Page 37 of The Mobster's Nanny

“I just—” I finally force out of myself, barely breathing. “You scared me, and I wanted to—”

“Don’t lie to me!” Matteo raises his voice all of a sudden, squeezing my wrists so tight I wince. “Stop acting innocent. Where did you get that dagger?”

A part of me wants to keep playing—but for some reason, the anger in his loud voice stirs something inside of me. I’m tired of lying, I’m tired of pretending! I want to look into his eyes and tell him the truth, so I snap, “You know where I got it! The Escarras gave it to me.”

My sudden outburst makes Matteo go still for a moment, and I feel a twisted kind of satisfaction when I see the surprise in his eyes. But it quickly shifts into anger. He pushes me against the bed with additional strength, gritting through his teeth, “Did you spy on me?”

I look into his eyes, hold a pause to enjoy the moment of truth, and smirk. “Yes.”

"Did you send them after us this Tuesday?"

"Yes."

“Why?” Matteo clenches his jaw, pushing my wrists into the mattress. “Louis almost got killed because of you!”

“Do you expect me to care?” I chuckle, refusing to let my true feelings out of my heart. Now is not the time to care about anything. The game is over. “You’re luckyyouare still alive.”

He opens his mouth to say something but changes his mind, and for a moment I catch a glint of hurt in his eyes, but it disappears in an instant. Matteo raises a wall of indifference, the same one I hold against him, and it feels wrong. I want to be open with him—but I guess it’s too late for that.

“God, I feel like you’re just a copy of the woman I loved,” he finally says, studying my face as if he’s seeing it for the first time. “Who are you?”

It hurts. Shit. It goes straight into my heart and squeezes it tightly, but I take a deep breath to steady myself and look away with a bitter chuckle. “Exactly, you know nothing about me. You don’t even recognize me—but I remember you, oh, I remember you so well.”

“What are you talking about?” Matteo frowns and sits back on my thighs, loosening his grip on my wrists, but I have no desire to use them. I’m not gonna win against him, not now, so I just look him in the eyes, not hiding my contempt anymore.

“I’m talking about the day ten years ago when one of your pawns showed up for a meeting with his little sister. His name was Hank. Do you remember someone like this?”

Matteo’s frown goes deeper, but I see confusion in his eyes. He doesn’t recognize the name. Of course, just another dead body on his count never mattered to him.

“Hank was the only person I had when I was a child, he was the only one who actually cared about me—but what did it matter to you, right?” I can’t help the seething note of venom in my voice as I raise my head over the pillows, instinctively trying to get closer to Matteo and make him hear it better. “You didn’t think about that when you brought him into your goddamn family and then shot him with his hands tied behind his back and dropped him at the side of the road like a fucking bag of meat.”

Matteo says nothing for a moment while I try to catch my breath, biting back the tears rising to my eyes. This goddamn bastard. How could I spare his life when he treated Hank like nothing? God, I thought saying it out loud would make it better, but my heart hurts even more now.

“So you think I did it,” Matteo finally says in a half-questioning tone, and I huff and drop back down on the pillows.

“What, are you gonna act innocent now? Iknowyou did it, the Mexicans told me. You forgot about him, like all your other victims, but I didn’t. For years, I was waiting for a chance to get to you—and it turned out to be so easy.”

Matteo quirks an eyebrow, unbothered by my teasing. “Is that why you got involved with the Escarras?”

“Yes.” I shrug as if it’s not a big deal. As if it didn’t take me almost four months to find a way to meet Giovanni in person. “They helped me get closer to you, and in exchange I provided them with all the information I gathered while staying at your home.”

Damn, it sounds harsh even to my own ears, but I want to get the truth out of my mind before it chokes me again. It seems to impress Matteo as well because, for a long minute, he doesn’t say anything, staring at the blanket by my side with unseeing eyes. What’s going on in his mind? In his heart?

The thought makes something in my own chest nag even harder, because no matter how much I want to stay cold and indifferent, I do care about him. Despite everything I just told him, my heart still belongs to him—and it looks like he’s thinking about the same thing.

“Why didn’t you kill me, then?” Matteo looks up at me, catching my gaze with an unreadable look in his eyes and tightening his hold on my wrists. “You had a chance to get your revenge—why didn’t you?”

I chuckle quietly and look away, feeling my heart pick up its pace under his intense gaze. Doesn’t he know?

“Because I couldn’t do it to Romeo…or to myself,” I mutter, avoiding his gaze, too scared to see something that will make the ache in my heart even stronger. “You are the only person who has ever treated me right and really cared about me. I fell in love with you like an idiot, and I—I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Matteo chuckles, the sound low and bitter. “You fell in love with me—yet you chose to carry this dagger around.”

I close my eyes as his words dig deeper into my heart. I know,I know!God, I messed up so many times I’ve lost count by now, and I still don’t know what’s the right thing to do. I can’t forgive him for my brother's death—but I can’t make him pay for it either.

Matteo doesn’t say anything for a long moment and only releases my wrists and pushes himself off and away from me, getting off the bed. I guess he knows now that I’m no danger to him. Even if I had the dagger in my hands right now, I wouldn’t have enough willingness in me to use it.

I’m sorry, Hank, but your little sister is too weak to let your soul rest in peace.

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