“Why?” I ask, suspicious suddenly.
“Well you’re about to eat my home cooked food aren’t you?” Matt grins.
I take my glass and the bottle and choose a seat that gives me a view of the city. Dusk is starting to fall and lights are coming on. “This really is a spectacular view. How do you get anything done here?” I ask over my shoulder.
Matt comes towards the table with his glass. He tops it off and places it down opposite me. “My home office is on the other side of the apartment,” he says. “When I first moved in here, I had this idea in my head of sitting right where you are now on my laptop. But of course it didn’t happen. I was far too nosey.”
He heads back to the kitchen and returns with two plates. He puts one down in front of me and takes his seat. “Bone apple tea.” He grins.
I crack a smile and shake my head. The meal looks wonderful. Chicken, mushrooms and spring onions mixed in a spicy smelling sauce with pasta. I take a forkful and chew it. “It’s delicious.”
Matt’s smile tells me he knew this for a fact. He might have joked about his cooking, but he really does know his way around a kitchen.
I watch him subtly as he takes a forkful of his meal. He’s still Matt. Still the man I was rapidly falling in love with. Isn’t he? The money, the power, the wealthy family. It’s a lot to get my head around, and even without trying to get to the bottom of Matt’s lies, I’m feeling kind of overwhelmed by it all, like I’ve stepped into someone else’s life.
I decide it’s time to get to the bottom of everything. And then at least I can walk away knowing the truth. Or not. Who knows? I sure as hell don’t anymore. “So, the restaurant… what made you do the whole undercover thing?”
“I told you. I’m a spy,” Matt smiles. His face turns serious when he sees I’m not joking around anymore. “Where do I start?”
“The beginning.” I might not like what I’m about to hear, but at least I know it will be true.
He nods and as he starts to speak, he gets this faraway look on his face, an expression that tells me he’s genuinely remembering something rather than feeding me another pack of lies, “I’ve always been drawn to the restaurant side of the business for obvious reasons,” Matt says. “But like I said earlier, Seb is the numbers guy, so it was actually him who spotted an anomaly in the books for La Trattoria. He came to me and told me he suspected something strange was going on with the finances. He brought in a professional auditor who confirmed that something was amiss. But at that point, we had no real proof there was anything but an incompetent manager in place. We had grounds to fire him, but we discussed it, and we decided we needed more information. For starters, we needed to know if anyone else within the restaurant was in on the scheme if indeed there was a scheme. Seb suggested sending someone in to pose as a waiter and I said I would do it. My father wasn’t overly happy about that idea, but I stood my ground. That restaurant is my baby, and I felt like I needed to handle it personally.”
“So you told Marco you had been a manager of another branch?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. He was just told I was transferring from another branch. The manager thing was just a rumor, but I let it go, because Marco seemed more open to talking to me about the goings on of the business when he thought I had been a manager. The plan was to catch Marco red handed and have him prosecuted, and as I said, work out if anyone else was in on his little money laundering scheme. It would have worked too, but then I met you and the whole thing went to shit,” he says with a smile.
I raise an eyebrow. “You thought I was involved?”
Matt shakes his head, laughing. “No. That’s not what I meant at all. It went to shit because once I met you, it compromised me. I could no longer be rational about it, keep the emotion out of it. When it was only money, it was easy to stay rational, cozy up to Marco, get him to trust me. But then I saw the way he treated you and when you told me he had hit on you, I just saw red. I couldn’t keep the emotion out of it after that, and I found it increasingly difficult to even pretend to be friends with Marco. I should have pulled out at that point, but Marco might have gotten suspicious if I was replaced and the next guy, also tried to buddy up to him. I fought my instincts every time I saw that creep. But then he fired James. He claimed it was because he was late, which is a shitty enough reason, but that wasn’t true. James had let something slip, something he had seen Marco do that struck him as odd. I don’t know how Marco found out it was James who had told me where to look for concrete evidence of his crimes, but he knew.”
“And James paid the price,” I comment.
“Actually, he didn’t. He has been given his job back with a nice fat cash bonus as a thank you for helping us weed out Marco.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised.
Matt smiles. “I know you think having money makes someone a monster Callie, but I don’t use people as collateral damage.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Matt says. “I can see how you’re different around me. How talking about money makes you uncomfortable.”
“It’s just… you’re from a different world.”
“You’d be surprised,” Matt says. “I’ll admit, we had a nice house when I was
