Page 12 of Mafia Don's Secret Baby

Matteo chuckled, and it rumbled deep in his chest as he took a step forward. He pressed into me, leaving no room for escape. I should have been scared. Having such a powerful Don in front of me, trapping me, should have terrified me. Instead, a spark of exhilaration ran through me. Excitement. My traitorous body wanted to be close to him, even if logic told me to back away.

I knew that Matteo had never been a threat to me. My body knew it, too.

“Silas wanted you to be safe. He didn’t want you getting yourself deeper into the life of crime, and he knew I would lead you toward that.”

“You still will.”

He lowered his head, his breath fanning my face. “You’re already here, are you not?”

Not for long. Not beyond my quest for vengeance.

But I couldn’t say that. Not with him so close.

I had liked him as a child. I’d had a crush on him for years the way all girls had a crush on their brother’s friends. It had been meaningless and inexplicable. It had been a crush that was never meant to evolve into something more. As a teenager, I felt something new and foreign. Something powerful and passionate. But as an adult?

The lust was all-consuming. The reasons for staying away grew murkier the closer he stood. With him in my face, I could hardly remember the reasons I’d been pushing him away.

“I can’t be tied to this place,” I whispered, but my words didn’t sound convincing, even to me.

His hand came to my face, and a knuckle lightly trailed down my cheek and the side of my neck. My body wanted this. Who was I to argue with my physical reaction to him? Did it really matter anyway?

“I was waiting for you to come home for years,” he growled. “I never stopped waiting for you.”

The words were my undoing. I wasn’t sure if he closed the distance between us or if I did, but our lips met in a frenzy of lust and longing. Years of pent-up need coursed through my body. I felt like a ball of liquid flame standing before him. My arms tangled around his neck, fists grasping at his hair.

Matteo lifted me by my thighs, and I wrapped my legs around him as I sat on the crate at my back.

God, I’d yearned for this. I’d craved this.

For years I had tried pushing aside thoughts of him, but I couldn’t ever expel him entirely from my mind. Not when my night with him had been the most memorable night of my life. There was no forgetting the way he had made me feel.

“Fuck, Lili,” he growled against my lips.

I shuddered at the sound of my nickname on his lips.

I wouldn’t be able to stop this. I knew that as well as I knew my name. Logic had nothing to do with it.

The trill of a ringing phone cut through the moment like a bucket of water being poured over me, and I jerked away, gasping for breath. My fingers trembled as they pressed into his chest, creating a breath of distance between us.

He didn’t back away. Not entirely. He pulled his phone from his pocket, his nearly black eyes holding mine. I saw the promise there: we weren’t done. Not even close.

“What?” he said into the phone. His eyes hardened as he took a step back, his mood shifting and gaze moving from mine.

I sagged in place with a deep exhale as he ended the call and began pulling weapons from the wall quickly, tucking them into his clothes in every possible place.

“One of my warehouses is being attacked, and I don’t have enough men in the area today. I have to go.”

Chapter Five

Matteo Costello

I pulled the car onto the street outside the warehouse. The sound of gunfire exploding inside was enough of an indication that we were under attack.

This wasn’t a Genovese warehouse.

This had nothing to do with Silas or Alessio, so Lilianna had stayed at the casino. I’d left four guards to keep an eye on her, but my casino was one of the safest places in the city with all the cameras, guards, and security.

I didn’t have to worry about her there.

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