Chapter Six
Matteo
The door swung shut behind her.
I listened to Morena’s footsteps fade down the hallway until the bass from the main floor swallowed them completely, turning the last soft click of her heels into nothing more than another throb in the club’s endless pulse. Only then did I look back at the man in front of me.
Dario stood with his pants open, blood seeping through the cut in his shirt in a slow, dark bloom, eyes wide and wet with the kind of fear that came from finally meeting someone who would not stop.
His chest rose and fell in shallow, panicked jerks.
The private room held the sour edge of his cologne and the sharper metallic scent of fresh blood.
Underneath it all lingered the faintest trace of Rena, something clean and warm that did not belong in a place like this.
I kept the knife where it was. The tip sat just inside the skin of his stomach, a precise, deliberate pressure. Another inch and the conversation would be over.
My hand was steady. My breathing was even. Everything about the moment felt clean in the way only violence ever did for me.
My voice sounded calm even to me, the same low register I used when giving orders that ended lives. “You put a knife on her throat. You were going to take what does not belong to you.”
Dario’s throat worked. A thin line of sweat cut through the powder on his temple. “The deal’s off until the auction. I can do what I want with my own…”
I pressed forward. The blade sank a little deeper.
A fresh line of red ran down into his waistband, dark against the pale fabric.
He choked on the rest of the sentence, the sound wet and broken.
His hands hovered uselessly at his sides, fingers twitching as if he wanted to push me away and knew exactly what would happen if he tried.
“She is not fucking yours.”
The urge to finish it was clean and simple. One push. One twist. The obstacle would be gone. No more hands on her. No more nights of watching her flinch under his control. The logical part of my mind lined up the reasons in neat order, the same way it always did before a kill.
He was a liability. He had touched what I had claimed. He had frightened her in a way that left new emptiness in her eyes, emptiness I had watched form under the stage lights for weeks. Removing him was the efficient choice.
The Families would not care. Dario was nothing. A handler. A temporary leash. Men like him disappeared all the time.
My wrist tensed.
Dario must have seen the decision form in my face. Panic flooded his expression so completely that for a second he looked almost young. Words tumbled out fast and desperate, spilling over each other.
“You kill me and she’ll hate you.” His voice cracked on the last word.
“You think she won’t know who did it? You think she won’t put it together?
She’ll look at you every day for the rest of her life and know you’re the reason the last piece of her world is gone.
She’ll never forgive you. Never. You’ll own a girl who spits every time you touch her.
You’ll have a wife who flinches when you walk into a room.
Is that what you want? Is that the kind of marriage the seat is going to respect? ”
The words landed harder than I expected.
I held the knife still. Blood continued to drip in a steady, quiet rhythm onto the floor between us.
In my head I saw Morena’s face when she had looked at me over his shoulder only minutes earlier.
The fear. The way she had obeyed a single quiet order from a stranger and ran without looking back.
I saw the version of the future where she learned I had killed the man who controlled the only leverage that kept her compliant.
She would wear my ring. She would carry my name and eventually my children. But every time I touched her she would remember that I had taken the last tether she had to the life she knew, even if that life was a cage.
Tools did not need to look at you without hatred. Tools did not require forgiveness. Tools did not leave a scent in a room that lingered after they were gone. The fact that the idea of her hatred made me pause was a problem I did not want to name.
Silence stretched in the small room. The bass from the club thudded through the walls, relentless and indifferent.
Dario’s breath came in short, wet pulls.
He did not dare move. A drop of blood slid from the tip of the knife and landed on the toe of his shoe.
He stared at it as if it were the only thing keeping him alive.
I made the choice.
I pulled the knife back. Not far. Just enough that it no longer sat inside his skin.
The cut was shallow but ugly. It would hurt for days. That was acceptable. More than acceptable. It was a reminder he would carry every time he moved, every time he looked down and saw the bandage.
“Listen carefully,” I said. The calm in my voice had not changed.
“You will not touch her again. You will not speak to her except to give necessary instructions about the auction. You will not threaten her. You will not put another mark on her body. She stays untouched until she walks onto that stage. If I hear that you have done any of those things, if I hear that you so much as looked at her the wrong way, this conversation will be the last courtesy you receive. There will be no warning. There will only be the part where I take my time. And Dario? I am very good at taking my time.”
Dario nodded too fast. Sweat ran down his temple. “I won’t touch her. I won’t talk to her. She’s clean until the auction.”
The words came out hoarse, scraped raw. “I swear. On my life. She’s clean.”
I stepped back and wiped the blade on the cut edge of his shirt, watching the blood smear into the fabric. Then I folded the knife closed and put it in my own pocket. He would not be getting it back. The weight of it settled against my thigh like a promise.
“Get out.”
He yanked his pants up, pressed his palm hard against the bleeding cut, and left without looking at me again. The door closed behind him hard enough to rattle the frame. The sound echoed once and was swallowed by the bass.
I stood alone in the private room for a long moment.
My cock was hard. That fact irritated me more than the unfinished kill. Everything about the last ten minutes irritated me. I had come within a breath of ending him and had stopped because the idea of her hating me carried more weight than it should have.
That was a crack in the foundation. I did not like cracks.
I left the room, left the club through the private exit that avoided the main floor, and drove home with the city lights streaking across the windshield in long, wet ribbons.
Rain had started at some point; I had not noticed.
The penthouse was dark when I entered. I did not bother with the overhead lights.
I went straight to the wall of her photographs and stood in front of the clearest one.
Stage lights on Rena’s skin. Collar dark against her throat. Eyes that had looked through the camera without knowing I was on the other side, watching, measuring, claiming in silence.
Three weeks.
In three weeks she would stand on that stage and I would buy her in front of every man who had ever watched her dance.
I would put my ring on her finger and my claim on her body and the syndicate would have their bloodline.
That part of the plan remained clean. The part where I had hesitated because I did not want her hatred was less clean.
It sat under my ribs like a splinter I could not dig out.
I stared at her image until the edges blurred.
Until the stage lights in the photograph seemed to pulse with the same bass I had left behind at the club.
She had no idea what was coming for her.
She had no idea that the man who had ordered her out of that room owned the next twenty-one days of her life, and every day after.
I pressed my palm flat against the glass over the photograph and left it there until the surface warmed under my skin.
Idrove to Santino’s house without calling first.
The estate sat behind high walls and quiet security, the kind of place that looked like old money until you noticed the men at the gates never smiled and the cameras tracked every car that slowed near the entrance.
I parked on the gravel drive and sat for a moment with the engine off. The last time I had been here, the girls had been small enough to lift with one arm. Time moved differently when you spent most of it in the dark watching someone else.
The watch ticked against my pulse, steady and indifferent, the same way it had the night Angelo died, probably. I wonder if he saw it coming. Leo Moretti was vicious.
My sister Aurora opened the door before I reached it.
Her face broke into a real smile, the kind she reserved for family, the kind that reached her eyes and made the years fall away for a second.
She looked exactly as she always had in the soft light of the foyer, elegant, composed, and capable of seeing too much.
“Matteo.” She pulled me into a hug that smelled like expensive perfume and something softer underneath, like clean laundry and the faint sweetness of whatever the girls had been eating.
Her arms were strong. She held on a second longer than necessary. “You should have told us you were coming. I would have saved you some dinner.”
“I didn’t know I was until I was driving.”
Her eyes were searching in that quiet way she had always had, when we were younger and I thought I could hide the sharper edges. Whatever she saw made her smile soften into something closer to concern. Then she stepped aside and let me in.
The house was loud in the best way. Somewhere deeper inside a child shrieked with laughter. Another voice, higher, called for Papa. The sound of small feet on hardwood. The distant clatter of toys. Aurora’s hand rested briefly on my arm, warm and steady.
“They’re in the garden with him. Go. I’ll bring coffee.”