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Bottom line: I need to kill Matteo before he kills me.
The notion has been brewing in the underbelly of my mind, there where darkness stirs and curls up like smoke to where it manifests in my inner voice. I don’t know when or how, but this man will be dead before he can even put a foot on a plane to Sicily.
My knees hurt from being on all fours on the hard tile, but I’m almost done. The apartment is unnaturally quiet, soundproof to the extent that the only thing I hear is Burley’s breathing and the crackle of the paper bag he’s holding. When the office door opens, my hands tremble in fear. I’m going to have to get a grip. I can’t afford to fold like Matteo’s brother when he had to pull the trigger. I’ve always prided myself on my ‘surgeon’s hands’, never showing the slightest quiver, but now I’m like a conveyer belt in sorting mode.
I don’t look up but watch from underneath my lashes as Matteo and his brothers walk past, not a single word between them. I wait for the final goodbye, but it never comes. There’s only the echo of the door closing and then Matteo’s footsteps as he doesn’t sneak up on me but comes to stand with his black Oxford shoes in front of me where I’m still bent over, looking at my reflection in the tile’s freshly polished surface.
“Enjoy the fire pit,” Matteo says.
“Will do. Sorry about the witness, I—” Burley starts.
“Don’t mention it again. If someone doesn’t want to listen, someone gets to deal with the consequences.”
Whatever you do, don’t watch.
Did he hear Burley’s command to me? Probably.
Oh God. I’m dead.
I don’t move, don’t dare to look up as Burley takes his bucket of chemicals, paper bag and towels and walks away. Neither of us moves and the silence between us stretches, but I can feel his eyes on me. I eventually lean back and look up at him.
I watch in fascination as he slowly licks his thumb and reaches for my cheek to wipe at something. Vomit or blood, who cares. His touch is so gentle, it’s a caress, hypnotizing in deceptive tenderness.
“See, kitten, this is where things get messy,” he says. “And as you’ve noticed, I don’t like messy things.”
“No, you don’t.” I close my eyes against his gentle assault because he hasn’t pulled away. Instead, he’s cupping my cheek, running his fingers along my temple to gather my uncombed strands behind my ear.
“This is the second time I’ve had to warn you,” he says, his fingers lifting away only to gather more hair from my face. “Already you’re making me break Il Consiglio’s rules. There’ll be no third time.”
I nod, and he lets go. I swallow at the bile still in my throat, feeling sick again. A man with this much control is a demon, the devil himself, and who am I to even think I can better him? I swipe at my face, not at tears, but to erase the lingering yearning his touch has left behind. A yearning that reaches way beyond the fingerprints still tingling on my skin.
“Let’s clean you up.” Matteo holds his hand out to me.
And as if I’m making a pact with the devil, I take it.
14
TASHA
Matteo lets go of my hand as soon as I’m standing but moves his hand to the small of my back. With a nudge he guides me to the stairs.
The silence is too eerie and unbearable in the maelstrom of questions in my mind. There’s only one thing I really want to know right now, and I gather my courage. “If you don’t mind me asking,” I start as we scale the stairs, not wanting to rock the boat more than I already have, “what happened to Tatiana? Where is she now?” Matteo listed her assault injuries in bullet points, and they made me want to cry. Just one of those is horrible, but that combination? She must have been in the hospital for weeks.
“Why do you ask?”
“I… I want to somehow justify the punishment you handed out earlier.” Which he did without a flinch.
Matteo stops at his bedroom door, which is on the opposite end of the corridor from the one I got to shower in earlier. “Wondering how I sleep at night, hmm?”
I shrug, but hold his gaze as he studies me, because yes, handing out that level of brutality would give me nightmares. Not that Matteo got his hands dirty and shooting a gun doesn’t count. No, he was the puppet master.
“I sleep just fine, kitten.”
He opens his bedroom door and ushers me in. Frustration bubbles up in me. He hasn’t answered my freaking question. “Tell me, please.”
“Natasha—”
I shudder. It’s the first time he’s said my name and I can’t. “Just Tasha, please. Everybody calls me that because the way people say my name always reminds me of the nanny Dad got me when Mom died and he couldn’t cope. She drove me to school and back always asking How was your day, Natasha? All fake sympathy and total disinterest. My Mom and brother just died, how do you think it was? Those were the days before I got a bodyguard.”
