Passion (In Wilde Country 2)

She looked up, face white. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what? Trying to save you from yourself?”

“You say—you say I do things when I know I didn’t.”

Pastore rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, his words heavy with sarcasm, “right.”

“You’re trying to make me think there’s something wrong with me. And there isn’t.” Her voice took on strength; her eyes blazed. “There isn’t! It’s you, Anthony, you, doing these things to me!”

“Me? I’m doing these things to you? The nurse, too, and the doctor?”

“There is no doctor! You keep saying there’s one, but there isn’t.”

“Right. Uh huh. We’re all in a big conspiracy against you, Ariel, every one of us.”

Ariel Pastore stared at her husband. Then, as suddenly as it had flamed to life, the fire in her eyes blinked out.

“I don’t—I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Something’s happening to me.”

“Yeah,” Pastore said. “You’re going crazy.”

“Goddammit,” Matteo said, “Tony…”

“Mr. Bellini.” Ariel Pastore put her hand on Matteo’s arm. “Please. Help me.”

Dear God, Matteo thought. He had never felt so useless in his life. He wanted to gather Ariel Pastore in his arms, stroke her hair, tell her everything would be okay.

Except, it wouldn’t.

Pastore was a piece of crap, but he was right about one thing. His wife was sick. She needed help, and to hell with his idea of a quick, quiet divorce.

Matteo looked at Pastore.

“She’s right,” he said flatly. “She needs help.”

“What’d I tell you, Bellini? Now you see what I’m up against.”

Matteo rose to his feet. So did Pastore. The men turned their backs to the booth.

“You don’t need a divorce lawyer, Tony,” Matteo said, taking out his wallet. “You need a good psychiatrist.”

“She does, you mean.”

“Yes. She does.”

Pastore moved in closer. Vodka wasn’t supposed to have a smell, but there was the scent of something evil on his breath.

“Right,” he said softly. “That’s why I wanted you to see I was telling you the truth when I said she needs to be committed.”

“That’s a decision for a physician.”

“It’s a decision for a lawyer. For you.”

Matteo stepped back. “Forget it.”

“You just said—”

“I said she needs psychiatric help. You don’t just put somebody away because it’s more convenient for you.”

“You think you can tell me what to do?”

Matteo could feel the adrenaline starting to pump through him. It was a warning, one he knew enough to heed.

He knew what the world saw when it looked at him. He was a man of incredible wealth. Custom-tailored suits. A condo in the sky. A collection of fast, expensive sports cars, but underneath those trappings, the real Matteo Bellini still lived and flourished.

He had been born with the fierce Sicilian temperament of his mother’s ancestors and the warrior savagery of his father’s. Add survival skills acquired in boarding schools that still obeyed the dictums of the nineteenth century and you had a man with a don’t-fuck-with-me attitude right under his civilized veneer.

Pastore stepped closer. “I asked you a question, counselor. Who do you think you are to fuck with me?”

Matteo grasped Pastore’s wrist. He pressed down hard against sinew, bone and muscle.

“Get out of my way,” he said in a soft, dangerous voice.

Pastore’s face went red with fury.

“You’re making a big mistake, Bellini. I don’t forget insults.”

“Yeah.” Matteo’s smile was as thin as the blade of a knife. “That really worries me.”

He dropped his hand from Pastore’s. Pastore stared into his eyes. Then he took a step back.

“This isn’t over.”

“I find out you’re trying to railroad your wife into an institution,” Matteo said, “it damn well won’t be.”

He pulled a hundred dollar bill from his wallet and dropped it on the table. Then he turned toward Ariel. She looked completely defenseless, but there was nothing he could for her.

“Mrs. Pastore,” he said gently. “Ariel. I’m sorry for this.”

She nodded. Her lips moved. Did they form his name? No. Of course not. It was only his imagination, but it wasn’t his imagination she’d begged him to help her.

His back was to Pastore.

What the hell, he thought, and he slid one of his business cards from his wallet and slipped it into her hand as he brought that hand to his lips.

“I’m glad to have met you, Ariel,” he said softly. “And I hope you feel better, soon.”

She nodded. “Thank you, Mister—Mister—” She blinked. “I can’t remember your name.”

“It’s Matteo. Matteo Bellini.”

Her mouth curved in something that was close to a smile. “Thank you, Mr. Bellini.”

Pastore was waiting for him in the street.

“You’re making a mistake, Bellini.”

“You already said that.” It had turned bitterly cold, and Matteo zipped up his leather jacket. “My P.A. will forward your files to your office first thing Monday morning.”

“What happened, huh?” Pastore’s mouth twisted in an ugly sneer. “You saw what she still looks like, a classy piece of ass, and your blood went from your brains to your balls?”

Matteo moved fast, grabbed Pastore by the lapels and shoved him back against the building.

“You better be sure I never see you again, Tony. And you’d better be sure you get her to a doctor who can help her. You got that?”

Color rose in Pastore’s face. He wrenched free of Matteo’s hands.

“I won’t forget this,” he hissed.

Matteo’s smile was thin and cold. “A threat?”

“La vendetta es una minestra che se mangia fredda,” the other man replied.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. It was an old Mafiosi curse.

“Si,” Matteo said, even more softly. “I agree. And I suggest you keep that in mind.”

Matteo walked away, moving fast, eager to put the evening as far behind him as possible.

It had started snowing.

The flakes were big and lacy, like the ones that had fallen on El Sueño that morning. It was the kind of snowfall that made everything look better than it really was. And that was a damn good thing, he thought as he stepped to the curb to hail a taxi.

No. No taxi.

He was a mess. His gut was a tangle of knots. His breathing was rapid. Even his teeth hurt from the way he’d been grinding them together.

He was blocks from his penthouse. It would take him a long time to walk home, though not long enough for Ariel Pastore’s sad, lovely face to stop haunting him.

Yeah, but it was a start.

Matteo dug his hands into his pockets and set off on the journey.

CHAPTER FOUR

In Matteo’s experience as an attorney, the start of a new year was often chaotic.

The holiday season was not all happiness and good cheer, especially when it came to relationships between the members of small, family-controlled corporations.

Sons fought with fathers, hus

bands argued with wives, and second and third generations were eager to take over the reins of businesses even when the parents and grandparents who’d founded them were not yet ready to be put out to pasture.

On top of that, Matteo had been away from his legal practice for that long weekend in Texas.

What it all meant was that Monday morning, he was swamped.

The phones rang nonstop, Fed-Ex deliveries piled up in the reception area, his desk was a sea of documents and letters his P.A. said needed his immediate attention.

Still, he took the time to instruct her to purge her computer and the file cabinets of everything that dealt with Anthony Pastore, and to have it all couriered to Pastore’s main office across the river, in Newark.

Janet’s face was a perfect blank.

“Mr. Pastore is no longer our client,” Matteo said.

A little smile touched her mouth. Or maybe not. It vanished in a heartbeat.

“I understand, sir.”

“And do it this morning, please. I know we’re buried in work, but this takes priority.”

It had to, he thought as he strode into his office and settled in behind his desk.

He wanted Pastore gone from his life and his head. Getting rid of all the data that connected them would surely accomplish that, and then he could banish Ariel from his thoughts. She’d been on his mind all day Sunday. He kept seeing her face, hearing her paper-thin voice. He remembered the touch of her hand on his. The press of her thigh. The darkness in her eyes.

Most of all, he remembered how she’d begged him to help her.

He’d spent yesterday telling himself he shouldn’t have left her in the hands of a man who only wanted to get rid of her.

Then he’d told himself how ridiculous that thought was. What could he have done? Called the cops? Told them to charge Pastore with speaking unpleasantly to his wife? Told them Pastore wanted him to draw up fraudulent papers so he could have her committed to a mental institution? He’d never actually said that. In fact, nothing he’d said had been unlawful, plus he’d been Matteo’s client at the time of the discussion, and client-attorney privilege was sacred.

Matteo stood up and went to the wall of windows that overlooked Madison Avenue.

He stared down at the jam of vehicles forty stories below.