“You tell me, Layne. You’re the one in full control of all this now.”
Curling my hand around his neck, I draw him down and push my lips to his. He smirks until I lick my way into his mouth, his smile falling away as he cups my face and kisses me with a near feral desperation, making my toes curl.
“Jesus.” He pulls away slightly before dipping back in for another taste. “I could kiss you for hours.”
Matteo only stops when Gina yells in Italian from the doorway of her café.
“Give me a break, Gina. I’m taking her home!” He turns back to me, his lips a little puffy, his eyes dilated in the setting sun. “First, I need one more kiss from you.”
“To make sure I’m real, right?” I whisper before he kisses me a lot slower this time, the both of us ignoring Gina’s antics behind us.
He pulls away, swiping his lip with his thumb and looking very satisfied with himself as he helps me into the driver’s seat. Passing my seat belt over, he waits until I’m clipped in before he closes my door and climbs in next to me.
A break in the traffic means the road is clear, so I take advantage of the conditions and drive his car like it should be driven—hard and fast.
“If we weren’t married, you know I’d be begging you to marry me?”
“About that…” I laugh, opening the windows and turning up the music.
Matteo sits back in his seat, his legs open wide, his head back, looking completely relaxed. Using the navigation, I follow the directions on the dash back to their home, finally seeing it for what it is…a high rise. I saw it before when I drove Matteo back after he was hurt in the alley, but clearly, it didn’t stick as something important.
Turning the music down as we wait at the final set of lights before I can turn down the ramp to the parking garage, I lean down to look up at the tall building. “Who else lives with you here?”
“Only our most trusted, mostly our capos and lieutenants. Are you familiar with the setup of Italian syndicates?”
“Yeah. I wrote a law review article on syndicate setup and the best way to prosecute as part of my coursework.”
He reaches over and squeezes my knee. “I think it’s amazing you’re so intelligent.”
“Thanks.”
He flicks his head when the light changes and continues to give me a run-down on the tenants. “Because we’re under Vitale, we are required to have associates of his on-site, as a show of our support. We’ve managed to contain them in a sense by being so heavily involved in their businesses, they can’t order pencils without us knowing. We’ve definitely upset Vitale by limiting their access inside the building, but we own it. We paid for it and the renovations, which gives us more say than if we were using one of his.”
“Are you related to Vitale? I know Valentine and Dante are his grandsons.” I slow down, so the guards can see Matteo in the passenger seat, and they activate the door for entry.
“Yeah.” Matteo says it with a heavy exhale before twisting around to face me. “I’m actually Vitale’s only son. His bastard child.”
Gasping in horror, I pull the car to a stop, safe in the knowledge the door will close behind us, and no one will drive into us.
“Oh my god, Matteo, he treats you so fucking awful.” In the short amount of time I saw Vitale, he acted like Matteo wasn’t even in the same room.
He throws his hand up, a bit like he’s over trying to understand his own father’s cruel motivations. “He definitely didn’t like that I was born a Beta. He’s never accepted me as his son. Publicly ridiculed my mother and me for years, but that doesn’t change the fact of who he is to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And I’m telling you, it no longer upsets me. If anything, I use it as a motivator.” Matteo looks out the window, and I start driving again.
“I understand that.”
“Family is more than blood. I wouldn’t die for Vitale, but I would for my pack.”
“Is your mom still alive?”
He grunts, shaking his head, a sudden well of his emotion keeping me quiet. “No. I’m glad she’s not, though. Vitale is a cruel, cruel man and my mother experienced that first hand.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She would have loved you, you know?”
