The mafia's arranged bride

6.Matteo

I didn't even wait for the echo of Madame Leticia's heels to fade before I was gone, practically bolted, shutting the heavy oak door behind me with a quiet that felt more like a verdict than a choice. The click of the latch was final. Deliberate. A man drawing his own goddamn borders before someone walks through them without asking.

From somewhere in the east wing, I could hear it, the procession. Madame Leticia's practiced murmur, low and ceremonial, the way she always got when she was performing the house rather than just running it. The soft, measured footsteps of the staff at a respectful distance. And underneath all of it, threaded through like something I hadn't asked to notice, the lighter step I'd already memorized without meaning to.

One interaction. One.

I stood behind my desk without sitting, jaw tight, staring at the grain of the mahogany without actually seeing it. My mind was doing the thing it does when I'm trying not to think about something, running loud, running fast, running everywhere except where I'd told it not to go.

“Stay busy. Stay the f**k away from her.”

My office had always been the one place that made sense to me. Dark wood, amber light, books I'd actually read lining the north wall, the city laid out behind floor-to-ceiling glass like it was mine to look at whenever I needed reminding of what I'd built. It had always felt like a fortress. Somewhere solid. Right now it felt like a cage I'd constructed myself and walked into with my eyes open, and the door had barely had time to shut before I understood the depth of the problem.

I pulled a drawer open. I closed it. Picked up my phone. Put it down.

The problem was the entrance. The trip. That stupid, graceless little stumble, she'd gone down like a waddling toddler and I'd almost laughed, almost, and then my arm moved before I'd issued any instruction whatsoever and she was against me and every organized thought I'd arranged for the day scattered like paper in the wind.

Alana was warm. That was the first thing. Not in a vague, ambient way, specifically, pointedly warm, the kind of warmth that radiates from actual skin and can't be manufactured or performed. And soft. Christ! She was soft in a way that felt almost deliberate, almost unfair, the kind of soft that makes something proprietary claw its way awake in your chest before you've had the chance to tell it to stay the hell down. My hand had been at her waist for maybe two seconds. Two seconds, and something in me had already taken inventory, catalogued it, and filed it somewhere I couldn't reach to delete.

She'd smelled like warm skin and something faintly floral underneath, not heavy, not deliberate, more like catching the tail end of something that had been there longer than the day. And her eyes when they'd come up to mine, wide, stripped of whatever careful composure she'd been maintaining, had carried that look. Not fear. Not embarrassment. Something I didn't have a clean name for that sat in the gut like a slow, low burn.

I'd stepped back. Two feet. Immediate.

“She is dangerous. You already know she's dangerous. Act accordingly.”

And I did know. I knew the way you know a storm before you can see it by the shift in pressure, by the particular quality of the silence before it. She was the type that ruins men softly and without apology. The type you f**k once, just once, just to see and then she's living behind your eyes permanently, and you're quietly restructuring your entire life around proximity to her without identifying the exact moment you started doing it. The skin-to-skin contact had delivered the message clearly and without room for misinterpretation. Fragile and soft in a way that made something in me want to stand between her and everything and simultaneously ruin her completely, wreck her thoroughly, take her apart with my hands until she forgot whatever careful version of herself she'd walked in here wearing.

The protection instinct, manageable. I could work with that.

The other part was getting buried. Today. Permanently.

Except then she'd turned to look at the house and her face had just, opened. The composure slipped for a moment and something genuine moved across her features in its place. Lips parting, those rosy cheeks deepening, eyes traveling up the staircase and across the height of the ceilings with a quiet, unperformed wonder that she hadn't thought to conceal because she hadn't anticipated needing to. Something almost childlike in it. Unguarded. Completely real.

That was what did it. Not the body. The face.

Because the image that arrived in the wake of that unguarded face was not gentle or halfhearted or vague. It was specific. Mercilessly, forensically specific. It arrived fully assembled like it had been waiting in a back room this whole time, just waiting for clearance.

Her on her knees. Right here. On the dark hardwood floor of this office, the amber light found every strand of that red hair as it unraveled all the way down — loose, cascading, pooling around her from head to floor like something out of a painting that would have been considered scandalous. Face bare except for the lipstick. Still red. Still intact at the corners because we weren't there yet, because we were still at the part where the anticipation sat between us like a third presence in the room, heavy and specific.

And my d**k in that sweet mouth.

That was the center of it. That was what the image kept returning to — her lips wrapped around me, hollowed and warm, taking what I gave her with those eyes still open, still watching mine from underneath, still burning with that particular brand of patience that isn't passive at all. The red lipstick beginning to blur and smear at the edges, transferring, leaving residue, that vivid red against my skin like a signature, like evidence, like something I could look down at and feel the full weight of. I wanted that specifically. Wanted to see the proof of her mouth on me, red and obscene and utterly undeniable.

And her eyes ,God! Her eyes through all of it. Steady. Upturned. Holding mine the way a person holds eye contact when they want you to understand that they know exactly what they're doing and exactly what it's doing to you. Not begging. Not helpless. Watching me with the calm certainty of someone who has quietly understood that the power in the room has already shifted and is simply waiting for me to catch up. A low sound from her throat not quite a moan, not quite a plea, dressed up in the costume of surrender while being, underneath, an instruction.

“Use me. I want you to. You're going to anyway.”

And the worst part, the part that made the whole image calcify and refuse to dissolve was that I could picture her enjoying it. Not performing enjoyment. Actually, genuinely in it, eyes bright, that hollowed mouth working like she had something to prove, like she was competing with herself.

I pressed both palms flat on the desk and breathed through my nose.

My d**k had registered its own opinion on all of this well before my brain had finished processing, and it was currently making its position extremely clear and extremely uncomfortable through the fabric of my trousers, which was information I did not need and had not requested.

Bury it. All of it. Right now.

I dropped into my chair and grabbed the nearest contract like it was a lifeline and not just paper.

She was the type that ruins men and doesn't even have to try. Doesn't have to scheme or maneuver or do anything calculated, just exists in proximity, just trips over her own feet and looks up at you with those eyes, just laughs when she doesn't mean to, and something in you quietly dismantles and rearranges itself around her without asking your permission first. I'd watched it happen to sharper men than me. I watched them go soft around a woman and call it happiness while their edges disappeared.

That was not going to be me.

“There is only this desk. There is only this contract. You built everything you have out of discipline, locate some.”

I smoothed the papers against the desk. Stared at the first line.

From beyond the door, drifting through solid oak like it had been engineered specifically to reach me, I heard her laugh. Short. Bright. Surprised out of her, like Madame Leticia had said something she hadn't expected to find funny and she was almost annoyed at herself for reacting. It was completely unself-conscious. Unperformed. The kind of laugh a person has when they're not thinking about how they sound.

It came through the door. Through the walls. And sat down somewhere in my chest in a spot I had not cleared or prepared or given any permission for.

I looked down at my lap.

Jesus Christ.

The contract went soft at the edges.

I leaned back and stared at the ceiling like it owed me something, a solution, an explanation, a reasonable exit from whatever this already was.

Happy married life to me, then.

I picked the contract back up. Pressed it flat. Started from the top.

Read the same opening line seven times.

Retained nothing.