Page 69 of The Cost of Corruption

And they were right. It was.

It was miserable and painful, but it was the only option.

“You should have listened to them and stayed away forever.”

I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. They spilled out over my eyelids and ran down my face.

“You have it all wrong,” Matteo said, reaching out over the back of the pew to wipe them off my cheeks. “All of them want you back. But they knew you wouldn’t be convinced it was the right thing until we’d solved the problem of your father.”

Oh God.

My heart clenched in my chest. “Please tell me you didn’t?—”

“No,” Matteo said, calming the worst of my fears before I could get the rest of the words out. “I won’t lie—I wanted to. But Liv convinced me that would only upset you more.”

She was right.

My father might’ve been a violent egomaniac, but he was still my father. Wishing him harm would have made me the same kind of monster.

“Then what did you do?” I asked.

“What I do best,” Matteo said. “I negotiated an agreement that was beneficial to both our families.”

I blinked. “What does that mean?”

“It means I secretly contacted your brothers and the other Costas and set up a meeting,” he explained. “We discussed how your father’s erratic behavior was threatening both our family’s security...as well as our finances.”

“And what did they say?” I asked.

“They agreed that a change in the hierarchy of the Costa family was long overdue,” he said. “So this morning, they packed your father’s bags, loaded him into a private plane to Sicily, and explained to him that if he didn’t want to meet my brother Dorian and his fine assortment of weapons in the middle of the night, he would stay there for the rest of his retirement.”

I could barely believe my ears. It all sounded so…sensible.

But there was one question I was still afraid to ask.

“And…and what about me?”

Matteo smiled. “Your family may be a bunch of wild animals, Chastity, but they love you. They don’t want you to be miserable. And they don’t care who you love, as long as you’re happy.”

I could barely believe it.

Now I was scared this was all a dream but for totally different reasons.

“So I can go home with you?” My voice was shaking so hard I could barely get the words out.

“I already told you,” Matteo said, his smile as gorgeous as ever. “I’m not leaving here without you.”

Chapter Nineteen

CHASTITY

MONTHS LATER

“Matteo, I have to get up.”

The gravity of my statement was only slightly undercut by my giggle filling the room a second later when Matteo wrapped his arms around my waist. I’d been trying to slip out from underneath our bed sheets for the last hour, but that plan wasn’t working out too well.

“No, you don’t.”

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