Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
GAbrIEL
“ O h, good. You’re here.” Matteo glanced up from the neat stack of papers centered on his desk the moment I walked through his door. An uncharacteristic grin lifted his lips. “I was just working on the books and wasn’t sure how to square up Theo Collins’ loan. Should I count the payment you accepted as ‘goods’ or ‘services’?”
I shot my brother a glare from the doorway. “It’s a lucky thing you’re so good with numbers ‘cause you sure as hell can’t tell a joke.”
“I thought it was funny.” Matteo’s self-satisfied smile only grew at the jab, and it didn’t fade as he leaned back in his chair. Crossing his arms, he looked me in the eye. “But seriously, what’s your plan with the girl?”
That was a damn good question. And even though it was one I knew was coming, one that had rolled through my mind the whole ride home, I still didn’t have an answer for it.
Not a good one anyway.
All I’d been thinking when I made the deal with Liv was how much I wanted her in my bed. How much I wanted to relive the ecstasy of the night before. How badly I wanted to taste her again and again. And make it so, this time, she couldn’t run away.
Beyond that? Well…
It only took Matteo half a second to correctly read my silence.
“ Shit ,” he groaned, pushing himself back from the desk. “You don’t have a plan, do you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Fucking your enemy’s sister is not a plan,” he tried to tell me.
“Sure, it is,” I shot back. “It’s just not one you like.”
Now Matteo was the one glaring, his disappointed and frustrated gaze locked on me as I moved to sit in one of the worn, brown leather chairs in front of his desk. At least that stupid grin was gone.
“I don’t care if you want to screw the Collins girl all the way to Chicago and back,” he said. “But unless you’re planning on letting me sell tickets to let the crowd at La Sera watch you, that kind of payment isn’t going to balance the books.”
I waved off his concerns with a toss of my hand. “Don’t be so damn dramatic. It’s not as if the family is doing badly. I’ve seen our numbers. We haven’t been doing this well since Papà was alive. We can easily absorb the loss.”
Matteo didn’t look convinced by my argument. His head cocked to the side as his eyes narrowed. But I didn’t know just how serious he was until he tented his hands on the desk in front of him.
Crap .
I knew that pose. It was Matteo’s serious look. The expression and posture he took on when he had to deliver hard or troubling news.
Even though we were identical twins, born only minutes apart and sharing the same face and form, my brother and I had developed very different personalities. So different that, after only being around us for a few minutes, most people had no trouble telling us apart.
Matteo, of course, was the more intellectual and businesslike one. Practically minded and slow to anger, I couldn’t remember him making a single rash decision in his life. His more level-headed attitude made him a perfect fit for his role as consigliere—advisor to the head of the family.
On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine anyone using my name and “level-headed” in the same sentence.
Of course, thoughtful consideration wasn’t my job in the family. It never had been. I’d been raised to take the reins of my father’s empire one day. I was taught to make snap decisions. To take action. To do what needed doing, consequences be damned. And I was just as good at my job as Matteo was at his.
“And if this situation was just about money, I would agree with you,” Matteo started. “Our Uncle Sal could have loaned that idiot, Theo, ten times the cash, and it still wouldn’t have put a meaningful dent in our finances.”
Great. “So why the hell are we having this conversation?”
If that was true, then all this bitching over payment and the books made no sense.
Matteo pinched the bridge of his nose as if talking to me was giving him a headache. “Because there are some things more important than money. Respect for one. Obedience for another.”
Somewhere along the line, I’d started relaxing a little too much in my brother’s chair, but at the mention of respect, I straightened up.
“You think our men lack confidence in me?”
It was a serious concern. Right after our Uncle Sal’s betrayal, trust among the ranks out on the street was at an all-time low. Everyone from the capos down wanted assurance that the organization was as strong as it had been under my father’s rule. I’d done my best to calm their fears, immediately taking control and quickly dealing with anyone still holding on to a misguided allegiance to my dead uncle.
The neighborhood mortuaries were busy that week.
But after cleaning house, the D’Angelo family seemed to be back on steady ground. If anything, the bloody and brutal rumors that had swept through the streets afterward had made us more feared than ever before.
Thankfully, Matteo quickly shook his head.
“It’s not our men I’m worried about,” he said. “Their allegiance to you and to the D’Angelo name is as strong as ever. It’s the other families that concern me.”
A month ago, back when I’d merely been the underboss of the organization, I wouldn’t have taken my brother’s concern seriously. Who the hell cared about the other New York families? None of them came close to our power and wealth.
But now that I was Boss, I couldn’t shrug things off so easily. I was responsible for too many loyal men. Too many families and livelihoods.
“What have you heard?” I asked Matteo, leaning forward in my seat.
“Nothing yet,” he admitted. “But something tells me it’s only going to be a matter of time before this story about you going soft and letting Theo Collins off the hook hits the streets.”
I shook my head and pointed toward the ceiling. “The bastard’s sister is upstairs, sitting on my bed right now, and will be for the next three months. I wouldn’t call that ‘off the hook.’”
Matteo’s expression stayed as flat as ever. “What about the Costas? You think they wouldn’t jump at the chance to toss one of their pretty little sisters or cousins at you to get out of a seven-figure debt?”
I recoiled in disgust at the thought. My brother knew better than to put that image in my mind. There was no way I would ever fuck a Costa, let alone allow one into my house for months at a time.
“Anyone who suggests that deal to me will be buried the next day in a closed casket,” I said.
“Then explain to me why Theo’s mother isn’t planning a funeral right now?” Matteo asked. He was one of the only people who could get a pass for talking to me so plainly.
Another one was sitting upstairs, waiting for me right now.
“Because the bastard was too much of a coward to come out and face me himself,” I told him. “Instead, the son-of-a-bitch sent his sister to do the job for him. The sniveling bastard didn’t even tell her what she was walking into. The woman thought she was walking into a damned business negotiation.”
Matteo’s brows pulled together in confusion. “And you took pity on her?”
Pity— there was another word that was never mentioned in the same breath as me.
“No.” I shook my head. “Absolutely not. The only thing I took was her .”
“So, she’s a hostage?”
Fuck, no. Hostages were what two-bit bank robbers took when they got in over their heads. Liv was a goddamn concubine.
“She’s mine .”
I hit the last word hard. Between Liv and Theo, my patience had been tested too much in the last twenty-four hours. The last thing I needed was for my own brother to think he could do the same.
My take-no-shit tone must have worked because Matteo closed his mouth and leaned back in his chair, nodding.
“Fine,” he said with a resigned sigh. “Keep the woman if that’s what you want. Just don’t go soft on the Collins’ in the process. Show the other families you’re every bit as scary as the papers make you out to be. If Theo thinks he can pay you off with his sister, show him you mean business. Take the girl and his company. Take every penny that family has, then run the bastard out of the country. Make him hide in fear as he grows old, poor, and alone. Make an example of him. It’s what Papà would have done.”
Matteo was right.
That was exactly the kind of revenge our father would have taken on a cowardly deadbeat like Theo Collins. It was the kind of action that had made the D’Angelos the most feared family in New York.
And if I wanted to prove to everyone in this city—in the world—that I was a worthy successor, then I needed to do the same.
“I was going to call him a little later, but I’ll do it now,” I said with a nod.
“Here. Use this.” Matteo reached into his desk drawer. A second later, he pulled out an older model phone in a Milwaukee Brewers case. Liv’s phone—it had to be. “Tony found it on the floor of the office after you left. Apparently, it was still on, and the voicemail she’d been sending was still recording.”
A smile curled my lips at the thought of Theo listening in horror to every word we’d said. If the little prick had even an ounce of conscience, it would kill him to hear what had happened to his sister.
“Well, that will save me the time of explaining the situation,” I said with a laugh as I took the phone off his desk and pocketed it.
“What are you going to tell him?” Matteo asked, looking much more relaxed.
“The truth,” I said. “That he has ninety days to get me every last cent he owes us, or I’ll take his business and his sister. Right before I take his life. “