“I’m not fond of it either,” I admitted with another punch. “It’s temporary.”
“Oh? Does that mean she’s giving you all the warm fuzzy feelings already?” he asked.
“When she isn’t threatening to cook my meatballs,” I grunted. He looked at me like I was insane, and since we both knew I was I didn’t bother to explain. After firing off a series of punches, I spoke again. “She hasn’t asked him for help. She’s following the plan and doing what she needs to do to protect the kids like I knew she would, but it drives me crazy. There’s a man who was friends with her ex talking to her, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it without telling her I’ve read her texts for years.”
I’d hated Jason even when Chad was alive, but the way he stepped into Calla and the kids’ lives after his death was like poking a bear. He’d been there for them when I couldn’t be. Held them while they cried.
I’d never tolerate his presence, for that alone.
“You’re all crazy with the shit you do behind their backs. My sisters would gut me if they ever found out I did something like that.” He shuddered, and for once I was grateful to be an only child. Calla was mine because of my willingness to do underhanded things to make her mine. If I didn’t stalk her, I wouldn’t even know her.
And I wouldn’t change having the sun in my cold, dark world for anything.
When I broke my victim’s jaw, Enzo called me off, satisfied with the warning. “You can’t keep bottling this shit up. You’ll explode.”
I hated to admit that he was right, and when my phone went off with a different tone, I grabbed it to answer.
When Matteo Bellandi called, you fucking answered.
???
Enzo would drop my nameless victim off at his house. He would have anyway, but my sudden call to the Bellandi estate meant that I had no choice but to haul my ass there.
I hated that it meant I had to leave Calla with Dante just a little longer, because I never wanted to be away from her, but there wasn’t time to pick her up and bring her with me.
At any rate, I suspected that this meeting wouldn’t be pleasant.
Pulling in to the Estate to find both Lino and Simon there, as well as the typical Don and Scar made the hackles rise on the back of my neck. We’d waited for this day, known it was coming even. But I really wished it didn’t have to come when things were so precarious with Calla. The last thing I needed was a war at home while I waged a war in the streets.
I’d need a dresser in the garage for when I needed to change before I went into the house. I did enough wet work in times of peace, but in war?
I might as well bathe in blood.
Don answered the door, and there was no smile on his face. Ivory and Luna were notably absent, no doubt tucked away upstairs so they couldn’t overhear something that could make Ivory nervous. I might have suspected Matteo sent them out of the house, but Scar’s car confirmed they were here. Ivory went nowhere without her bodyguard, and she’d be lucky if Matteo didn’t refuse to let her leave the estate altogether.
I should consider it for Calla and the kids, and if it weren’t for Axel needing to go to school, I’d do it. But he’d be upset if I arranged a home tutor for him until things died down, and I couldn’t explain it to him.
Not yet.
Calla would have my meatballs for that one.
We wouldn’t all fit in Matteo’s office, even as large as it was. Not comfortably, so they’d all set up in the sitting room at the center of the house. It seeme
d like I was the last to arrive, but there were no jokes about me having to escape the claws of my woman. The situation was too serious for that. Matteo didn’t enter territory conflicts lightly, not when he knew that innocents would inevitably be harmed.
But the benefit outweighed the cost in some circumstances.
“Cuevas has ceded the territory to Murphy,” Matteo confirmed, and it felt like the entire room sucked in a breath. It had been years since Chicago had seen a territory dispute, since Matteo took over and the other organizations thought to test him.
“Has Murphy said if he’ll operate within the city?” Lino asked, always the voice of reason to Matteo’s rage.
“He hasn’t said anything, which I think we need to interpret as his stance. We prepare. We wait. We watch. I don’t want to start a war if it isn’t necessary, but if he tries to traffic people in the city—”
“We destroy him,” Scar growled, looking to me and meeting my eyes. We were both more acquainted with the trafficking industry than the others; we’d seen the results of crimes like that firsthand. We’d lived that life.
We’d never let it touch our city again.
“Yes,” Matteo agreed, and his eyes came to mine much like Scar’s had. Matteo might not know the exact circumstances of my life before I worked for the Bellandis, but I knew he suspected.