Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Matteo
Ikeep the gun pressed against the base of Lorenzo’s skull and listen to the silence around us.
That is the thing people never understand about surviving this kind of life. It is not about how fast you can move when everything goes to shit. Not about how well you shoot, how many men you have backing you, or how much money you can throw at a problem until it disappears. It is the silence.
The ability to read it and feel its shape. To know when it shifts from benign to malignant in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
The wrong kind of silence has teeth.
Sharp ones.
The kind that sinks deep and doesn’t let go until you’re bleeding out on pavement that doesn’t care who you were.
I felt it the second I stepped out onto the street with Emery.
That old, crawling shift in the air. That sense that something unseen has fixed its eyes on you and is deciding whether you are worth the effort to kill.
Most men never notice it until it is too late.
Until the bullet is already in flight or the blade is already at your throat.
I noticed it before I had my first body to bury.
My father made sure of that. He drilled it into me with the same ruthless precision he used for everything else.
He taught me to feel danger the way other men feel rain, to trust my instincts even when logic said I was paranoid, and to act first and question later, because hesitation is what gets you killed.
It has saved my life more times than I can count. Today it brings me right back to the one thing I have known was coming since the day I walked away.
They have found us.
That fear is the only thing on earth that can still get under my skin.
Not for myself.
I stopped being afraid for myself a long time ago. Fear is a luxury men in my position cannot afford. It slows you down, makes you hesitate, and gets you killed.
But fear for someone else—for the woman carrying my child—that fear is sharp. It lives in my chest, reminding me with every fucking breath I take that I have something worth losing now.
Then when I saw it was Lorenzo that somehow made it worse.
Because Lorenzo is not some hired gun or a desperate soldier looking to make a name for himself by taking down Matteo De Luca.
“How the fuck did you find me, Lorenzo?” My voice is hard. It’s not a question but a demand.
His shoulders stay loose beneath the dark shirt stretched taut across his back. As if having a gun to his head were just another Tuesday.
He has always had that cold stillness in him.
Even when he was young, grief had hollowed him out so badly he looked too small for his own skin.
Most children cry when they lose their family.
Lorenzo learned how not to. He went quiet instead of breaking.
He stood there with those watchful eyes, absorbing every lesson my father threw at him.
He turned himself into something harder and more ruthless than anyone expected.
I tighten my grip on the gun. I feel its weight and the promise it holds.
“Answer the fucking question.”
A low laugh escapes him. “Still a prick, I see.”
“And you are still fucking breathing because I have not decided otherwise.”
That gets a slight shift from him. A subtle change in posture that tells me he is recalculating. Reassessing the situation, remembering that the man holding the gun is not some amateur he can talk his way around.
Because Lorenzo remembers who I am. What I am. What I have done to men who underestimated me.
I glance once at the far end of the lane, at the recessed doorway where Emery waits, hidden from view. She knows the drill—stay back and let me handle the immediate threat.
It doesn’t mean she is helpless. Far from it. There is a difference.
Emery is not some delicate thing that needs protecting from the ugly realities of the world. She has survived things that would have broken most people, and I know she would stab a man in the throat herself if she had to. That is one of the many reasons I love her.
I don’t say anything to her yet because I still need her out of sight, far enough away in case this goes sideways, so she has time to run. I know Lorenzo didn’t come alone; he’d be fucking stupid if he did.
He lets out a breath through his nose. “You always did have control issues, Matteo.”
“And you always had a talent for saying the wrong fucking thing with a gun to your head.”
His jaw tics.
Good. Let him understand that whatever blood is between us, whatever history lies under our skin, means precisely jack shit if he is here to put Emery in danger.
“I followed a lead,” he says at last. “That’s all.”
“That tells me nothing.”
I stare at him, weighing the tension in his body, the rhythm of his breathing, the set of his shoulders.
Lies have texture. They sit differently on a man.
Lorenzo is holding something back, but he is not spinning me any polished bullshit either.
He’s too controlled for that. And that is what makes him dangerous.
But Lorenzo has always been dangerous, even if some people couldn’t see it back in the day.
I remember him at ten. Small for his age.
Skinny in a way that made him look breakable.
Sitting on the back steps of my father’s house after his family’s funeral.
Refusing to go inside because there were too many strangers in black, pretending they gave a shit about a boy who had just lost everything.
I sat beside him in silence for nearly an hour before he finally spoke.
“Did they suffer?” Three words asked in a voice that had no business coming from a child. Just a flat, clinical question, delivered with the kind of detachment that should have taken decades to learn.
He didn’t want comfort or an adult to pat his head and tell him everything would be okay. He wanted someone to look him in the eye and tell him the truth instead of feeding him bullshit to make him feel better.
So I did.
I didn’t lie to him. I told the truth, that yes, they would have suffered. However, I did not tell him everything because I had heard the orders my father gave his men. I had heard Emery’s father repeat them back with that same cold efficiency he used for everything.
“Keep the boy alive. Kill the rest.”
To this day, Lorenzo doesn’t know that it was my father who killed his entire family.
He doesn’t know that the man who took him in, who gave him a home, and turned him into something dangerous and useful, was, in fact, the same man who ordered his family’s execution.
All because Lorenzo’s father became a threat. That was all it took. One moment of defiance. One decision that made my father question his loyalty, and Lorenzo’s family paid for it.
Lorenzo nodded when I answered his question. He stared at his hands and just sat there, turning grief into something colder. Something he could sharpen into a weapon and use later, when the time was right, to follow the blood trail back to the man who gave the orders.
Now I have no reason to protect my father’s legacy. If Lorenzo is not here to kill me, I can finally tell him the truth. And the more men out there looking for revenge against my father, the better.
Even though I don’t know what godforsaken hole my father is hiding in, he’s still a threat.
A ghost with resources and connections. My father does not forgive or forget.
He will never let go of what Emery and I did to his precious empire.
That kind of defiance does not fade; it festers, and one day he will come for us.
And when he does, he will make sure we suffer for it.
Unless I find him first or turn every man with a grudge and a gun loose on him before he can make his move.
Lorenzo could be one of those men if he knew the truth behind the name he has been hunting for all these years, but first, I need to know why he is really here.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t give a shit about what you believe, Matteo.”
I slam him into the stone wall hard enough for the sound to crack through the lane. He gets one hand up in time to catch himself. Palm flat against weathered stone, absorbing the force before his face meets brick.
But I keep the gun fixed on his head. Keep the pressure there because I’m done with vague answers and careful deflections.
“Don’t fucking lie to me,” I say.
“You think my men would not already be here to put a bullet in your fucking head if I were not alone?” Lorenzo’s voice doesn’t waver. “You think they would let you stand here with a gun pointed at my head and do nothing?”
The bastard has a point. They would have been here the second I pulled the gun. They would have been around the corner, weapons drawn, with orders to kill. Which means either he is telling the truth or his men are better at waiting than I gave them credit for.
I press the barrel harder against his skull.
“Then what the fuck do you want?” I lean in closer, letting him feel the heat of my breath. The proximity to violence. The razor-thin margin between conversation and execution. “You just decided to take a day trip? See the fucking sights? Track down an old friend for coffee and a fucking chat?”
“Something like that.” His voice carries a dark edge of humor. “Or maybe there was another option.”
“What other option?”
“The one where you stay dead.” His tone hardens and becomes the voice of a man laying down terms. “Stay hidden. Stay the fuck out of the way while I clean up the mess you left behind.”
“I don’t want that life anymore. I have the life I want right here. So you can fucking have it, Lorenzo. You can have the empire, the power, and the fucking throne. All of it. I don’t give a shit.”
“It is not that easy.”
“Why the fuck not?”