“Damnit, Ma—Don Matteo.” Hank catches himself, but not quite in time. Matt’s irate gaze swivels over to the man, who backs out of reach. “You’re the one who paid for that computer, remember? We need high-end equipment if we’re going to stay ahead of the Empire hackers. You just set us back by at least a week, if not more. Holly and I can’t both type on the other one at the same time.”
“So fucking invoice me for a new laptop.”
Hank throws his hands in the air. “It took a month to get the parts for that one! They’re custom builds, Don Matteo. It’s notlike we can go to the local Tech Shack and just pick up a spare from the display models.”
A valid point, but not helpful when Matt’s in a mood. I surreptitiously step between Matt and the twins, pretending to be reading one of the dozens of monitors they’ve got hooked up. I can see them perfectly fine from where I was at, but Matt needs a moment to cool down.
“So, Lucinda’s found hackers of her own? Or were they already there?”
I pose the question as idle curiosity, but it makes a difference. My dad struggled to increase the Empire’s numbers the brief time he was in charge, and I never bothered trying. If Matt’s mom has brought in new blood, that could spell trouble for us in more ways than one. If not, it could just mean Dad’s men got lucky in finally breaking through the twins’ firewalls, and Lucinda took it as an opportunity to rile Matt up.
Yancy, who also stands a respectable distance from my angry boyfriend, leans against the door frame and shakes his head. “I knew Lucinda was tough, but I never knew she had balls of fucking steel. To just flat-out demand you two to hand over the Royal Syndicate—Jesus, that woman is nuts.”
Matt snarls. “You have no idea.”
Before anyone else can say a word, he storms out of the twins’ server room and disappears down the hall.
“What’d I say?”
I pat Yancy on the shoulder. “Lucinda’s return to the land of the living is a sore point for both of us. I think we’d prefer if she had stayed dead.”
His scarred brows shoot up, and his jaw drops. I don’t think he expected such venom from me, especially when it comes to Lucinda. Yancy knows she was like a foster mother to me, but we haven’t revealed her sick machinations to the rest of the Royal Syndicate yet. Publicly coming out as a couple, declaringourselves equal partners in running the Syndicate, and outing Lucinda as being alive and well was all shocking enough. If we’d added in the details of our … interconnected family, that would have been too much for anyone to take at that time, even someone as loyal as Yancy.
“Trust me, Yancy. You’ll understand in time.”
With that, I leave in search of Matt. He seemed off before his mom dropped that unexpected email, so he really must need to talk to someone. Since I’m the only person here who’s a match if he gets violent, I guess it falls to me.
I find Matt outside, heading towards the woods. Following at a leisurely pace, I catch up to him at a familiar tree, one I beat the bark off of a few weeks ago.
“God, it feels like forever since I shredded my hands on this tree.”
Matt nods, but he doesn’t respond.
Time for a different approach. “Want to tell me what crawled up your ass? Because last I checked, it wasn’t my dick.”
He looks back over his shoulder, perhaps to see if we’re alone. Matt ditched his guard easily enough, but Percy stuck to me like glue until I ordered him to stay at the edge of the woods. “Don business,” I told him. The kid seemed to take me at my word. He clamped a fist over his heart and did an about-face, promising to keep anyone else away from us while we talked.
With no one around to overhear, Matt finally opens up.
“What the fuck was that in the gym?” he asks me. “The fucking bullshit about ‘having fun’ with our secret?”
His questions take me aback. “Matt, you’re always making comments like that.”
“Not you, though. You’re the level-headed one, or at least I thought you were. Since when do you fuck around about your private sex life?”
The words hurt as much as if he’d punched me.
“I don’t understand. I thought you’d enjoy being able to cut loose when we’re alone together.”
“There’s cutting loose, and then there’s being fucking flippant.”
Who would’ve thoughtthatwould be where Matt drew the line? “Look, Matt, if it bothers you that much, I won’t do it again. You’re more important to me than dumb jokes. I just wanted to … I don’t know. Be myself, I guess. I’ve never really had the chance. I’m always on, always guarding and guarded. I sure as hell couldn’t talk like that with you before the manor.”
He frowns, and some of the anger bleeds from his face, replaced with concern. “What do you mean? You’ve always been able to talk however you wanted with me. I’ve never stopped you from speaking your mind.”
I try to smile, but it feels unnatural given my current mental state. “I couldn’t speak my mind about everything, Matt. I couldn’t tell you about what happened when I was with Emily.”
Before we escaped the attacks on Matt’s father and the rest of the upper ranks of the Royal Syndicate, before I got married, way back when I first started dating women, I used to see him. Every time I had sex, the woman under me turned into Matt, and those visions haunted me until Matt confessed his love for me at his dad’s panic house.
