Page 106 of Phantom Mine

His gaze is searing on me. “You already have it anyway.” He continues before I can question what he means by that. “You’re not asking me to do something I’m not already doing,” he explains, “Because I’ve spent the past ten years planning to overthrow my family to take over theFamiglia.”

I suck in a shocked breath, but Matteo keeps going.

“Unlike my brother, I was never handed a leadership position in theFamiglia. I had to earn everything, starting at the bottom and slowly rising up the ranks to the position I’m in now. Over the past year, I’ve sabotaged my family at every turn, I’ve turned loyalists of theirs into supporters of mine, and I’ve created allegiances to strengthen my position. Taking Rocco’s throne is my revenge for everything he’s done, Leni, but beingDonis what I want most in the world. I was born to do this, even if my father never believed it.” His eyes soften and he cups my cheek. “Rocco was always going to die,cara. Maybe not today, but soon. He brought about his own execution by touching you tonight, so don’t spend another second worrying about my feelings as it relates to my family. Their reckoning has been a long time coming.”

Matteo basically just took a knife to his chest, cut out his heart and placed it in my hands for me to do with as I wish. That’s the power he’s just given me and I’m not sure what I’ve ever done to earn this level of trust from him.

“Why did you tell me?” I ask, stunned. “You might have just gambled your life away.”

“I told you I would work to earn your trust,cara. This is me doing that.”

My stomach clenches in response to his heated words.

My head is spinning from the information he just gave me, but concern for him trumps everything else. “Hold on. Won’t you be the number one suspect once Rocco’s body is found?”

He looks at his brother’s corpse. “Whoever has been killing my cousins is unknowingly playing right into my hand. Rocco’s murder will just be attributed to them and I’ll avoid suspicion. Whatever their reason may be, they’re clearing the way for me without realizing it.”

I choke down the lump in my throat, hoping that Matteo doesn’t notice my reaction. He can never find out that Thiago is the one behind those murders.

“TheFamigliais in such dire straits that we’re on the brink of civil war. I know I can save us, but I can’t do it alone. That’s why...” Matteo pauses. For the first time since he started speaking, he seems unsure. He swallows thickly and his eyes find mine one more, harder and more distant now. “That’s why I need to marry into Marina’s family.”

Marina.

She has a name. It’s pretty, probably as pretty as she is.

I hate it, just like I hate her.

He just told me he’s planning a coup—information that would be priceless if I were to take it to my brother—and all I can focus on is the name of his fiancée.

He’ll hate me when he finds out who I am, who my brother is, and the extent to which I’ve been lying to him since we met for the second time, so her name shouldn’t matter.

But it does.

“The Marchesanis run the second most powerful branch in the Mafia after mine and if we unite, then no one will be ableto oppose us.” He shakes his head slowly. “I can’t become Don without that alliance.”

This time my heart clenches for an altogether different reason, something like disappointment. I understand now why he warned me not to fall in love with him. His fate and a revenge ten years in the making both rest on his engagement.

For a naive, foolish second, I allow myself to believe I hear a hollow undertone in his voice. Something that tells me if he could choose, it would be different.

But it’s just my imagination and his words serve as a sorely needed reminder that I need to come back to reality.

We’re on borrowed time, him and I.

No use pretending otherwise.

“I understand,” I finally say.

“You understand,” Matteo echoes stiffly. His eyes are heavy and demanding as they trace over my face, asking things of me which they shouldn’t, which theycan’t.

I look anywhere but at him. “I do.”

Silence.

He huffs out a humorless laugh and jams his hands into his pockets. When I glance up at him, his eyes are dark and volatile on me.

He stares at me like he wants me to say something else.

It’s not like he gave me a choice.

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