Chapter 4 Matteo
MATTEO
Ottavio joins me across the street just as the door opens.
I’ve got a cigarette between my fingers, unlit. I don’t smoke. Never have. I don’t like the taste, don’t like the smell, don’t like what it does to people over time. I like the weight of it, though. The familiarity. It gives my hands something to do when they want to reach for worse habits.
Marco used to smoke.
Ottavio flicks his lighter open and shut without lighting anything, mirroring me without meaning to. He follows my gaze to the restaurant entrance.
“Our guys are in place,” he tells me quietly. “They’ll follow at a distance a couple subway cars after hers and escort her home.”
Escort. The polite version of follow.
I nod once.
Rose steps out onto the sidewalk, shoulders tight, bag pulled close to her body.
She pauses near the subway to say goodbye to her friend, a quick smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
Even from here, I can see the way she keeps checking the street, the way she positions herself so her back isn’t exposed.
Ottavio notices it too. “She’s been jumpy.”
“For three months,” I say.
She turns toward the subway entrance and starts down the steps without looking back. Too fast. Like she’s trying to outrun something that isn’t there.
Or something that is.
I watch until she disappears underground. Then I roll the cigarette between my fingers, feeling the paper crinkle softly. I used to watch Marco do this when he was thinking, back before thinking got him killed. Before I had to step into a role that was never meant to fit this tightly.
Ottavio shifts beside me. “You want me to move closer?”
“Not yet,” I blow out a breath. “If she notices, she’ll shut down.”
“And the other one?”
My jaw tightens. “He’s still out there.”
Ottavio exhales. “Hard to pin him down without alerting her?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Across the street, traffic moves on like nothing is wrong. People laugh. A cab honks. The city keeps breathing.
Somewhere underground, Rose is alone.
After a beat, Ottavio says, “I heard something else on the street.”
“Go on,” I urge.
“The drugs coming into our territories,” he says. “Word is, they might trace back to the Pavlov brothers.”
That makes me grimace.
Of all the Bratva names to surface, theirs is among the worst. Violent, unruly, and raised by a father who made a sport out of breaking people just to see where they bent. If they’re involved, this isn’t some half-assed incursion. It’s deliberate.
“Manhattan and Queens too?” I ask.
“Smaller outfits," he says, "but all under Pavlov protection. Nothing solid yet, but it’s lining up.”
"And you're sure this isn't just drunks talking out of their asses?"
"Oh, I'm always sure." He grins. "Isn't that why you picked me?"
It is, and I believe him. It's why he’s my second. Ottavio doesn’t deal in rumors; he deals in patterns, in quiet conversations and loose tongues. If he says the street is talking before anyone else has picked it up, it’s because he knows how to listen.
Bratva pushing into all our boroughs changes the equation. It means pressure points I don’t like. It means Notte Bianca isn’t as insulated as it should be.
It also means Rose’s problem might be bigger than a man who doesn’t understand the word no.
Or it might not.
For all I know, she’s dealing with a persistent ex who can’t take a hint. She has no reason to be connected to my world and its darkness.
But I can't take that chance.
Rose.
The name rings in my ears. The florist that has had me coming back for dinner at Notte Bianca every night for the past year.
Sometimes, I catch myself watching her longer than I should.
Not because I mean to, and not because I don’t know better, but because there’s something about the way she carries herself that pulls the eye and refuses to let it go.
She moves like someone who’s learned to live inside the smallest version of herself possible, careful steps, guarded shoulders, chin lifted just enough to pretend it isn’t fear that keeps her upright.
She doesn’t know she’s mine—my flower, my little fiorellino—not in any way she should ever accept. Right now, she’s in the little world she’s built brick by brick out of caution and stubbornness.
I remember her warm smile. I know exactly how many kinds of men would see those soft edges and decide they’re an invitation.
That’s where I come in.
It isn’t love. It isn’t kindness. It isn’t anything that would make sense if I tried to explain it to anyone else. It’s a promise I made without speaking—that nothing and no one is going to touch her as long as I am breathing.
And she can never know that.
Because if she did, then I don’t know that I could restrain myself any longer.
There are moments when the restraint hurts.
When she leans over the bar to reach for something and the hem of her shirt shifts, revealing just a sliver of skin at her waist—tan, warm, soft—and I have to look away before my thoughts turn into something I’d never forgive myself for.
The curve of her throat when she tilts her head to read, the small, unconscious motions of her mouth when she concentrates, the way her fingers cradle books and flowers with the same tenderness. I notice all of it.
I catalog it. And then I bury it.
Because a man like me doesn’t get to want things like that.
Not from a woman like her.
She deserves peace. Light. A life that isn’t shaped by violence or men who learned too early how to break the world to get what they want.
If I touched her—really touched her—she’d never be able to unlearn what I am.
And I won’t drag her down into the dark just to satisfy a hunger I should have killed the moment it began.
So I keep my distance. I keep my hands clean where she’s concerned. I guard her in silence and pretend my presence is nothing but coincidence.
She’ll never know how fiercely I claim her in the privacy of my own mind.
And she’ll never know that the only reason she stays untouched is because I refuse to be the one who stains her.
Suddenly, the idea of my guys escorting her isn’t enough.
“Change of plans.” I flick the cigarette into the gutter without lighting it and head for the steps. “With me.”
Ottavio bites down a smirk and follows.
We reach the subway entrance. I stop at the top of the stairs and look down into the glow of fluorescent lights and tiled walls, listening to the echo of footsteps below. Rose is already gone, swallowed by the tunnels.
“She’s not walking alone anymore,” I say.
Ottavio glances at me. “You sure you want to take that on personally?”
“Yes.”
“No rotation?”
“No,” I repeat. “Me.”
He nods once. No argument. That’s another reason he’s my right arm. He knows when to talk and knows even better when to shut the fuck up.
“Keep me posted on the Bratva situation.”
“Will do, boss.”
The shadows close around me easily. So do the subway doors, two cars after hers.