13.

M ATTEO

“Why are you so antsy today?” Luca asked as he walked into my office. “If you snap at one more person, I’m gonna call Mama and tell her she needs to come up here and put you in time-out.”

“When did she ever use that on us?” I asked.

“Never. We’d broken her down so much by the time she had the younger ones that she had no energy left to discipline them and had to start trying new things.” Luca flopped onto the couch in the sitting area of my office and said, “It would probably work on you just about as well as it works on Ember.”

“Rocky road on the journey of parenthood?” I asked with a chuckle as I walked around the couch to sit in the high-backed chair next to the window.

“That girl is gonna be the death of me.”

“How?”

“She’s not gonna kill me, but Tabby might.”

“What did you do?”

“When Ember looks at me with tears in her eyes and her lip starts to quiver, I'm a goner, man. I can’t take it, so I end up caving and then Tabby has to come in and play the heavy. That pisses her off, she gets snippy with me, Ember ends up in trouble anyway, and then I’m the one in the doghouse.”

“You’d better get over that, or you’re gonna have problems when she gets old enough to get into real trouble.”

“But how?”

“Only thing I can say is that you should talk to Papa about it. Look at how he handles Mama, and, of course, Stefania has been a pain in the ass since she was born, and she’s turned into a moderately normal, although very high maintenance, young woman.”

“That’s a good plan. I need to go see him anyway.”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and sent Papa a text, knowing that he was still a hostage at home because Mama was following the doctor’s orders to the letter. It had been almost six weeks since Papa’s heart attack and surgery, and the doctor had insisted that he take it easy . . . for six weeks. Mama was there to ensure that he didn’t even shave a single day off of that timeline no matter how much Papa complained.

And boy, did he. When I talked to him a few days ago, he had bitched and moaned, griping that he’d been relegated to a countdown app on his phone, so I knew that as of today, he had three days left.

My phone rang, and I saw that he was calling rather than answering my text, so I put him on speaker and said, “How are you doing?”

“If you don’t come rescue me from this house, I’m going to set it on fire just so I can have the excitement of going to jail and getting to look at new scenery.” Luca and I burst out laughing, but Papa didn’t laugh with us. Instead, he growled, “If there’s any love for me in your heart, you’ll come get me out of here.”

“We’ll be there in just a bit. What do you want us to tell Mama?”

“I don’t have to tell her where I’m going! I’m a grown man!” Papa said before he started cursing in Italian.

“So, what you’re saying is that we need to come up with a plausible lie before we get there,” Luca teased.

“Possibly.”

I bit back another laugh and said, “We’ll figure something out. See you soon.”

“You’re the best sons a man could ever ask for, Mattuca.”

“Thanks, Papa,” Luca and I said in unison.

“Except when you do shit like that,” Papa grumbled right before he hung up.

It didn’t take long for us to get out of the office even though we stopped to talk to Zach on our way out, giving him a few minutes to bitch about parenthood, all the while, letting us know by the proud smile on his face that he was enjoying it more than he’d ever admit.

The most surprising thing about our short walk to the elevator was the raised voices coming from Rico’s section of the floor. It wasn’t just his voice we heard, but his daughter Constance’s voice too. Luca and I felt a certain kinship with Stan just like Zach did, probably because we were closer in age to her than her father who just happened to be one of our business partners.

Things had been tense between Rico and Constance since her guards were shot and he found out exactly how his daughter felt about the men he’d assigned to protect her while she was in college. I couldn’t imagine how stressful it must be for Rico, especially since one of the men who had given the four families so many problems for the last few years was still out there in the wings just waiting for his opportunity to pounce.

We’d discovered a disturbing number of disloyal guards working for him, some of them men we’d known for most of our lives, all of whom we’d trusted to protect not just us, but our families too. It was hard to get past that and trust the men we had around us now, but I felt secure in the knowledge that Salvatore and Rocco would never betray me. Of course, I’d taken measures to make sure of that, and they understood why, but no matter how secure I felt in our working relationship and long friendship, the events of the past few years would always make me leery.

I wondered how Bella would feel knowing that when she moved to New York, there would always be one of my guards nearby, not because of the company’s affiliation with The Four Families, but because of her connection to me. So far, we had managed to keep our relationship under wraps, but that hadn’t been hard to do since we hadn’t seen each other in person since her trip to Vegas three weeks ago.

It was hard to believe that she and I had been talking for six weeks - of course, more seriously with a future in mind only for the last three - and wouldn’t get to see each other for several more. We’d been trying to use platitudes to make ourselves feel better about the situation, but I was convinced that the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” bullshit was created by a sadist who was hopefully roasting in hell.

“You’re gonna have to get your head out of your ass before you get hurt, Matteo.”

I looked over at my brother and glanced out the window beside him, shocked to see how close we were to our parents’ home. I’d been daydreaming about Bella again, completely out of touch with reality which could be deadly for a man in my position.

“Shit. I was off in my own little world, wasn’t I?”

“Obviously, you weren’t here. I’m guessing you were somewhere in Texas?” I couldn’t help but smile, and my brother just shook his head. “Why don’t you just go down there and see her?”

“She’ll be here soon, and she’s going through a lot right now trying to get her house packed up and everything in order so she can move.”

“If you want to be part of her life from now on, don’t you think that helping her do that might be a good idea?”

“You’re right.”

“I’m always right.”

Rocco, who just happened to be driving today, snorted and when I looked up at the rearview mirror I saw him trying to fight back a smile. Salvatore wasn’t nearly as successful and laughed outright before he asked, “Do you know how many times I’ve heard both of you say that?”

Rocco lost it and started laughing which caused Luca to scowl before he said, “You’re both fired.”

“You can’t fire us,” Salvatore retorted. “Nobody else can put up with your brother full-time.”

“He has a point,” I agreed. As if it was a chore, I said, “I guess I’ll have to keep them around.”

“Let’s get back to the subject then,” Luca suggested. “Why don’t you guys take him to Texas and put us out of our misery?”

“I think I recall Dino talking about you making him miserable when you first started seeing Tabby,” Rocco said with a grin. “Something about forcing him to go to a bar where he felt like a piece of prime rib at a meat lover’s buffet.”

I burst out laughing because I could imagine that being something Dino would say, especially since when Luca met Tabby, she was working at a gay bar and Dino accompanied my brother a lot.

“Call your girlfriend, and tell her you’re coming to help her pack,” Luca ordered. “God knows you’re not worth much up here when your head is there.”

“Are you guys up for a trip?” I asked.

“Always,” Rocco said.

“I do love Texas women,” Salvatore said with a salacious grin.

Luca was right. My head was in Texas as was my heart. I needed to do whatever I could to help her get to New York as soon as possible because I wasn’t sure how long I could last without her nearby. Those few days in Las Vegas with Bella were some of the best in my life, and I couldn’t wait to experience more of them - a lifetime of them, if I had my way.

“I’m going to marry her,” I blurted. I heard my brother swallow hard and looked over to see that he was shocked. “Tell me you didn’t see that coming.”

“We all did, Matteo. We just didn’t think you’d admit it so soon.”

“Obviously, I haven’t told her that yet.”

“Just a suggestion, but you might want to ask her instead of telling her. In my experience, that works out much better.”

“You’re probably right,” I agreed as I pulled my phone out. “I just admitted you were right about something and didn’t get hives. Look at me, growing as a person all because of love.”

◆◆◆

BELLA

I touched the button to turn on my blinker and then lifted my arm to signal my turn just as Lark did the same thing ahead of me. As I took a left onto one of the busier roads in Rojo, I saw Rain in my peripheral pulling up beside me in the turn, so I made sure to hug the left line to give her plenty of space. There was too much traffic for us to make the next light, so we pulled to a stop side by side just as my phone rang, blaring The Golden Girls theme song over my speakers.

I hit the button to ignore the call at the same time Rain yelled, “Was that Squid?”

I barely had enough time to answer before Rain’s speaker blared the same ringtone, signaling that she had a call.

“Something’s wrong,” I called out as I twisted in my seat to look at the lines of traffic behind us. It was stacked up, so I knew we wouldn’t be able to pull off on the right and it would be easier to get into the turn lane up ahead. I was about to call out to Lark and tell her my plan when her phone started ringing through her speakers. I could tell by the look on Rain’s face that she understood my anxiety, and when I saw Lark’s hand come up and circle around before she pointed ahead to the left, I knew she’d come up with the same plan I had.

When we left the clubhouse to go on a ride, Cydney was the only one who stayed behind. She’d been under the weather for the last few days and had an appointment at Hamilton Medical to get checked out. Of course, Zoey was missing, too, since she was on duty right now, so the call might be coming from her.

Since all of us had the same ringtone to signal when it was one of our core group - eight women who had started the Texas Queens MC - the simple fact that the ringtone that was playing came from one of the two missing was concerning, especially since whoever was calling was jumping from one of our phones to the next as a signal that we should pull over and take the call.

As soon as the light changed, Lark hit the throttle and pulled into the turn lane with us close behind her. Once there was a break in traffic, we all shot through it to get to the other side of the street and then pulled up together into the half-empty parking lot of a clothing store. By the time I turned my bike off, Lark had her phone in hand and was returning the last call that had come in.

All of the bikes were off by the time Squid answered, and I could feel the emotion coming through the speaker as she managed to choke out the news through her tears. I felt my heart catch in my chest at the news of our friend’s attack.

Obviously, our casual ride to enjoy the pretty afternoon weather would instead be spent at the hospital waiting to hear any update on Zoey’s condition.

It didn’t take us long to get to the hospital across town, but by the time we arrived, the waiting room was full of people we knew. Luckily, they had some news for us and explained that Zoey had been rescued by a biker who happened to be cruising by when she was attacked on the side of the road. The list of her injuries was considerable, and I knew that it would take months, if not years, for her to recover.

The knot in my chest was growing by the second, and I couldn’t resist the urge to run outside to get some air. I found a place on the side of the building, out of the line of sight of the door, and pulled my phone out of my pocket when it started ringing. I saw Matteo’s smiling face fill the screen as I answered the call, but his expression morphed into one of concern when he saw my red-rimmed and puffy eyes.

The next few hours seemed to take years, but when the doctors finally came out and gave us an update on Zoey’s condition, I felt a small measure of relief. She wasn’t nearly out of the woods, but she was going to live and that's what mattered. Even though the staff encouraged all of us to go home, I couldn’t make myself do that and neither could the rest of the girls. We sat together in tense silence as the world went on outside the hospital until I had no choice but to lean my head back to rest on the wall behind me and let sleep pull me under.

Just a few minutes is all I needed and then I would wake up and make sure everyone was taken care of.

When I heard a voice call my name, I thought I must be dreaming. I didn’t want to wake up because reality sucked. Zozo was injured and the one person whose arms I wanted to feel around me was almost two thousand miles away. When I heard it again, I shifted in my seat but opened my eyes when someone touched my hand.

“Bella, wake up. I think you’ve got a visitor,” Squid said when I turned to look at her.

“Huh?”

“Twang.”

I turned the other direction and let out a gasp when I saw Matteo standing there. No, it was someone who looked like Matteo. His eyes were a different color, and he was wearing black-framed glasses and a baseball cap with the bill facing backwards along with a faded T-shirt and jeans.

Obviously, I was dreaming, but it felt like Matteo and sounded like him too.

I glanced around the room and found Salvatore dressed much the same - very casual and unlike himself. Rocco, who was standing just a few feet away, didn't look like himself either.

When he took a step closer to me, I knew it was Matteo trying to be inconspicuous so he wasn’t recognized and jumped out of my chair. With a sob, I threw my arms around his neck and held on tight. The feel of Matteo’s arms enveloping me in a hug as he lifted me off my feet seemed to take away the stiffness from the uncomfortable position I’d napped in and relieved the stress I had been holding onto for the last few hours.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered through my tears.

Matteo squeezed me a little tighter and said, “I got here as quickly as I could.”

“But why?”

“Whenever you need me, I’ll be there, sweetheart - even if I have to get in a plane and fly all night, I’ll do whatever it takes to make my way to you.”

“But why?” I asked.

“Because I love you, Bella, and I can’t stand to see you in pain.”