Page 11 of Matteo
Francesca answered for her when she remained silent. “You should have seen how brave she was, Mom. She kicked ass.”
“Not really,” she croaked. “Matteo saved the day.”
Grace looked stricken while I turned my attention to the police officer. “The children will be leaving now.”
“Not so fast, sir.”
“The shooter is dead,” Matteo stated calmly.
“You should be thanking my son.” Matteo pulled away from the mess of limbs and joined me. “Let’s go, kids.” I turned to the older officer and stated, “We’ll be on our way.”
He wasn’t as easily manipulated as the younger ones. Although, judging by the way his body stiffened, he’d just realized who I was. My reputation sometimes preceded me.
“Sir, we need your son and his accomplice to make a statement,” he reasoned, glancing warily at Nikola’s tall, bulky frame. He was right to be worried. The boy was capable of serious damage. “Your daughter and her friend may go, but we will need a statement from them in the near future.”
I shared a look with my wife and she nodded. “I’ll take them home.”
“Call Bianca, tesoro,” I advised. She was bound to hear about today’s events sooner or later, and then Nico Morrelli would probably set the entire school on fire. Pressing a kiss on top of my daughter’s red curls, I murmured, “I’ll give Morrelli a call as soon as I’m done with this shitshow.”
She knew what that meant.
Francesca wouldn’t be coming back to Yale, and knowing Nico, neither would his daughter.
CHAPTER SIX
ARIANNA
“Mom, I promise I’m okay.”
My voice was muffled against her chest as she squeezed me for the millionth time. Dad wasn’t much better, hugging both of us and muttering some stuff in Italian I didn’t even attempt to catch. Francesca wasn’t faring well either. Mrs. Vitale was smothering her between exasperated looks exchanged with my mother.
It was my last year working on my master’s in astrophysics, and I’d decided it was time to branch out. D’Arc was great, but it was built around influential mafia families from all over the world who knew our parents in some way. The subtle feeling of suffocation, of always being watched and monitored as a mafia princess, was hard to escape there.
But at Yale, I was a nobody.
It turned out it wasn’t the smartest move on my part. In hindsight, I should have stuck to online Yale classes at the D’Arc campus.
“Mom—” I tried again, but she wasn’t letting go.
My twin brothers were snickering and rolling their eyes, all their attention on their phones. Probably planning worlddomination with the rest of their heathen friends. It was an unspoken but known thing with all of them. They believed the menace of their ancestors lived rent-free in their DNA.
After what had happened today, I was starting to see there might be something to it after all.
We were all clustered in the Vitales’ sprawling family room. Francesca and her mother sat on the lounge chair by the grand piano that looked out onto the luxurious terrace. I sat on the couch opposite them, smooshed between my parents, feeling like a ten-year-old.
“I’m unharmed,” Francesca protested when her mom began examining her face and hands as if she would find a scratch if only she checked her over one more time. “Thanks to Arianna, who threw herself in front of me like a martyr.” She gave me a pointed look that I took to meanSave me again, I beg of you.
Mom let out a whimper, her face paling. Dad’s expression darkened, his hand balling into a fist. I was certain we were all thinking the same thing—how I failed my sister Gianna once upon a time. How I hadn’t been so brave then and she endured days of terror alone.
My gaze flitted to where she was seated. My beautiful sister, a mirror image of our mom, never complained, keeping her unfailingly positive attitude. But how could she not hold it against me? I was the reason for that scar on her neck…
“I’m sorry. I fucked up again,” I murmured, wishing I could turn back time. If only it’d been me who’d gotten hurt, not Gianna. “If I had?—”
“It’s time you stop apologizing for things you had no control over,” Dad scolded, his voice achingly gentle. Sometimes I wished he’d yell at me. Hit me. Put the blame where it belonged. But he never did.
“It’s all over,” Mom murmured, kissing his cheek, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether she was talking about today’s shooting or the one from five years ago.
It started so innocently, a few weeks after our twentieth birthday.
