Chapter 4 Taken From Her
"Sign here, here, and initial the exclusivity clause on page three," Matteo said, sliding the contract across his desk with two fingers, watching the DJ's manager scan it with the particular hunger of a man who'd just been offered triple his going rate to switch venues six days before a launch he'd already been booked for elsewhere.
"This is a lot of money for one Saturday night," the manager said, not looking up from the page.
"It's not for one Saturday. It's for the next eighteen months, exclusive to Obsidian, no outside bookings without my approval.
" Matteo leaned back in his chair, unhurried, the same stillness he brought to every negotiation that mattered.
"Your client plays here, he plays for people who can actually afford what he's worth.
Marea's a nice room. It's not this room. "
"He's already committed to their opening night. Signed contract, deposit paid."
"Deposits get refunded. Commitments get renegotiated when the numbers change enough.
" Matteo tapped the signature line once, patient, a man who'd never once needed to raise his voice to get exactly what he wanted from a room.
"You have until end of day. After that, the offer drops by a third for every twenty four hours you make me wait. "
The manager signed within the hour. Matteo watched him walk out of the office with the contract tucked under his arm like something fragile, and let himself feel, for exactly as long as it took the door to close, the particular satisfaction of a clean, surgical win.
It shouldn't have felt this good. A DJ swap, in the scope of an actual district war, was a minor tactic, the kind of move he'd authorized a hundred times over the years without ever once lingering on the aftermath.
But he found himself picturing her face when she heard, the exact moment the news would land, and something low and warm moved through his chest that had nothing to do with the eighteen-month exclusivity clause he'd just secured.
He was still turning that thought over, uncomfortable and unwilling to name it, when Ronan appeared in the doorway looking like a man delivering news he already knew wouldn't go well.
"She's here."
"Who."
"You know who." Ronan stepped aside as if to prove his point, and past him, moving through Obsidian's VIP floor like she owned the deed to it, came Del.
She hadn't dressed for a confrontation. She'd dressed like she'd walked straight out of her own office, blazer, heels, hair still pinned from a workday, which somehow made the fury radiating off her land harder than if she'd shown up armored for battle.
Two of Matteo's floor staff moved to intercept her at the velvet rope, and she walked through the gesture without even slowing, the kind of momentum that made grown men rethink whether stopping her was actually their job.
"Cristea." Her voice carried across the VIP floor, sharp enough that three separate conversations at nearby tables went quiet. "We need to talk."
Matteo rose from his chair unhurried, buttoning his jacket with the same calm he'd have used greeting an expected guest, though every line of her body told him she hadn't come here expecting hospitality. "Ms. Castellano. This is a surprise."
"Is it." She stopped three feet from his desk, close enough that he caught the specific note of her perfume under the club's ambient cedar and smoke, something warmer, citrus and something floral underneath it that didn't belong in a room built entirely on cold control.
"You poached my headline DJ six days before my launch night.
Signed, sealed, and gone by lunch, according to his manager, who at least had the decency to sound guilty about it. "
"I offered a better contract. He took it. That's business, not sabotage."
"It's sabotage when the timing's this deliberate.
" Del's jaw tightened, and Matteo watched her decide, visibly, whether to keep this conversation contained or let it get louder.
She chose loud. "You couldn't have made this offer last month.
You couldn't have made it next month. You made it this week, six days out, because you knew exactly what it would cost me. "
"I make offers when the numbers make sense. If the timing happens to be inconvenient for you, that's not my problem to solve."
"You're standing in a room full of your own men enjoying this."
"I'm standing in my own club having a business conversation.
" Matteo rounded the desk, closing half the distance between them, close enough now that he watched her breath catch, small and involuntary, before she covered it with another wave of anger.
"If you'd like to have it privately instead of giving my staff a show, my office is upstairs. "
"I'm not going anywhere private with you."
"Then we can finish this here, in front of everyone, if that's genuinely what you'd prefer.
" Matteo let the offer sit, unhurried, watching her calculate the optics of a public shouting match against the discomfort of a private one, and knew before she moved which way she'd decide.
Del was too controlled to hand him a spectacle he could use against her later. "Your choice."
She held his gaze another long second, fury and calculation both burning behind her eyes, then turned toward the private elevator without another word, heels striking the marble floor hard enough that the sound carried over the club's ambient music.
Matteo followed, aware of Ronan's eyes on his back the whole way, aware of exactly how many of his own men had just watched him let a rival walk him upstairs on her terms instead of his.
He didn't care. That was the part that should have bothered him and didn't.
The elevator doors closed on silence thick enough to taste, Del's arms crossed tight over her chest, jaw set, refusing to look at him even in the mirrored panel that put both their reflections directly in front of her.
Matteo watched her instead of the numbers ticking upward, close enough in the small space that he caught the fine tremor still working through her hands, adrenaline she hadn't fully burned off yet.
"You're angrier than a DJ contract deserves," he said.
"You don't get to narrate my emotions to me."
"I'm making an observation."
"Make it somewhere else." The doors opened onto his private office floor, and she strode through them without waiting for direction, apparently already familiar enough with the layout to find his door on instinct alone, which told him she'd done her own research on him the same way he'd done his on her.
His office was colder than Marea's, all glass and steel and a skyline view that put the entire district under his feet, and she stopped in the center of it, turning to face him the second the door clicked shut behind them.
"Eighteen months exclusive," she said. "That's what his manager told me. You didn't just poach him for one night. You locked him out of ever playing my room again."
"That's how exclusivity clauses work."
"You could have offered him one night. One buyout, enough to make my launch impossible, and you'd have gotten the exact same result.
Instead you bought eighteen months of a man's career specifically so I could never have him back, even after this war is over.
" Del stepped closer, close enough that Matteo had to actually look down to meet her eyes, close enough that the citrus and floral note under her perfume hit him harder than it had downstairs.
"That's not business. That's cruelty with a signature on it. "
"It's leverage."
"It's personal."
"Everything between us is personal." The words left him before he'd fully decided to say them, low and certain, and he watched them land on her exactly the way he'd intended, though intention and control were two different things and he felt the second one slipping the longer she stood this close without either of them stepping back.
"You made it personal in your office two weeks ago, telling me you weren't a thing.
You made it personal poaching Alvarez out from under me within a week of that conversation.
I'm simply matching the register you set. "
"I'm defending my club."
"So am I."
"By destroying mine?"
"By making sure mine wins." Matteo let the honesty sit there between them, unguarded in a way he rarely allowed himself to be, and watched something shift in her expression, fury still present but tangled now with something else, something that looked almost like recognition.
"You'd have done the same in my position.
You already proved that in the alley behind your loading dock last Friday, from what I hear. "
Del went very still. "How do you know about that."
"I know things in a district I care about. I told you that already."
"That's not an answer. That's surveillance."
"Call it what you want." Matteo reached toward her without fully deciding to, close enough now that his knuckles nearly grazed her arm before he caught himself and let his hand fall back to his side, the almost-contact hanging between them heavier than an actual touch would have been.
"I'm not going to apologize for knowing what happens in my own territory.
And you're not going to convince me you regret whatever you did in that alley to protect what's yours, because I watched you refuse to sell that same territory to my face two weeks ago like the idea personally offended you. "
"That's different."
"It's exactly the same." His voice dropped lower, rougher at the edges than he'd intended, and he felt the whole careful architecture of the conversation start to shift under both of them, business collapsing into something with no name yet that neither of them seemed willing to step back from.
"You protect what's yours by any means necessary.
So do I. The only difference between us right now is which side of this district we're standing on. "
"Then maybe you should ask yourself why that difference feels smaller every time we're in the same room."
The words hung there, too honest for either of them to have meant to say out loud, and Matteo watched her realize what she'd admitted a half second after she'd already said it, watched the fury in her expression falter into something rawer and more dangerous.
He should have stepped back. Every instinct that had built his empire told him to put distance between himself and a woman who'd just handed him exactly the kind of leverage he'd normally exploit without hesitation.
He didn't move.
Neither did she.
The office had gone silent except for the low hum of the skyline through floor to ceiling glass, and Matteo stood close enough now to see the exact moment her breathing changed, shallow and quick, close enough that if either of them leaned another two inches this conversation would end somewhere neither of them had planned for it to go.
He watched her hands curl slightly at her sides, not retreating, not advancing, caught in the same paralysis he felt working through his own chest.
"You should leave," he said, and hated how much the words cost him.
"I should."
Neither of them moved for three full seconds that felt considerably longer.
Then Del stepped back first, breaking whatever current had been running between them, and Matteo watched her rebuild her composure in real time, shoulders squaring, jaw resetting, the same transformation he imagined she performed a hundred times a week running her own club through crises he'd only now started to understand the shape of.
"This isn't over," she said, already moving toward the door.
"I never said it was."
She left without another word, the office door closing behind her with a controlled click that somehow landed harder than a slam would have, and Matteo stood alone in the sudden quiet, one hand still faintly warm where he'd almost touched her arm, staring at the space she'd occupied like it might still hold some trace of her if he looked long enough.
He should pull back. Every rational calculation he'd built his entire life around said the same thing, that whatever this was becoming threatened to compromise every advantage he'd spent two weeks constructing, that a man who let himself want his opponent this openly had already handed her the one piece of leverage she needed to win.
He crossed to the window instead, watching the district lights spread out beneath him, Marea's magenta sign glowing faint in the distance even from this height, and made the only decision that had ever actually made sense to him in situations like this.
He wasn't going to pull back. He was going to push harder, because pulling back had never once gotten him anything he actually wanted, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, wanting something had stopped feeling like a weakness and started feeling like the only honest thing left in his life.
Ronan found him there twenty minutes later, still at the window, and took one look at his brother's face before deciding not to ask.
"The health department contact called back," Ronan said instead, careful. "Confirmed for Thursday. You still want to move on it?"
Matteo watched Marea's sign burn faint and steady three blocks south, and thought about the exact way Del's breath had caught when he'd almost touched her arm, and felt something cold and certain settle back into place behind his ribs even as the warmer thing underneath it refused to fully quiet down.
"Move on it," he said. "Thursday."