Page 13 of Twisted Knight

Matteo shrugged with a little teasing smile. “I heard she is absolutely stunning. Maybe I should ask her out for dinner.”

My stomach dipped down. I felt a burning jealousy even if I had no right or reason to.

Luca shook his head to the side. “Absolutely not.”

Matteo leaned back on his seat, arching an eyebrow. “Oh, I see you want that one too? Aren’t you greedy? Is your wife happy to share you?”

Luca snorted. “Of course not! I’m monogamous and Cassie is all I need. But India’s family and I would not even unleash you on my worst enemy, so on my family?” He winced. “Nope.”

I wanted to kiss Luca right there, again I was not sure why. I wanted to protect India, for Cassie’s sake, but I knew I had no right to do it. Luca did though. As the head of the family, he could stick a ‘No Touching’ sign on her without any speculation.

Matteo laughed. “Fair enough, Montanari. If only you knew the irony of your statement.”

I frowned. Matteo seemed to give up way too easily—almost as if he never had any intention to ask India out. That was the most annoying thing about Matteo Genovese… Well, at leastoneof the most annoying things—the man wasalwaysplaying games, always testing, always assessing. You were never sure about what came out of his mouth.

Luca sported a matching frown. “What do you mean?”

Matteo waved his hand dismissively, blowing his smoke toward me. “I’m just messing with you.”

“Aren’t you always?” I grumbled.

His calm icy-blue eyes turned to me. “Of course I am; that’s half the fun,” he replied with a teasing smile.

“Why did you want to see us before the meeting?” Luca asked. I guessed he didn’t have time for Matteo’s antics today—good on him.

“It’s about our little issue,” he announced, crushing his cigarette in the ashtray.

‘Little issue.’ That was a way to put it. A traitor was in our ranks, someone smart enough to play Benny and Savio as a puppeteer and get away with it. That was not a little issue; that was a nuclear bomb, and I wouldn’t want to be him once Matteo got his hands on him. Matteo had kept a man alive for five days, torturing him just enough for him to stay alive and suffer before putting an end to him. He looked like calm personified, but he was the most sadistic and demented of us all. A man without a heart, without a conscience, only living by the rules of thefamiglia, ready to sacrifice everyone and everything to obtain what he wanted.

“I’ve got a few leads. Alexei said we should go to Verdi tonight. There's a couple of men we can collect from the side alley when we’re ready. We will have a little chat.”

‘A little chat’ for Matteo meant nothing less than a heavy torture session in this building’s basement which will end with the guys spilling it all and dying quickly or the guys saying nothing and dying slowly.

Actually, thinking about it, every ‘little’ thing coming out of Matteo’s mouth was an atrocity in the making.

Luca shook his head. “I told you before, I'm not spending a night away from my wife, especially so far along her pregnancy. That’s not negotiable.”

“But you have that,” Matteo waved his hand dismissively, “doctor or whatever living there.”

Luca sighed. “She’s a psychologist, hardly a doctor, and she could be an obstetric surgeon for all I care. I’m not spending a night away from my wife.”

“Young love,” Matteo sneered mockingly.

“Something you clearly can’t understand,” I couldn’t help but remind him.

Matteo turned toward me, his eyes full of amusement. “And you can? Actually, maybe the live-in psychologist will give you intensive therapy. We all know you need it.”

That reminded me of the note I received, something I really needed to discuss with him.

“Basta,” Luca growled, always so defensive of me and our little circle. “Let's start that council meeting now. We didn’t come to chitchat.”

“Awww, now you’re hurting my feelings, Gianluca.” He rested his hand on his chest with a pretend pout. “Here I was, sitting, thinking what a delight it was to spend time with the two of you…”

I leaned back on my chair “What would Italians be doing at Verdi? It’s Russian territory. It would be stirring up shit. That would be like tattooing yourself as a traitor.”

Matteo shook his head. “None of us are that stupid.”

“I’m not coming,” Luca insisted more forcefully.

---