Chapter 10 - Matteo
MATTEO
Ishouldn’t have stayed.
The thought follows me out of the library and down the hall. I told myself I was checking on her. Making sure she was settled. Making sure she was safe. Somewhere along the way, that line blurred, and I let it.
That was a mistake.
She’s not a woman I should touch, or want, or even think about the way I do.
She’s untouched by the things that define my world, by the compromises and the blood and the quiet decisions that rot you from the inside out.
I’m a Don. I’ve earned what I am, and I’ve paid for it.
She hasn’t. Dragging her into that darkness would be a kind of theft.
I want to protect her. Not taint her.
She feels clean in a way I stopped being a long time ago. Light, where I am weight. If she ever learns what I actually do, what my name really means when people whisper it, I don’t know what she’ll see when she looks at me again.
The thought sits wrong in my chest.
Without realizing it, my steps take me down the familiar corridor, past the rooms that have been empty for years. I slow when I reach the door at the end.
The west wing.
It’s late. Too late for social visits.
But I go in anyway.
I tell myself I’m just checking. Habit. Responsibility.
The lie barely registers anymore as I open the door and step inside.
The lights are low, but not off.
He’s awake.
An old man sits in his chair by the window, a book open in his hands, glasses low on his nose. The lamp beside him casts soft light over silver hair and lines carved deep by time and pain. He looks up when I enter, eyes still sharp despite everything.
“Son,” Moreno says mildly. “You’re up late." He glances at the clock, then back at me. “Or very early.”
That drags a smile out of me. "Papà."
I pull a chair closer and sit beside his bed, careful not to disturb the tubing.
“How are you doing tonight?” I ask quietly.
He considers it, the way he always does. “Some days are better than others,” he says. “Tonight is,” he pauses again, then finally mouths, “tolerable.”
My gaze drifts to the machine beside him, the steady rhythm of assisted breaths doing work his body no longer can. Ever since the shooting, since he lost a lung and the use of both legs, nothing comes easily to him anymore. He needs help with everything now. Even breathing.
The west wing smells faintly of antiseptic and clean linen. Doctors, nurses, cleaners—they’re the only ones who come here besides me. This part of the house isn’t forbidden because it’s dangerous. It’s forbidden because it’s fragile.
Like my dad now is.
Moreno Moretti was once a proud, fearsome man.
Don of Brooklyn. A name that used to shut mouths and open doors.
Now he’s thinner, quieter, his power reduced to stories and memory.
What surprises me still is that he never turned bitter.
If anything, being freed from the weight of command made room for other things. Patience. Gentleness. Regret.
Grief, too.
His eyes flick to me, knowing as always. “Do you remember when Marco tried to teach you how to ride his motorcycle?” he asks suddenly.
I huff a quiet laugh despite myself. “I was twelve. He told me if I didn’t let go of the handlebars, I’d never learn.”
“And you didn’t listen,” Moreno says, lips curving.
“I crashed into Mrs. Bellini’s hedge,” I say. “Marco swore it wasn’t his fault.”
“He paid for the hedge,” my father adds. “And for your stitches.”
We sit there smiling at the memory, the warmth of it edged with something sharp. Marco’s absence presses in around the room, heavy and familiar. The laughter fades, but neither of us looks away.
Some losses never get lighter.
My mind drifts, as it always does, to the night Marco died.
It was supposed to be a truce. Philly coming up the coast, us meeting them halfway in some warehouse that smelled like oil and dust and bad decisions.
I wasn’t there. I was still the younger brother then, the one kept out of rooms where deals were sealed and guns came out. But my father was.
The other boss got nervous. Started shouting, waving his gun. He was high as a kite, a mistake you don't make when you push product. Rule number one: never get addicted to your own dust.
He fired and hit one of the barrels.
When Dad talks about it, he always mentions the smoke first. How it filled the place so fast it felt alive. Then the shouting. The running. Chaos blooming as the roof caved in and collapsed on them in hot, angry chunks.
Marco carried him out.
That’s the part that never leaves me. My brother, bigger and braver than he had any right to be, hauling our father out from under a fallen beam and through flames, coughing blood and still pushing on, because that’s who he was. Action first. People first. He got Dad outside, got him to safety.
Then he went back in.
One of the men was trapped. One of ours. Marco didn’t hesitate. He never did. A true leader, they said afterward. A hero.
Heroes don’t come home.
I feel it all at once every time—the pain, sharp and immediate; the anger that still hasn’t burned itself out; the helplessness of knowing I wasn’t there, that I couldn’t stop it. He was my older brother. My shield. The one who moved while I thought.
I had my nose in books. He had blood on his hands and fire at his back.
When he died, the space he left behind swallowed everything. Big shoes to fill. Expectations stacked so high I didn’t have time to grieve properly before I had to learn how to rule.
I look at my father now, at the steady rise and fall of his chest helped along by machines, and the weight settles back where it always does.
Marco saved him.
And I became what was left.
My father shifts in his chair, like he’s felt the turn my thoughts have taken. He closes the book in his hands and sets it aside, fingers lingering on the cover.
“I heard a woman’s voice earlier,” he says lightly, like he’s commenting on the weather. “Around the house.”
I stiffen despite myself.
“Anyone I should meet?” Moreno lifts his eyebrow knowingly. “Anyone you’d care to introduce?”
I hesitate.
“No,” I say. The answer comes faster than the reasoning behind it. “She’s not… she’s not here to stay.”
He watches me closely, too closely to miss what that costs me. “Ah,” he says. Then, after a beat, “I know I'm not who I used to be, but I still don't think that's reason enough to be ashamed of your old man.”
The words hit harder than they should.
“No,” I say immediately. I lean forward without realizing it, hand tightening on the arm of the chair. “I would never be ashamed of you.”
He nods slowly, accepting it, but his gaze doesn’t soften. He knows me too well.
What I don’t say—what I can’t—is that shame isn’t the fear. Weakness is.
My father is the only family I have left. The last living proof that I once belonged to something before blood and power hollowed it out. He’s my fault line, the place where everything would crack if struck hard enough.
Losing Marco nearly destroyed us both. I barely held us together then. I won’t risk that again.
I can’t afford for anyone to see where I bend. Not my enemies. Not my men.
Not even Rose.
Dad exhales slowly, the sound rasped but steady, and shifts against the pillows. “It’s late,” he says, the way a father does when he knows the conversation has gone as far as it’s going to go. “You should get some rest.”
I nod, rising from the chair. “I’ll let you sleep.”
He looks at me for a long moment, eyes soft but sharp, taking stock the way he always has. “Goodnight, figliolo.”
“Goodnight, papà.”
I pause at the door, listening to the machine settle back into its steady rhythm, then slip out quietly and close it behind me.
The corridor feels longer on the way back.