171

Gianna It was past midnight when we finally arrived home.
Most of the other guests had left long before we did, but Luca and Matteo had to stay in charge of La Cosa Nostra and pretend to try to figure out what had happened.
No one suspected them, at least not openly. To be honest, neither Bardoni Jr. nor Mrs. Bardoni had seemed too upset. Their tears would have been crocodile tears, if I had ever seen any. Perhaps he had been as obnoxious to them as he had been to me in the short time I had spent with him.
I could not believe that my life had changed from being a waitress in Munich to covering up my husband’s crimes.
After a quick shower, I crawled into bed. Matteo was still arguing with Luca in our living room. This was one of the few instances when I fully understood Luca’s anger.
I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling as I listened to their voices. The ankle monitor lay on my bedside table, taunting me. Maybe I should have taken advantage of tonight’s confusion to escape. Luca, Matteo, and Romero had been busy cleaning up their mess, and I was without my stupid ankle bracelet. It had been the perfect opportunity. So why hadn’t I run away? I doubted anyone would stop me.
Because of Aria? I wished that was the only reason, but as I stood in the lobby waiting for Matteo to return, I hadn’t even considered running away. Why was she no longer at the forefront of my brain? Six months ago it had been all I could think about, it had been an obsession that had consumed me, and now sometimes I felt I was only thinking about running because I felt I had to.
It was confusing. I was not as miserable as I feared living with Matthew. Sure, he was a crazy killer , but it wasn’t that I wasn’t used to that kind, and in fact it made life exciting even though I hated to admit it. Living life as a normal person, doing normal things, earning money at normal jobs, had been an incredible experience, but for some reason it had never seemed more than a distraction.
The door opened and Matteo walked into the bedroom.
He was no longer wearing his jacket and half the buttons on his shirt were already unbuttoned. He gave me his usual smile before disappearing into the bathroom.
I could have pretended to be asleep to avoid talking to him but for some inexplicable reason I wanted to talk to him . When he emerged from the bathroom in his boxer shorts , showing off his lean, muscular torso, I almost cancelled my plans. But that would have been just too wrong . A man had died , even if he was a horrible man, and having sex like that shortly after his death would have been absolutely wrong.
Matthew slipped under the covers and grabbed me by the waist, drawing me to him. His eyes were hungry. There was no sign that he still remembered what he had done not long before. His lips claimed mine and I let his tongue in, let the kiss consume me until my body began to vibrate with pleasure and I forced myself to push him away before I did something I would despise myself for the next morning.
Matteo threw himself on his back with a groan. “It’s Bardoni’s fault, isn’t it?”
I frowned. “Maybe I’m just not in the mood. You’re not that irresistible.”
“If you say so,” he said in a low voice that sent a treacherous shiver down my spine. The bastard was too manipulative.
I decided to steer this conversation to safer grounds. “So Luca will punish you?”
Matteo chuckled. “Luca has never punished me for anything. He is used to my proactivity.”
“Proactivity?”
Matteo winked at me and I almost joined him again.
Instead I pulled the blankets up to my chin as another barrier between us.
“Luca looked furious.”
“He’ll get over it. He always does. He was going to get Bardoni killed anyway. It was only a matter of time.”
I had a feeling that this was no ordinary pre-bedtime chat.
“When did you kill your first man? Asylum?”
Matteo leaned his head on his arm, smiling. He ran a finger down my arm in a very distracting way. “NO. I was a late bloomer compared to Luca.
“Really? That seems unlikely.
“Not really. Luca made sure I didn’t get into trouble when I was younger. He was a protective big brother.”
“I can’t even imagine Luca as a child, much less him making sure you stayed out of trouble.”
“He did. Is it really that surprising? Didn’t Aria try to protect you when you were younger?”
“He still does,” I said with a grimace.
“See. Luca is the same way. Of course now I’m making it harder for him to keep me under control, just as you make it hard for Aria.”
“I think there’s a huge difference between the kind of trouble I cause and the kind of trouble you cause.”
“Give it some time. I have a feeling you haven’t reached your full potential yet.
A laugh came out of me. Damn. Why did he have to say things that made me laugh? “You didn’t answer my question. When did you first kill?” “It was a few weeks after my 13th birthday.”
“Is that what you call a late bloomer? Most boys that age worry about their pubic hair sprouting and not killing someone.
“Oh, I came to terms with my pubic hair a long time ago,” he said in a sing-song voice. “And most guys aren’t the second sons of the head of the New York Cosa Nostra.”
“Good point. But Luca can’t have protected you very well if you had to kill when you were still so young.
Matteo’s gaze grew distant. “He did what he could.
Our father wanted me to kill one of the guys Luca and I hung out with from time to time because he had tried to get out of the mob.
My stomach clenched. “E?”
“Luca drew his gun and killed the boy before I could.
The father was definitely pissed off. He beat Luca within an inch of his life.
The idea that Luca had done something so caring for his brother was strange, but it wasn’t all that surprising if you watched how those two interacted. It was obvious that they loved each other, cold-hearted bastards or not. “Luca is huge. How could anyone beat him?”
Matthew smiled wryly. “Luca could have wiped out Father if he tried, but he never fought back.
Father was Chief and would have put Luca down like a rabid dog if he had raised his hand against him.
Sometimes I forgot that things were not all sunshine and roses for men. They had more freedom when it came to promiscuity and going out, but they had their own burdens to bear. “I guess your father found someone else to kill pretty quickly after that.” I barely knew Salvatore Vitiello but he had seemed like a creepy piece of shit.
Matteo nodded. “A couple of months later he found out about another traitor . He had my throat cut.
The girls were not given many details about the investiture ceremony, but Umberto had often let something slip when he was watching over us. Usually the first killing of an initiate was from a distance with a gun. “He didn’t let you shoot him?”
“No, it was probably intended as an additional punishment because I had managed to avoid killing the first time.
Shooting is easy, it’s less personal. Using a knife is dirty work. You have to get close to your victim, you have to get blood on your hands.
I held my breath. His voice had become very calm.
Slowly I stood up on my arm. I wanted to touch it but I didn’t. “That sounds horrible. Could you do that?”
“What do you think?”
There was the frightening smile of the shark. The one that made me believe that Matteo was capable of anything.
“You killed him.”
“I did. He was messy. He was tied to a chair, so he couldn’t fight back, but it took me three tries to cut his jugular. I was covered in blood from head to toe. The next day I still found blood under my fingernails.
“Then why do you prefer knives to guns? You really don’t seem to mind getting your hands dirty anymore.
“At first it was to show my father that I was tough and that he hadn’t broken me like he probably intended. And once I got really good with the knife and everyone admired me for my skills, it seemed like a waste to give it up.”
I scanned his face but it was blank. I could not tell if it was the whole truth or if he was keeping the worst to himself: that he had come to enjoy the most personal killing. For a moment we stared at each other until it became too personal again and I lay down and rolled onto my back.
“Have you ever thought about killing Luca? If he died, you would become Chief. You wouldn’t be the first Made Man to kill a family member to get ahead,” I asked.
Matthew’s expression hardened. “I would never kill my brother. I’m not interested in becoming Chief, and even if I did, I still wouldn’t get rid of Luca to improve my position.
Luca has my back and I have his. It’s always been that way.”
“That’s fine. It’s important to have people you can trust,” I said honestly. Loneliness was a big problem in our world. You always had people around you, but you couldn’t trust anyone. There was only one person I trusted completely and that was Aria. Lily was too fragile and young for many of my secrets, and Fabi was a boy and my father’s influence on him was growing by the day. And I couldn’t even talk to them anymore.
“What will it take for you to trust me?” asked Matteo in curiosity.
“A miracle.” I turned my back to him and turned off the lamp on the nightstand. The look in his eyes had stirred something in my chest that terrified me.
Matthew turned off the other lights, then leaned toward me, kissing my ear. “Who doesn’t like a good miracle?”
*** Matthew’s arm clutched my waist heavily, his hot breath against my neck, and his leg thrown over mine stopped my blood flowing; so why was it strangely good to wake up next to him?
I detached his arm, slipped off and stood up quickly . Matthew did not wake up. His hair was a complete mess and his face looked honest and almost gentle in his sleep. I reached out my hand but stopped before I could brush his forehead with my fingers. What was wrong with me?
I took a step back. My eyes rested on the discarded ankle monitor on the bedside table and an idea crossed my mind. I grabbed the monitor and ran with it to the bathroom. That thing could not be destroyed with water. After all, you could shower with it, but maybe I could flush it down the toilet. Not that Matteo couldn’t ask Sandro to bring a new monitor, but the gesture would send a nice message. I dipped the monitor into the toilet and flushed.
Unfortunately, it got stuck.
“Did you just flush the ankle monitor down?” asked Matteo in a voice hoarse with sleep.
I turned around. He was leaning on the threshold, his arms crossed over his bare chest and an amused expression on his arrogant face. Heat rose to my cheeks. “I tried, but he froze.”
Giggling, Matteo approached me and we both stared at the bowl. “And who will get it out now?”
“You?”
Matteo ducked but I grabbed him by the arm.
“Aren’t you going to put on gloves or something ?”
“It’s clean and I can wash my hands afterwards,” he said with barely disguised amusement. “My hands have been covered with worse, believe me.”
I left him with a shrug. “Do whatever you want.”
He retrieved the ankle monitor and placed it on the sink, then pulled down his boxers and walked to the shower, presenting his firm butt to me. She turned on the water and plunged into the stream before facing me again with a raging erection. “Do you want to join me?”
I reached for my toothbrush. “No thanks.”
It took a lot of restraint not to look at Matteo as he showered. I had a feeling he was taking his time on purpose.
The water turned off and Matteo got out, drying himself with his towel. He nodded toward the ankle monitor. “You realize it’s still working, right?”
“Oh come on. I didn’t run away last night. You don’t need to put that thing on me again. I’ll behave myself.”
“Really?” asked Matteo dropping the towel and coming toward me. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
I rolled my eyes. Two could play at this game. I pulled my shirt over my head, then slid my panties down my legs before straightening up, completely naked. Let Matteo handle it .
As expected, Matteo’s eyes traveled over my body and his cock twitched in response.
I smirked. “I really hate the monitor. I don’t want to wear it again.”