Chapter 3 - Sins of the Fathers
The grand foyer of the Conti estate looked less like a home and more like a high-tech fortress cloaked in seventeenth-century Italian Renaissance architecture.
Two dozen surveillance monitors flickered behind a concealed mahogany panel near the entry. Heavy blackout drapes covered every multi-pane window. Armed men in tactical vests moved through the corridors with the disciplined, hushed efficiency of naval officers on a submarine.
Leo Mercer, Matteo’s towering head of security, was waiting at the foot of the sweeping marble staircase. His jacket was unbuttoned, his hand resting near his holster, his face etched with grim tension.
"The perimeter is locked down, Boss," Leo reported, his eyes darting briefly to me with professional scrutiny before snapping back to Matteo. "We pulled traffic cams from Boylston Street. The shooter dumped his jacket in an alley two blocks away and vanished into the subway system. It was a pro. Ex-military. Byrne’s signature contractors."
"Sweep the staff," Matteo ordered, shrugging out of his bloodstained suit jacket and handing it to a butler who appeared like a ghost from the shadows. "Someone inside the Velvet Room gave them Nora’s shift schedule. I want that person in the cellar before sunrise."
"Understood," Leo nodded, turning on his heel.
I stood in the center of the foyer, shivering in my thin black work blouse and black slacks. My birthday sneakers were covered in dried beer and road grime, looking absurdly out of place against the gleaming, hand-polished checkerboard marble floor.
"Upstairs," Matteo said, turning to me. "Third door on the right. There’s a guest suite with an attached bath. Take a hot shower. Get out of those wet clothes."
"I don't take orders from you," I said, crossing my arms over my chest, digging my fingernails into my elbows to keep my hands from shaking. "You kidnapped me."
Matteo stopped at the base of the stairs, turning back to face me. The cut on his jaw had stopped bleeding, leaving a dark, jagged line across his pale skin. He looked exhausted, lethal, and impossibly patient.
"I saved your life," he countered evenly. "There is a distinction."
"You threw me over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes in front of thirty people!"
"Would you have preferred I escorted you out by the elbow while bullets shattered your spine?" He took two long strides, closing the distance between us until his towering silhouette blocked the chandelier’s warm light. "I don't care about your dignity, Nora. I care about your pulse."
"Why do you care?" I challenged, stepping into his space, refusing to back down. My head barely reached the middle of his chest, but the fury burning in my veins gave me a reckless kind of courage. "You're a mob boss! Your family runs the docks, the clubs, the bookies! Don't play the holy savior with me. If my father took forty million dollars from your rivals, you want that ledger just as badly as Damian Byrne does!"
Matteo stared down at me. For a second, a flash of something dark and dangerous passed behind his eyes—the ruthless Don who made hardened killers beg for mercy. But then the storm passed, replaced by a strange, heavy quiet.
"Your father saved my life," Matteo said quietly.
The hall went dead still.
"What?"
"Fifteen years ago," Matteo explained, his voice stripped of all arrogance, "I was seventeen. Byrne’s men ambushed my father’s car outside the South Boston dry docks. They killed my driver. They shot my father three times in the chest. I was trapped in the backseat, bleeding from shrapnel, waiting for them to finish the job."
He looked away, his jaw tightening as old memories surfaced.
"Your father, Patrick, was the crane operator on the night shift," Matteo continued. "He wasn't made. He didn't carry a gun. But when he heard the gunfire, he didn't run. He took an iron crowbar from the maintenance bay, smashed the skull of the lead gunman, pulled me out of that burning vehicle, and hid me inside a freight container for six hours until my family’s soldiers arrived."
I stared at him, my heart pounding against my ribs.
My father.
I remembered him as a quiet, burly man with calloused hands who smelled of sea salt and spearmint gum, who read me bedtime stories about Irish kings and kissed my forehead before every shift. I never knew he had blood on his hands. I never knew he had pulled the heir to the Conti empire out of an inferno.
"When your father vanished ten years ago," Matteo said, bringing his gaze back to mine, "my father gave him his word before he died: if the day ever came when the Gallagher family was hunted, the Conti crest would stand as your wall. I am not keeping you here for forty million dollars, Nora. I have enough money to buy this entire city twice over. I am keeping you here because I don't break my family's debts."
May you like
He reached out, his thumb lightly brushing against the sleeve of my blouse.
"Now go take a shower," he said softly. "Before you catch pneumonia."
