Page 8 of Mafia’s Final Play

“We’re Catholics, Aunt, we don’t divorce, remember?” Matteo leaned back in his seat, his hands crossed in his lap. If he didn’t lean back, he’d hang up on her, and he didn’t want to do that. It would show her that she’d got to him and he’d never let her know that.

“There is annulment, Matteo.” She spoke the words softly, a sibilant note in her voice that turned into a dangerous hiss. Was she ordering him to annul his marriage?

“That would be a bit hard to do, Celeste. We’ve consummated the marriage, we were both of age, in our right minds, and whatever else the grounds are for annulment. It’s not happening.”

“I know a priest here, he’ll do as I ask.” Her face wavered on the screen but then settled. She was in Italy, so the connection wasn’t going to be that good anyway.

“Celeste, drop it.” He barked the words out, an order for her to stop her nonsense.

“Oh, now there’s the manhood you somehow lost when you married that little bit of trash of yours,” she gloated across the miles, and it only irritated Matteo even more.

“If you make one more remark about her, Celeste, one more…” he started but she just laughed a trilling, spiteful laugh, before she looked directly into the camera.

“You’ll do what? Run off with her and never speak to me again? I highly doubt that.”

“Don’t push me. That’s all you’ve done my entire life and I’ve had my fill of it. You put me in charge here, so I suggest you let me do my job and get on with it, instead of calling me up to insult my wife.”

“Oh, like that is it?” She leaned into the camera to look more closely at his face. Her lips pursed in cruel delight as she saw what he couldn’t hide from her. “Interesting. Fine, have your way, Matteo. But take care you don’t get burned.”

“Goodbye, Celeste.” He’d barely finished when she ended the call.

That fucking bitch, he thought as he closed the laptop and sat back in his chair again. But maybe she was right, in a way.

His feelings for Marie made him weak, made them both a target of those that wanted to see him fail, of those that wanted what he had. That was part of the reason he kept her locked behind guards and a very heavy door. He could breathe knowing she was safe at home. If she was outside of those walls, away from the protection of his men, he’d constantly be in panic mode.

No, he had her where he wanted her, safe and secure.

He hated to be weak, and she was very much his weakness now. He needed her in ways he’d never known he could need anyone. The fact that Celeste knew that now infuriated him, but he couldn’t do anything about that. And what was that warning at the end, before she closed the call?

He knew she’d hated Marie’s mother, Ruby, and with good cause. But Matteo knew something about Celeste that nobody else did: it wasn’t that Ruby had been her husband’s lover that caused her to hate Ruby, it was that Ruby had caused her embarrassment. And then she’d had the gall to have the child that his late uncle, Nick, hadn’t given to her. That’s what really infuriated Celeste, that’s what had motivated her.

Had that hatred transferred over now to Marie? It would make a sort of convoluted sense. Marie was the child that had caused her further embarrassment, proof that her husband had strayed. Did that deserve Celeste’s hatred now? And if it did, was Celeste willing to kill over it?

That thought, finally fully formed in his mind, stunned Matteo. Would Celeste be so cruel, so fucking selfish in her decades-old wallow into self-pity, that she’d order a hit on her nephew’s wife? The answer to that came swiftly and without a flicker of hesitation. She would if it got her the vengeance she craved, no matter the cost.

A new idea developed as he looked around the office, a spartan place with only his desk, desk chair, a file cabinet, and a space heater that he used in the winter. Four walls covered in cheap wall panel boards nailed up long before he was born, made the room feel almost… coffin-like. An air conditioner kept the room cool from a window to his left. He pulled at the sapphire blue silk tie he wore and at his collar as thoughts bombarded him.

If it was Celeste, if she’d called the hit, he had nowhere to hide, no safe house that she didn’t know about. There was nowhere they could run to for safety.

Just as quickly, his thoughts jumped back to whether Celeste was the threat. Maybe that’s what Celeste meant when she told him to be careful and not get burned. He’d have to leave Marie to not be taken down with her? But that would never happen, not as long as he had breath in his body. He’d never leave his wife. She needed him.

He needed her.

With steady hands, he picked up his phone and called Anton. “Scratch whatever you’re doing and meet me down at the river warehouse.”

Matteo knew he didn’t have to elaborate, Anton would know which one he meant.

“Sure, boss. Be there in 10 minutes.”

“Good. Come alone,” Matteo added, simply because Anton sometimes brought one of the other guys with him.

“Will do.”

Matteo left his laptop, but picked up his briefcase, closed and locked the office door, and let Penelope know he was going out. He drove to the warehouse quickly and got there before Anton did. When his man arrived, he got out of the car and they walked together into the silent building. Another empty building, another place for them to hide illicit goods.

“What’s up, Matteo?” Anton asked, his light-green eyes lit with curiosity.

“I need you to find me a safe place, a place that nobody, not even the family, can know about.” Matteo looked at him, the man he’d chosen because his loyalty was to Matteo, not Celeste. He was the only one that Matteo could trust right now, besides Marie.