Grace wondered exactly what had happened during those “lost” years.
Matteo had placed his arm about Grace’s waist when he introduced her to the older Italian couple and included her in the warmth of their greeting. They had teased Matteo when he asked Papa Benito if he would prepare his famous lasagna dish for the two of them.
The Italian couple’s unrestrained pleasure in seeing Matteo again and preparing his favorite dish didn’t quite fit in with what Grace had read about the ruthless head of the London Mafia.
Shouldn’t people pale at the sight of him before handing over bundles of money to pay for their “protection”?
“You’ve watched too many old Mafia movies,” Matteo drawled as he watched the confused emotions flicker across her face.
She eyed him dubiously. “I have?”
He nodded “This is the twenty-first century. Everything is done online nowadays. Also, I’m really not what you think I am.”
“You’re not Matteo Zalotti, head of the London Mafia, responsible for—or incriminated in—dozens of unsolved murders throughout the city?” she corrected dryly, making sure to keep her voice low so that the other diners couldn’t hear their conversation. “That isn’t you?” she challenged.
Matteo wished he could deny it, but how could he do that when days ago, he had ordered the death and disposal of the body of the man responsible for having blackmailed him into compliance for nine years?
The same man who had also ordered those “dozens of unsolved murders throughout the city,” all in Matteo’s name.
But Matteo was thirty-six years old, not a child, and he had no intention of behaving like one by claiming “that was all his doing, not mine.”
Not too many people were even aware of the shift there had been in the hierarchy of the Zalotti organization nine years ago, or for how long that change had existed, and Matteo would prefer it remain that way. After all, he had still been visible as the head of the family, if in name only. Also, Matteo, given a choice, would have ordered some of those deaths too.
“It is me,” he finally allowed. “But that isn’t all I am. I’m not a monster, Grace. I was brought up by very loving parents until I was almost twenty-seven. I have a younger sister whom I absolutely adore and would do”—and had done—“ anything for.”
“The sister who is shortly getting married?”
“I have only one sister.” He smiled slightly. “My hope is that soon, Bella and Bryce will present me with nieces and nephews to spoil.”
Grace seemed lost in thought for several seconds. “What happened to change things almost ten years ago?”
Matteo’s nostrils flared. “You didn’t read about that when you looked me up online?”
Color highlighted her cheeks. “I couldn’t get over all the photographs of you and those dozens of women.”
His mouth twisted. “You really need to move past them.”
She eyed him derisively. “Most of them were tall and leggy blondes, and they looked so much alike, I can’t imagine how you even remembered which one was which.”
None of them had been in Matteo’s life long enough for him to need to differentiate. “I called them all babe,” he admitted reluctantly.
Grace winced. “That’s…pretty awful.”
“Yes.” He sighed his regret for the careless player he had been for so many years. Then, he’d been a much younger and reckless man than he was now or ever would be again. “Yes, it is,” he acknowledged self-disgustedly. “But I’m no longer that man, and there’s been no one in my life for years. I’m also well aware your name is Grace,” he added dryly.
“How reassuring!”
“Grace—”
“You really don’t have to keep repeating it to convince me,” she dismissed. “You were going to tell me what changed almost ten years ago?” she reminded.
He drew in a deep and controlling breath. “My grandfather was originally head of the Zalotti family, then my father took over thirty years ago. Ten years ago, I was forced to take over when my parents were both gunned down and killed in the street after leaving a restaurant— No, not this one,” he answered when Grace gave an alarmed glance at their surroundings. “I had that one razed to the ground and the ashes scattered,” he bit out harshly.
Grace couldn’t imagine having the power to destroy, just obliterate, a whole restaurant off the face of the earth because her parents had been killed as they were leaving it.
Not that she needed to imagine it, because her own parents had died after her father killed her mother before killing himself.
She gave a shake of her head. “Did you find who was responsible for ordering the shooting?”
A nerve pulsed in Matteo’s slightly clenched jaw, his eyes a cold blue. “Eventually, yes.”
“And is he now razed to the ground and his ashes scattered too?”
“Yes.”
Grace shivered at the hardness of his tone. “On your instruction.”
“Yes.” There was no apology in his voice only a statement of fact.
A fact Grace couldn’t accept as easily as he seemed to.
She placed her water glass carefully down on the table before it slipped out of her badly shaking hand. “This was a mistake—”
“Ecco qua!” Mama Benito placed two steaming bowls of delicious-smelling lasagna on the table in front of them. “Buon appetito!” She gave the two of them a beaming smile before turning her attention back to the other diners.
A heavy silence hung between Grace and Matteo after the Italian woman had left.
Grace, because she really couldn’t think what to say.
Matteo, because he seemed to be waiting to take his cue from whatever she decided to do next.
She finally drew in a ragged breath. “I’m just the manager of a bookstore. I don’t know you, nor do I want to be involved in or understand your world.” She gave a rueful smile. “I’m also not a tall and leggy blonde.”
“I don’t want a tall and leggy blonde. I want you.”
She looked at him searchingly for several tense seconds, noting the possessive glitter of his eyes as he gazed back
