Preacher Man , and you could hear a pin drop.
God, her voice. Husky but velvety too. The way she moved her hips was mesmerizing and had me harder than I’d been in years.
She sang that song as if she was singing it to me . The way a few of the men in the room squirmed in their seats, I don’t think I was the only one feeling that way. She sang about love and young desire, and it blew me away.
Everything faded; no one else existed. Only her, up on that stage, illuminated under a spotlight and magnificent. I knew then I had to have her. I would get Renata Andretti in my bed or die trying. I would taste her skin again, claim her fully this time. I’d make her come and scream my fucking name, and then I’d… The rest didn’t matter. Only that I wanted her with a single burning intensity I’d never felt before.
My boyhood feelings surged back, but they brought something new and vicious. A thirst for revenge and white-hot need so blinding I needed to grip the table to stop myself from storming across the room and grabbing her.
They left not long after, and I hired the private investigator the next day. After all, I’m in charge of the family and the business now. No one to tell me I can’t let an Andretti into my house.
If I get my way, she won’t only be in my house—she’ll be in my bed, and on her knees, and over my desk.
These days, I get regular reports on my principessa. And she will be mine. Soon.
I realize that I’ve been standing watching the lingerie store she went into for more than five minutes, and people might start thinking I’m a pervert. I go and stand outside a store nearby and mess about on my phone, never letting my peripheral vision leave the door of the lingerie shop.
She’ll come out soon, I’m sure.
I’ve also had a spy planted in the Andretti camp for a long while, and she’s gotten close with Renata’s mother. Started to whisper words into her ear about how fortuitous it would be for them to smooth over the hard feelings between our two families. She’s a master manipulator, the sort of woman capable of making the person she’s talking with think the ideas she’s planting are their own.
She’s been whispering away at the matriarch of the Andretti clan, and she’s reported back to me that soon it might become family belief that getting their precious but wayward daughter back into a marriage is the best way forward. What better marriage than one to heal old rivalries and cement new power?
They’d never have let their precious daughter marry into a Mafia family, even though that is exactly what they are. The Andretti’s think they’re better these days. They are not. Neither are we, but on the surface, Clifford and I have made our enterprise look entirely legal. Under the surface it is a different matter, but her parents don’t know that.
Renata will be presented it as a challenge. They’ll tell her she needs to win me over. To give them a chance at an allegiance and a combination of wealth. She’ll probably hate the idea, but I know her. I know what she orders at her favorite restaurant. I know what she watches on her Smart TV. I even know what porn she masturbates to.
The one thing that Renata wants more than anything is to be taken seriously and to have power. I need her to think this is all her family’s idea. That once she gets on board with it, she’s the one in control. That this is her manipulating the boy she once thought she loved.
She’ll see this as a way to exact revenge on me.
In reality, she’ll simply fall into a trap I’ve already baited.
I’ll be waiting for her.
She won’t be hard to catch, but she’ll be hard to tame. To truly own.
I can’t wait.
She emerges from the store, and I sink into the shadows of an alleyway.
I haven't been following her today. I do sometimes. For kicks. Today, she just happened to be here. Right where I am. Fate.
I know she has a meeting with her mother and father soon. I bet they’ll present their idea to her. Their scheme. A way for the Andrettis to subdue an ancient enemy and try to strike at the heart of our family business. They’ve been fed false intel for some time now. Intel I’ve designed.
Their information paints Clifford and me as weak. It looks as if our family legacy is crumbling. We’re ripe for a takeover, and what better way than to have their daughter become my wife and pull my strings? A friendly merger, except they will think they’ll ultimately be the ones in charge.
Except, that’s so far from the truth. Clifford and I have consolidated the family power and increased it. Our wealth is massive. Clifford is a sadist. A sick, fucked up kid, but it works for me, as he does all the very dirty work we’ve needed to do to get where we are.
Not that I shy away from violence. I simply don’t relish it the way he does.
Renata isn’t the young girl she was when I first fell for her, but I’m not the boy I was then either. Last time she saw me, I had floppy hair, skinny arms, and pretty features.
Now?
I weigh two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle. My broken nose changed my face, making it harder, and the ink I’ve covered myself in crawls up my neck, peeking out of my shirt. Only my eyes look the same. Everything else about me is rougher, harder, more powerful.
I’ll take my pretty beauty. My Mafia princess. The girl who got away and played games with me. I’ll take her back and claim her as mine, and then I’ll break her.