Page 79 of The Lies We Tell

“Enough, you two,” Matteo said when Maeve scoffed. “I want to take a step back and make another pass at this. Remove Antonetti as the focus and use a broader net to search. See what we come up with.”

“Sienna’s working from home today, but I’ll pull her in to help me.”

The phone rang on Maeve’s desk, and she jogged across Matteo’s office to answer it, closing the door behind her and drowning out the sound of her voice.

“How’s everything look for pushing the Antonetti sale through?”

“Good. We’ve got everything we need lined up and ready to go. Sienna suggested a paper trail that extended all the way back to before you came home.”

“Makes sense.”

“What are you going to do with her when this is all said and done?” Luca asked after a beat.

Matteo rubbed his eyes with his fingers and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d been trying not to think about it. What he wanted to do was rewind his entire life and never agree to take her from her father’s house. Better yet, to never have met her in the first damn place.

If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t want to both rage at and hold her every time he walked past the closed door to her room and heard her call his name. He wouldn’t give a fuck what happened to her. But he had, and he did, and now he was stuck.

Because there was no good answer here. All roads ended with her gone. As much as he might love her, he didn’t trust her. And he had no idea how to come back from that. Letting her go was the only option.

“I don’t,” Matteo said honestly. “First I want to deal with her father. Then I’ll deal with her.”

“You should—”

“I’m not in the mood for your opinion on this, Luca.”

“If you’d listened to my opinion from the beginning, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Matteo’s lip curled back over his teeth. “I’m finished being lectured by you about this. You were right, brother. Is that what you want to hear? You were right, and I was wrong. Does that make you feel better?”

“That’s not what I—”

“Don’t bother. You and Dom both have been eager to take me down a peg since I arrived. I guess you finally got your moment. Enjoy it. There won’t be another one.” Matteo swiveled back to his computer. “You can go.”

Luca pushed to his feet at the same time Maeve poked her head back in. “Sorry for the interruption.”

“We’re finished,” Matteo replied with a pointed look at Luca. He waited until Luca stormed out and motioned Maeve forward with a wave of his fingers. “Who was on the phone?”

“Belgian police. They wanted to speak with you, but I wasn’t sure how you wanted to handle it, so I told them you were in a meeting.”

“I spoke with Schmidt again this morning.” Matteo tapped the end of his pen against the blotter on his desk. “He’s not hearing any whispers that they think I’m involved. No blowback on your family either.”

“Grandda’s people in Brussels don’t seem worried at all. I had a call from Callum yesterday and a text from Roarke. They’re in agreement. Of all the problems this caused, it doesn’t seem like the police will be one of them.”

A relief. One less thing he needed to worry about. “I’ll call the cops back when we’re done here. What about the Spanish?”

Maeve cast her eyes to the ceiling, and Matteo swallowed a chuckle. “Sienna spoke to them, so if you want nuance, you should ask her, but they seemed stuck somewhere between not giving a shit because they’d already been paid and wanting to remind us they can choose to take their business elsewhere if their product isn’t safe with us.”

“Dramatic as always.”

Maeve snorted her agreement. “Need some more time, or should I place a call to the Belgian police?”

Straightening, Matteo adjusted the cuffs of his shirt. “Might as well get it over with.”

Maeve nodded, closing the door behind her again, and within a few minutes, her voice came over the intercom to announce she had the officer on line two.

Taking a deep breath, he pressed the button to connect the call and put it on speaker. “This is Matteo Bianchi.”

“Mr. Bianchi.” A deep, gravelly voice filled the room. “My name is Oscar Mertens. I’m an officer with the General Directorate of the Judicial Police in Belgium. Do you have a minute to speak to me about the accident at your airport?”

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