The hot tears began to fall immediately after she had climbed into the back of the cab she managed to flag down and given the driver her address.
Chapter Six
“You’ve seemed…preoccupied these past couple of days?” Bryce Steele, Matteo’s future brother-in-law, drawled as the two men sat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen of Bryce’s penthouse apartment drinking single malt whisky. They were already halfway down the bottle—or, at least, Matteo was. “I’m not sure if it’s because you’re trying to think of how to off me and hide the body where no one can find it, or if it’s something completely unrelated to the fact I’m marrying your sister in two days’ time.”
Matteo glanced bleakly at the other man. “If you were trying to be funny, I assure you talking about me offing you wasn’t the way to go about it.” It was three days since Grace had walked out of the restaurant after firmly stating she didn’t want to see him again.
They had been three bloody awful days as far as Matteo was concerned. Saturday and Sunday had dragged by, hour after hour, minute after minute, despite his having broken up the monotony by agreeing to have Sunday lunch yesterday with Bella and Bryce and the rest of the Steele family. He had spent the whole time feeling alone and lonely in the middle of a crowd.
Today had been busy with work, but still Matteo had counted the hours in minutes and then seconds, until he couldn’t stand his own company a moment longer and had decided to visit Bella and Bryce at their apartment this evening. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that his sister and the other Steele wives and partners were out this evening on Bella’s hen night, which meant only Bryce was home.
The other man studied him closely. “You’ve met someone. I know the look, buddy,” he derided before Matteo could protest. “I fought my attraction to your sister for several weeks until I couldn’t fight it, or her, any longer.”
“Why did you fight it?” Matteo prompted curiously.
The other man shrugged muscled shoulders shown to advantage in a body-hugging black T-shirt. “I didn’t think I was right for her. She was a cop, and my years in the army weren’t exactly without their share of horror and bloodshed, some of it way under the radar. Some of the work I now do for Steele Protectors is…questionable.” He chuckled. “Of course, at the time, I didn’t realize she was the sister of a Mafia don.”
Matteo grimaced. “How did you feel about that once you did know?”
Bryce shrugged. “I only knew of you by reputation.”
He winced. “Which wasn’t good.”
“I prefer to decide for myself if I like a person. I like you, and I’ve been hearing nothing but good things about you from Nikolai the past few days. Everyone seems pleased with the direction the Zalotti organization and the Markovic bratva are now going.”
Matteo enjoyed the burn as he threw more whisky to the back of his throat and swallowed it down before answering the other man. “And what if all you knew or had read of me was the years previous to that. The women. The wild parties. Followed by nine years of seemingly ruthless despotism as head of the Zalotti family.”
“That last bit wasn’t you.”
Matteo rose restlessly to his feet. “But the women and wild parties previous to that was definitely all me.”
Bryce shrugged. “We’re all a little wild in our early to midtwenties.”
Matteo gave a humorless laugh. “Grace is in her twenties, and I don’t think she knows what wild is.” She had taken great pains to point that out to him.
“Her name’s Grace?”
Too late, Matteo realized he had given a name to his emotional torment. “My life, who I am, is completely alien to her. She lives alone with her fucking cat, for God’s sake.”
“Bella wants a cat,” Bryce mused. “She says she misses that monster cat, Max, who lived in the house next door to her.”
“Grace’s cat is named Mr. Darcy. Yeah, I know,” he sighed when he saw Bryce bite his top lip to stop himself from smiling. “She’s obviously a romantic, and I’m… Well, what she named her cat emphasizes how totally unsuited we are for each other.”
“But.”
“But I want to be with her again, ache for it, as much as I need to breathe air to fucking live!” Matteo ran an agitated hand through his hair.
“If she feels the same way…”
“She walked out on me in the middle of our first date on Friday evening.” Ordinarily, Matteo wouldn’t spill his guts to Bryce like this. He’d only known the other man a couple of weeks. But he needed to talk to someone, or he was going to go not so quietly out of his mind.
“Why?” Bryce pressed again.
He grimaced. “I…couldn’t keep my hands to myself.”
“In what way?”
“In every way,” he groaned.
The other man raised one eyebrow. “You mean…?”
“Yes.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes,” Matteo confirmed through gritted teeth.
“On a first date in the middle of a public restaurant?”
“It was more of a booth off to the side— Yes,” he grated as Bryce continued to look at him, his brows raised.
“You have some balls,” the other man admired.
“Painfully aching ones.”
Bryce sobered. “You also need to apologize.”
“I did. She still walked out.”
“Apologize a second time.”
“She said she didn’t want to see me again.”
“Bella’s probably said that to me a time or two in the past too, but we’re still getting married in two days’ time,” Bryce mused. “Which,” he sobered, “behooves me to mention the agreement I know you have with Leon Brunelli and which will no doubt become fact once he arrives on Friday. Bella doesn’t know anything about that, by the way, and I would rather it remain that way. At least until after we’ve escaped on our honeymoon.” He grimaced. “She would kick your arse and refuse to go anywhere if she knew you were sacrificing your future for the family. Again. After the things
