Page 195 of Matteo

A long silence settles between us.

“You were cautioned?” he asks carefully.

“Yes, but no conviction or criminal record. Vlad served roughly a year.”

He frowns.

“You had no degree. No corporate background. No traditional qualifications. Yet somehow my father hired you anyway.”

I stare at him. “What are you saying?”

His jaw tightens. “I'm saying there may not have been a criminal record to find. But Paul Knight doesn't need a criminal record.”

A chill runs through me. “He had people investigate me?”

“I don't know.” But he sounds like he does. “I think he found something.”

“Why wouldn't he tell you?” I ask.

“Because that's not how he operates.”

The answer comes too quickly; as if he's thought about this before.

“He gathers information. He keeps it. Then he uses it when it benefits him.”

I stare at the floor, then look up at Matteo, still none the wiser. “You think he knew?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“But why would he hire me if he knew?”

“Because you were exactly the person he needed.”

I don't like the way he says it. Not one bit. And because I don’t know what to say next, I sit there, watching him, waiting for him to say more. But really, what I want to do is wipe away the sad expression on his face. I want Matteo to smile again. I want us to be … The stray thought stops me in my tracks. It’s going to be a while before I will get over this man.

“My greatest fear in life,” he says, finally, “was becoming my father.” There’s a faraway look in his eyes. He holds a pen in his hands, twisting it open then closing it.

I know it hit him hard, what I said to him earlier. “I didn’t mean that,” I say, quickly. “I just wanted to hurt you.”

“No. It’s true,” he insists, still playing around with the pen.

“It’s not true, Matteo. I didn’t mean what I said.”

He sets the pen down, looks at me so intently, I forget to breathe.

“It’s true. I realize now that I did exactly what he does. I looked at a situation, decided what made sense to me, and acted on it without caring who it hurt. I became him.”

“You did not.” He’s punishing himself, and I hate that I’ve had a hand in making him think this way.

He looks at me. “Didn’t I?” Then his voice drops. “I can’t bear it when the people closest to me, the people I love and—” He stops abruptly, like he’s said too much. “When the people I love and trust,” he continues, as fireworks explode inside my heart, “do something to shatter that trust. I can't deal with it, because that’s what my father did to my mother, and I never want that to happen to me.”

I finally understand where he’s coming from, and my heart fills with so much love for him in this moment.

Love.

For this man. We've never said those words to one another, but I feel that for him. And he's just told me, indirectly, that he feels it for me.

“I don’t get close to people, not quickly,” he says, playing with the pen again. “I take my time in getting to know them, but with you, it happened so fast. I felt we clicked. We were similar in so many ways. It’s almost like … like we were destined to meet.”