Matteo exhales.“We can’t prove anything.”
Fighting to keep my anger in check, I slap my hands on his desk and lean forward.“They fucking murdered our father.And they’re muscling into our territory.I won’t allow it.”
“Fuck me.”Matteo drags a hand through his hair.“This isn’t your goddamn decision.”
I can’t argue with that.He’s head of the family.But I know he thirsts for blood as much as I do.
Nico exhales.When he speaks, his voice is as precise as a scalpel.“Where is she?”
“Safe.”
“Damn you, Dante.”Matteo’s voice drops, deep and clipped.“Quit fucking bullshitting us.You’re walking a fine line.”
I push myself upright again and meet his stare without flinching.“At my house.”
My words hit hard.
The way a bullet lands when it hits the protective armor plate but still bruises the ribs.
Matteo tightens his fingers around the edge of the desk.
Nico draws in a slow breath.
Though they exchange glances, neither of them speak.
Because the meaning is unmistakable: I didn’t stash her in a warehouse.I didn’t tuck her into a safehouse.I didn’t leave her with soldiers or send her out of state.
I put her under my roof.
The Moretti underboss’s roof.
The place no one enters without permission.
The symbolic weight is massive.
We all know what the rest of Texas’s Families will assume.
“Who’s with her?”Nico asks.
“Adriano.”His name comes with an image—my soldier outside my bedroom door, back against the wall, expression blank but eyes always moving.The faint strip of corridor light at his boots.The sight of the lock behind him.
“She’s…resting,” I add.“The door’s locked.”From the outside.I’ve been planning this.So I took that extra precaution.And, of course, an almost invisible thumbprint sensor so I can open if from the inside in case of an emergency.“Cameras are rolling.I guarantee her safety.”
Matteo’s brows draw low.“You goddamn well put her in your bed.”
There’s a beat of silence that’s heavy.Telling.
It pulls the memory up with brutal clarity—her weight soft in my arms as I carried her upstairs, the faint, intoxicating scent of her skin and shampoo.
The tremor in my fingers as I undressed her with more care than I should have.The warmth of her cheek beneath my knuckles when I brushed her hair aside.
Nico speaks, jolting me from the past as he demands an exact timeline of what happened.
As I answer in a calm, unhurried tone, Matteo stares at me like he’s deciding whether to reach across the desk and knock me out cold.“Did I make a mistake naming you my underboss?”
His words reopen wounds.The sight of our father’s body in the morgue, his satin-lined coffin, the vows I made as he was being lowered into the ground, the work I’ve done in blood and shadow so Matteo wouldn’t have to.
Thick and suffocating silence spreads over the room.The old clock on the wall ticks once, twice—too loud in a room where everything else has gone still.
