Page 33 of Matteo

His assurance should comfort me and should feel like a lifeline, but all I can think about is the cost of our love—a tally of blood and violence that never seems to end.

I let out the breath I’ve been holding, and my words rush out with it. “After tossin' the photos in the trash, I didn’t think twice. But shit, Matteo, at that point, I was carryin’ Niko and hadn't yet found the balls to tell you.” My shrug feels like a confession of my cowardice. “You know me, always chicken shit with the heavy talks.”

My hand floats between us, a bridge I'm too scared to cross. “Then, the day after your car pulls away from my place, there's a knock. Thought it'd be Angel or Spike 'cause who else has the guts to show up unannounced?”

I can still hear the ominous creak of the door and feel the chill as my safe space gets invaded by shadows. “But no, it’s three goons I’ve never seen, but their suits screamed Italian high-class thugs.”

They manhandled me into a chair, their grips bruising, marking me like cattle. And in those moments, my apartment—the one place that should've been sacred—turned into a goddamn slaughterhouse.

Tears carve tracks down my face, each one a testament to fear and betrayal. “These fucks, they did their dirty work. It left me shaken, stirred, not fucking stirred enough to miss the threat. 'Disappear, or you're next.' So, I ran like hell. For our kid. For me.”

The silence is a living thing that is suffocating and heavywith Matteo's stillness. He's a statue carved from ice and darkness, and I swear even his heart has stopped beating.

“I ain't gonna look up,” I whisper to myself, 'cause I don't need to see the void where his soul used to dance. Not again.

Instead, I nestle my head in his lap, my sobs a silent storm. Steadin' my breath, I brace for the hurricane I've just unleashed. He wanted me here—I'll be his fuckin' anchor.

Chapter Seventeen

Matteo Ricci

Eleanor's voice is a goddamn bullet in my head, ricocheting off the insides of my skull. "They did their dirty work…," she said, and those fucking words are like a mantra from hell. I'm spiraling, the rage boiling in my veins like molten lead, itching to tear this city apart brick by bloody brick.

But I'm stuck in the past, a whole decade lost, and those three bastards are ghosts, shadows I can't grasp in the here and now. It's a dead end, a fucking labyrinth with no way out. The haze wants to take over, wants me to let it swallow me whole until there's nothing left but the fury.

Then there's a touch, light as a feather, on my cheek. Soft sobbing cuts through the black mist, threatening to cloud my vision. Her touch vanishes, and I find myself staring into eyes the color of autumn leaves after rain—light gold, not yellow, filled with a sadness that wrenches at my gut.

I know what I'm supposed to do. My hands should reach for and comfort her, but they're like cinder blocks at my sides.Useless. Then her lips press against mine, tender, pulling me back from the brink. It's a fucking anchor in the storm, her kiss. And suddenly, my body remembers its purpose. Her touch sends signals firing through every nerve, banishing the numbness and filling me with something other than blind rage.

My arms lift, heavy but mine and I cradle her face between calloused hands, returning the kiss with everything that's been coiling tight inside me. She's the light in the dark, the calm in the chaos. My forever. All I gotta do is show her, make her feel it down to her bones.

"Eleanor," I mutter against her lips, the word more of a prayer than a curse because if anything can save me from myself, it's Eleanor. It always has been and always will be. No amount of time or distance could ever change that. With her, I can almost believe in redemption—if not for my sins, then at least for my sanity.

Eleanor's name slips from my lips like a sacred incantation, whispered into the quiet space between us. Her response is a hushed echo, a fragile thread binding me to reality. "Matteo."

"Ti amo," I rasp, words heavy with a longing that's festered deep in my blood for too damn long. The declaration crashes through the remnants of my rage, leaving only this raw need to claim her as mine.

My arms act on instinct, coiling around her waist, yanking her into my lap. She's the anchor in this storm, the force capable of pulling me back from the brink. Skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat, we're entangled in an unspoken promise of forever.

I seize the hem of my t-shirt that hangs on her like a shroud of my possession, wrenching it over her head. Bare before me, she's art in its purest form, a masterpiece scarred and beautiful. It's a sight that fucks with my control, making me desperate to feel her wrapped around me, to drown in her.

Impatience gnaws at me, urging my hands to tear away the last barriers. Boxers shoved down just enough to liberate my cock, standing rapt and ready. No more waiting. No more fucking games. Just Eleanor and I stripped down to our most primal selves.

"Christ, you're perfect," I grunt as I guide myself to her entrance, holding my length steady. She descends onto me, a slow burn of pleasure that sears through my veins. Her moan is a symphony in the dark, a sound that brands itself onto my soul. "Oh, Matteo..."

Time halts, breaths mingle, and hearts synchronize. We're motionless, two halves of a whole brought together by fate or fucking chance—it doesn't matter which. Her eyes lock with mine, and I see it all there—the chaos, the love, the relentless drive to belong to each other.

Then she moves. Goddamn, does she move. Eleanor rolls her hips, igniting a fire, licking every nerve ending. This isn't a quick fuck, a release of pent-up aggression. No, this is something else entirely. This is Eleanor claiming me just as much as I'm claiming her.

"Fuck Matteo, this is it!" Her voice fractures, raw with the crest of her climax. And it's enough to nearly undo me, to make me come undone at the seams, because this is what itmeans to be truly alive—to feel every goddamn thing with no holds barred.

In the underbelly of Australia's criminal world, where power and control are the currency we trade in, this—right here, right now—is the only thing I'll ever bow down to. Her, Eleanor, my beginning and my end.

Her grip on me is like a vice—tight and unyielding. Eleanor's climax wrings every last drop from me, and I swear there's nothing holier than this, right here in the dark where only sinners tread. "Prendilo tutto, piccola, ogni cosa che ho è tua, tutto ti appartiene," the words rumble from deep within my chest, half-growl, half-plea, as I pour myself into her.“Take it all, baby, everything I have, it all belongs to you.”

Pulse slowing, breath evening out, we're just two souls stripped bare, raw with each other. My arms snake around her, pulling her so damn close our sweat mingles. Her skin against mine is the only truth I know in the chaos of my world. No orders were barked, and she didn’t move to clean up. Tonight, I'm not the boss, not the don. I'm just a man holding onto his woman, anchored by the beat of her heart against my chest.

Eleanor's breaths deepen, steady and soft. She's out cold and peaceful in a way that makes me envy her ability to slip away so easily. I sit there, still inside her, feeling my own body betray me as it succumbs to the calm. But there's work to be done, plans to forge in the shadows.

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