Passion (In Wilde Country 2)

A flash of something fast and feathered had erupted from a concrete planter on one end of the terrace and taken to the sky.

The agent, all spit-and-polish elegance, had shrieked, then muttered a word that had no elegance to it at all.

“Sorry about that,” she’d said.

Matteo, head tilted back, hand shading his eyes as he tried to follow the thing’s flight to the park, had said, “What in hell was that?”

“Some kind of bird. A hawk. I’d heard it was trying to nest here. No worries, sir. I’ll speak with the building management and they’ll deal with driving it off.”

“Leave it.”

“But Mr. Bellini…”

“I’m buying this place,” Matteo had said, shocking himself as well as the agent, “and the hawk is not to be disturbed.”

A man about to plunk down eight figures for a bit of Manhattan real estate was not a man with whom to argue, and the agent had known that.

Six months later, Matteo and the hawk co-existed in respectful peace, each aware of the other, each aware of its boundaries.

The hawk was a redtail. A male.

Matteo had learned that by Googling it, though he’d learned more surprising details from a business acquaintance who, it turned out, had had a similar experience on the terrace of his own condo across the park, on Fifth Avenue.

“He’s still nesting there,” Sheikh Salim al Taj had said with a smile, “but we’re a little more cautious now. My wife, Grace, and I are pleased to have him with us, but we don’t let our little girl on the terrace alone. Well, we wouldn’t do that anyway, and we don’t believe the hawk would deliberately do her harm, but it can’t hurt to be cautious. You know how it is.”

Matteo tossed his duffel on a bench in his bedroom, toed off his shoes and stripped off his clothes.

Yes. He knew how it was.

Being cautious about things, about life in general, was what happened when a man took a woman into his life.

He became domesticated.

Either that, or he went on behaving as he pleased and then turned into a man like his father, one who was a liar and a cheat, married to a woman who damn well had to be a liar, too, pretending she didn’t know her marriage was a sham so she could get from it what she wanted, because it was not possible that a woman would not know the man she lived with was a fraud and—

And, what?

Matteo frowned. Where had all that come from? What did it have to do with anything?

Amazing, what a few days of domestic overkill could do to a man’s brain.

“Enough,” he said firmly, and he headed straight for the walk-in glass shower that would surely wash away the hours of travel as well as the memories of El Sueño and all it represented.

* * *

A long shower, a shave, a cup of espresso, and his mood showed improvement.

Matteo sat before the big fireplace in his living room, gazing into the fire he’d built on the hearth. He’d changed into faded jeans, a white dress shirt open at the collar topped by a navy cashmere sweater, and mocs.

The espresso was ground from coffee beans he bought from a little shop all the way downtown in the part of Little Italy that had not yet been swallowed by the ever-growing boundaries of Greenwich Village. The smell of the shop, the taste of the coffee, reminded him of Sicily and the tiny town where he’d grown up, where you could hear the sea pounding against the cliffs.

As kids, he and Luca had played wild, dangerous games on those cliffs.

Matteo smiled.

Those were good memories.

But there were other memories, too, ones that were not good, he thought, his smile fading.

Their mother’s anger at their father’s endless absences and the tension in the house when he was home. Her shouting. His silence.

Going away to boarding school had seemed a blessing—until he and Luca realized they’d only exchanged one hell for another. Maybe they’d been a little wild, a bit rough around the edges. Maybe they’d needed some discipline, but they surely hadn’t needed being beaten into submission…except neither of them had ever submitted to anything, which had led to their being sent to another boarding school, that one in Yorkshire.

“It can’t be any worse than this place,” Luca had said.

Matteo laughed. He could laugh, now, after so many years, all of it only a memory, but how wrong that hope had been.

Cristo, what was with him? All these long-buried memories scurrying through his head like mice through a woodpile. He was wallowing in self-indulgence, and that was definitely not something he normally did. He was not like Luca, who’d brooded over their childhood. Not him. He had moved on.

What he needed was to get out. See some people. Go someplace where the music was loud, the lights were bright, and the women were hot.

Nothing difficult about that in New York.

Matteo killed the fire, took his cup and saucer into the kitchen, went upstairs to the master suite to grab his wallet, his car keys, a leather bomber jacket…

His cellphone rang.

Damn.

It was probably Luca or one of his sisters, calling to make sure he was okay. He should have phoned them.

But the number that came up was unfamiliar. Some idiot trying to sell him something? He took the call with a harshly growled, “What?”

“Bellini? Did I get you at a bad time?”

Matteo frowned. “Who is this?”

“Tony. Tony Pastore.”

Tony Pastore. Matteo’s frown deepened. Pastore was a client. The Mall King, the media called him. His shopping malls dotted the northeast corridor from Maine to Georgia. What kind of legal advice could he possibly need on a Saturday night?

“Tony,” Matteo said with false good cheer. “What can I do for you?”

“I’ve got a problem.”

“Yeah. There’s a lot of that going around lately.”

“It’s something I have to deal with ASAP.”

“Of course. Look, I’ll have my P.A. phone yours first thing Monday morning to set up an appoint—”

“We talked a few weeks ago. Remember? I called you, told you I was going to divorce my wife. You agreed to take it on.”

Hell. Matteo sat down on the edge of the bed. He remembered the conversation. Pastore had not phoned again. Nothing unusual in that. People talked about divorces, then changed their minds. If Matteo had given it any thought—which he had not—he’d have figured that was what had happened with Pastore, and that was fine with him because he didn’t practice family law. His specialty was corporate and estate law for small, wealthy, privately held corporations.

That kind of law was fascinating, complex and sometimes difficult, partly because some of his clients had such power and wealth that they thought of themselves as emperors.

Pastore surely did.

He was rich, as were the rest of Matteo’s clients, but he was also arrogant and flashy. The simple truth was, he didn’t like Pastore. Still, he’d taken him on as a client.

The thing was, they’d known each other forever, long before Pastore was the shopping- mall king, long before Matteo had made his first million.

The connection went all the way back to their Sicilian childhoods. They’d grown up in the same village.

Not that they’d ever been friends.

For one thing, Pastore was two years older. He’d run with a different crowd, a tough bunch whose fathers were reputed to be Mafiosi soldiers.

And he’d been a bully.

Matteo had been his target on a couple of occasions.

Still, they were adults now and as Pastore had reminded Matteo when he’d first contacted him a couple of years back, the past was history.

“Hey,” he’d said, “we’re different people now.”

Maybe.

But Matteo had the feeling Pastore hadn’t changed much. Despite the fortune he’d made, the bespoke suits and handmade shoes, the acquired polish, there was coarseness to him, an underlying hint of

violence that Matteo found a turn-off. He’d considered dropping him as a client several times, but there was this Sicilian thing called loyalty…

“Bellini? You there?”

“Yes.” Matteo nodded, as if Pastore could see him. “I’m here.”

“Good. Because I want to get moving on this. Immediately.”

Really? Matteo thought. At—he glanced at his watch—at seven o’clock on a Saturday night?

“I understand. As I said, I’ll have my P.A. call your—”

“Tonight.”

Matteo’s eyebrows rose.

“Look, Tony, I’m sure you’re upset, but—”

“My wife and I are going out for dinner in an hour.”

“And?”

“And, it’s the perfect opportunity for you to get a look at her.”

“Why would I need to get a look at her? You want my advice on how to proceed with a divorce, it doesn’t mean I have to meet her. In fact, it’s better that I don’t.”

“I want more than your advice. I want you to handle it. I told you that.”

“Either way, the procedure’s the same. You’ll each have a lawyer. The lawyers will deal with each other, not with each other’s clients. Unless… Do I have it wrong? Because if you and she are filing for an amicable divorce—”

Pastore barked out a laugh.

“Amicable? Not unless you think her going ape-shit when she finds out I’m dumping her is gonna be ‘amicable.’ Trust me, man. This is not gonna be a walk in the park.”

“Right.” Matteo massaged his temples. “Okay. When you come to my office on Monday, you’ll give me the details, we’ll arrange to have papers served to her and we’ll proceed from there.”

“No good.”