Searching for her for the past few hours had been a living nightmare, especially as he had been unsure if he would find her in time. The men guarding Leon’s hotel suite had proven stubbornly hard to break, but one of them had eventually succumbed to Stefano’s relentless persuasion and revealed the warehouse near the docks as the place where Leon was keeping Grace.
Immobilizing the guards outside the warehouse without alerting anyone inside the building had taken several more precious minutes. Matteo’s relief had been palpable once he entered the building and knew the hooded figure seated on the chair being questioned by Leon had to be Grace.
He wanted to rip that hood from her head and kiss and hold her. At the same time, he knew Leon meant his threat—if Grace could identify the older man, Leon would exact retribution.
“What the hell—!” Leon rasped as there was a kerfuffle over by the doorway.
Matteo glanced across the warehouse to see an angry-faced Carla pulling out of her uncle’s grasp before she strode forcefully toward them.
“Who the hell is this?” Leon demanded incredulously.
Carla glared at she passed him. “My name is Carla Andretti. I suggest you remember it, because if you’ve hurt one hair on Grace’s head, I will personally make you very sorry.”
“What the hell, Matteo?” Leon appeared dumbstruck.
“She’s Grace’s friend, and the two of them work together.”
“I’m also Italian, which means I have a hell of a temper when roused,” Carla warned. “Dear God, why hasn’t one of you taken the damned bag off Grace’s head yet?” She glared at the two men before pulling off the hood.
Grace blinked several times in the brightness of the overhead lights, very aware of the silence of the two men as she allowed Carla to hold her and murmur reassuring words of comfort.
An expectant silence.
One she knew only she could fill.
“I’m fine, Matteo,” she reassured him once Carla had released her. “Mr. Brunelli’s men weren’t too rough, and although it might not seem like it, he hasn’t behaved badly toward me either.”
Grace didn’t consider a few threats as behaving badly.
“Grace, how do you—”
“Know who he is?” she asked Matteo lightly before turning to the gray-haired and wide-eyed American. “Hi, Uncle Leon. Long time no see.” She gave him a wave with her fingers.
Chapter Sixteen
“I still can’t believe it,” Leon murmured incredulously as he stared at Grace calmly reclining in an armchair in the sitting room of his hotel suite drinking a cup of tea from the pot Leon had ordered be brought up to them.
Matteo couldn’t believe it either. Grace was Leon’s niece, Gracia Brunelli. A niece who had apparently disappeared five years ago following the death of her parents, Leon’s brother, Giovanni, and his Spanish wife, Constanza. The exact amount of time Grace had been living in England under the assumed name of Grace Morrissey.
Matteo had been too dazed to protest when Leon had decided the three of them were going to his hotel so he could order refreshment for Grace and they could all be more comfortable while they talked.
Carla had looked ready to argue that decision too until Grace assured the other woman she would be fine and that her Uncle Leon would never hurt her.
Leonardo Brunelli was Grace’s Uncle-fucking-Leon.
Matteo felt incredulous every time he thought about it.
And Grace hadn’t so much as looked at Matteo since greeting the older man by his familial title.
Matteo wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was Grace still angry with him for what had happened over the weekend? Or was she angry with him because Carla had told her Matteo was expected to marry her cousin, Natalia?
A marriage, Matteo had already told the older man, was never going to take place.
Surely Grace had heard him tell Leon that?
If she had, it didn’t seem to have made it any easier for her to look at him.
“You’re very quiet, Matteo,” Leon mused.
He narrowed his eyes at the older man. “I’m still in shock regarding Grace’s identity as your niece.”
“Me too.” Leon smiled warmly at her. “I thought I had lost you forever, cara, when you disappeared so completely after Gio and Constanza’s death.”
“You mean after my drunk of a father shot my mother and then himself when she told him she couldn’t stand his possessive bullshit another minute and she was leaving him?” she scorned. “Is it any wonder I took the opportunity to escape that life by coming to England and assuming a new identity?”
Matteo’s shock had turned to horror. His own parents’ unexpected deaths had been a tragic blow for both himself and Bella, but at least they’d had each other and could also draw comfort from the fact that their mother and father had loved each other unconditionally. Giovanni Brunelli sounded as if he had thought of Grace’s mother only as a way of furthering his standing in the Mafia rather than loved her.
“My brother was an excitable and very jealous man,” Leon conceded.
“He was a drunken arsehole, and you know my mother never did anything to cause that jealousy!” Grace defended. “Yet time and time again, he would drink too much and then accuse her of flirting with his men or the ones that visited the castello on business.”
“Constanza was a very beautiful woman.”
“She was, and it might have been an arranged marriage organized by her father and yours, but my mother was still faithful to my father!” Grace stood up to pace the room, all semblance of calm now gone.
Leon nodded. “She was.”
“She was also warm and kind.”
“Yes.”
“He used to beat her for those imagined affairs,” Grace stated flatly.
“Did he beat you too?” Matteo felt
