Hunted By The Mafia Prince

Chapter 8: Small Warning

I lean forward. “When you say for breakfast, do you mean he plans to eat me as his breakfast? If so, I request to be fed lots of sweets first. You know, to really fatten me up before I go in the oven.”

Their scowls deepen.

Tough crowd.

“That was a joke,” I say. “Ever heard of Hansel and Gretel? No? Okay.” I get off the bed and start to adjust my appearance, trying to look as though I hadn’t spent the night tossing and turning. “You mobsters really need to brush up on your fairytales.”

One of them blinks at me, then turns to his companion and asks, “Is she…?” He taps his temple, like he’s asking about my mental state.

“I honestly have no idea,” the other tells him.

“Do you mind telling me your names?” I ask. “I feel rude referring to you as ‘this one’ and ‘that one’ in my head.”

They look suspicious.

There’s a long pause, then one of them goes, “I’m Savio.” The other— the familiar-looking one— says, “I’m Dimitri.”

It finally clicks why he looks so familiar. “You tried to kill me once, didn’t you? I remember that. Wow, you were so little back then. How old were you? Seventeen? Eighteen? Look at you all grown up now.”

Savio nudges him in the ribs and whispers, “You know her?”

Dimitri shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know, dude. Maybe? Do you have any idea how many people I get ordered to kill?”

I can’t help chuckling as I make my way over to them. “You two whisper worse than my six-year-olds.”

“Are you ready to go?” Savio demands, trying to put on an intimidating front.

“Sure am.”

They try to grab my arms, but I had enough of that from Matteo yesterday, so instead I loop my arms through theirs. The two exchange glances over my head, and they look so confused I have to force back a laugh.

“Off we go,” I say, nudging them forward. “But don’t forget about the sweets.”

“That sounds like a really weird thing to be a fairytale,” Dimitri comments as we leave the room.

“Oh, it is.”

They seem curious, so I start telling them the whole Hansel and Gretel story while we walk to wherever Matteo’s waiting for me. It’s partly for their entertainment, and partly because I’m literally going to get an ulcer from stressing over what Matteo could be planning.

I get to the part where the witch is trying to shove Gretel into the oven, but I fall silent when the boys lead me into the kitchen.

At the sleek countertop stove stands Sienna, an apron tied around her waist and a spatula in hand. Judging by the incredible smell in the air, I assume she’s making pancakes.

My eyes drift further around the space, which is half-kitchen, half-dining room, and I find Matteo sitting at the head of a long table. He has a cup of coffee in front of him and a newspaper in his lap.

The whole scene looks so domestic. It makes my stomach queasy for some reason.

Without looking up from his newspaper, Matteo lifts a hand and curls his fingers in a ‘come here’ gesture. I’m quickly led over to a chair to the left of him. When I sit down, he folds his newspaper and places it neatly on the table beside him.

“You can go,” he says, and Savio and Dimitri take off without a word.

I can’t keep myself from looking over at Sienna, who’s now placing the pancakes onto a plate. She seems focused on her task, hands steady, dark eyes narrowed in concentration. I force myself to tear my gaze away, and when I do, I find Matteo watching me with a faint smile.

“Good morning. How’d you sleep?”

“Like s**t,” I snap. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Having breakfast with you,” he says.

“I don’t want anything.”

“Are you sure? The last time I kidnapped you, I remember you asked for pancakes. Sienna makes the best.”

“I hate pancakes now,” I lie.

He knows I’m full of s**t, but he doesn’t say so.

I hear heels clicking against the floor, then Sienna steps up to the table. She sets a plate of beautiful pancakes in front of Matteo, and he looks at her.

“I’m going to go shopping while you take care of…” She waves a hand vaguely in my direction.

He nods. “You got money?”

“Yes.”

“Take Ciro with you, okay?”

“Okay.” She bends down and pecks him on the lips.

I frown.

As Sienna walks out, Matteo returns his attention to me. “Now, where were we?”

I dig my nails into the arm of my chair. “We were getting to the part where you cut the s**t and tell me what you want.”

He reaches into his suit pocket, and I tense, thinking he’s going to grab his gun. Instead, he pulls out a folded piece of paper. He smooths it out and slides it towards me.

“I want to know who fabricated these.”

I glance down at the paper. It’s a printed out screenshot of a text conversation. As I read them, I realize these are the text messages that sent one of Matteo’s brothers to jail. They prove he’d arranged an operation to transport drugs and weapons.

“Fabricated?” I echo. “No one fabricated them. These texts are real, hard evidence. The cops found them on the phone of some guy they caught during the bust.”

Given his nonchalant attitude so far, I didn’t expect much of a reaction to my words. So I’m surprised when I notice a flicker of hardness in his eyes, the faintest movement as he clenches his jaw. He overcomes it quickly and looks back at me with a clear expression.

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” His voice emerges soft and smooth. “You want to do this the hard way? Fine by me.”

He takes out his phone and, after a few clicks, presents it to me.

My heart sinks.

It’s a picture of my mom and her boyfriend, taken from outside their house, looking in through the window.

Matteo swipes his finger left, and then there’s my youngest sister, Riley, walking across her college campus, her books held to her chest. Another picture, and it’s my other sister, Nora, on what seems to be a date with a guy. Next is Milena and Gianna on the balcony of their house, and the final picture…

It’s a selfie of him and Alex. Matteo’s smiling at the camera, his hand fisted in Alex’s hair as he uses it to lift his bloody, swollen face up. Alex looks like he’s been beaten to a bloody pulp.

“What the hell!” I shoot to my feet. “You said you wouldn’t hurt him!”

Matteo shakes his head as he rises to stand as well. “I said I wouldn’t send anyone inside the house, and I didn’t. I waited for him to step outside to make a phone call.”

I drag my eyes away from the picture, shooting Matteo the worst glare I can muster.

“Aw,” he says. “Don’t look at me like that.”

I lift a fist to punch him in his stupid face, but he catches it easily, shaking his head.

“You don’t get to do that anymore,” he tells me.

“f**k you!”

He c***s an eyebrow and gives a mean little smile. “No, that’s another thing you don’t get to do. Sorry.”

I clench my teeth.

“This doesn’t need to be unpleasant, you know. I understand you’re running on low sleep and food, so I’ll excuse your crankiness.” He releases my hand and sits back down, then he gestures for me to do the same.

I stay standing.

His eyes harden. “Sit. Down.”

When I continue to defy him, he shakes his phone at me in a silent reminder. He has men following everyone I care about. One phone call— hell, one text message— and they’ll all be dead.

I sit down.

He continues, “This will be so much easier for everyone if you just follow my terms. I only ask that you help me get Nico out of jail. Do that, and you get to carry on with your miserable life.”

“And if I don’t?” I challenge. “You’re going to kill them all?”

“Not at first, no. I’ll start off small as a warning.” His tone is perfectly pleasant. “For old times’ sake.”

My chest tightens. “What do you mean ‘start off small?’”

“Well.” He picks up a fork and knife and digs into his pancakes. “You practice family law, don’t you? I think you know what’ll happen if I file for custody of the kids.”

“This is the 21st century,” I say flatly. “Your mafia laws may be outdated, but thankfully, the government’s aren’t. Moms win custody battles these days.”

“They do,” he acknowledges. “But judges also take into account whether the mother is a fit guardian. And sadly, you are not.”

“Come off it,” I sneer. “Any judge worth their salt could see that I’m a better parent than you would be.”

Matteo raises his brows as he swallows a mouthful of pancakes. “Are you, though? Let’s go over the facts here. You work full-time at a law firm. You don't have enough money to hire a nanny for the kids— or enough money, period. Not to mention, you hid them from me since they were born, even though telling me could have spared Miles a lot of suffering. That doesn’t sound like good parenting to me.”

He takes another bite of his food and makes an appreciative noise. “You sure you don’t want some of this?”

I can scarcely breathe.

This is worse than anything I could’ve imagined. The Matteo I knew was a man of honor, a man who had limits on how far he’d go. He never would have done something like this. He wouldn’t have used his own children as blackmail against me.

“You’ve changed.” I force my voice to remain steady.

Unperturbed, he says, “I haven’t. You’ve just never dealt with this side of me before.”

“Leave my family out of it, Matteo. They have nothing to do with this. You’re going too far.”

He shrugs, almost apologetically. “I don’t plan on harming them unless you give me a reason to. But let’s get one thing straight.” He edges his face closer to mine, and I get a real glimpse at how he’s feeling as the gold in his eyes darkens. “When it comes to bringing my brother back home… nothing is too far for me.”

Abruptly, he stands up. “I’ll give you some time to think about this while I prepare things for Miles’s surgery. I hope that, for the sake of the kids, you won’t make me do something drastic.”

He starts walking away, and as he goes, his leg brushes against the newspaper he had on the table, making it fall to the ground. My eyes are drawn to the headline on the front page, which reads, ‘Judge McCarthy Dead, Police Investigate.’ There’s a photo of the judge attached to the corresponding article.

There’s no doubt about it. That’s the judge who ruled over the Famiglia’s case, the one that sent them all to jail.

Fuck.

I stagger to my feet and make my way to the kitchen sink. I splash cold water on my face, hoping to calm myself down enough to think.

There’s a solution, there has to be. I just need my brain to stop panicking and start working. I need to retrace my steps, to try to remember more details about those screenshots. I’ll either find proof that they weren’t, or I’ll figure out who might have done it.

Yeah, alright.

I can do this.

Straightening up from the sink, I look straight ahead at the wall in front of me. And that’s when I notice it for the first time. When I’d entered the kitchen earlier, I’d been too distracted by Sienna’s presence, by nerves over Matteo.

But now I see it.

Smack dab in the middle of the kitchen wall is a framed photograph of Matteo and Sienna… from their wedding.