Once Burned (Morelli Family 3)

Matt’s eyes narrow and he shakes his head in disgust.

“Is that better?” I ask him, regular now, kicking my feet back up and tipping back my beer.

“You didn’t get your brother’s gift for showmanship,” he says silkily.

That’s like a knife to the gut, hearing him refer to Mateo as my brother.

“Eat your goddamn cake,” I snap.

“Believe me or don’t,” he says, finally using his fork to chop off a little piece of cake. “Makes no difference to me.”

“If it made no difference, there was no reason to say it,” I point out.

He raises the cake to his mouth, but speaks before taking a bite. “Sure there was. This is the last time we’ll see each other. My last chance to tell the truth. Don’t say you’ve never wondered.”

“Of course I haven’t,” I say, watching him finally take the first bite.

It won’t be long now. Matt’s deathly allergic to strawberries. At Mateo’s 10th birthday party, he picked a strawberry cassata cake. Matt couldn’t eat it, but when someone got him a slice of cheesecake (the only cake he does like), they used the same knife.

Before he finished half of it, his throat closed up and he had to be rushed to the hospital.

That’s when strawberry cassata cake became my favorite. When it nearly killed this evil bastard.

Now here it is, 23 years later, to finish the job.

“Few more bites, and I’ll get out of your hair,” I tell him.

“You’re not staying?” he asks, looking unimpressed. “Never took you for a coward.”

“Nah, it’s just… if there’s anyone in the world who deserves to die alone, it’s you.”

“A man who kills for a living shouldn’t be so judgmental,” he informs me, taking a sip of the beer. When he swallows, it looks like he struggles a bit.

I push off the couch, walking over to him. I grab his fork, getting a big bite full of strawberry. As I shove the bite into his mouth, I tell him mockingly, “Now I can add patricide to the list of my sins, huh?”

He chokes it down, and I grab his beer, taking it over to the sink to dump it out. I’m done here.

“What do you think he’ll do?” Matt asks. “What do you think he’ll do when he finds out, Adrian? Mateo has no loyalty, no sense of family. Mateo is out for himself, and no one else.”

I shake my head. It shouldn’t even surprise me that this old bastard is using his last remaining moments on Earth to try to get to me to kill his son, but somehow it does.

“Go to hell, old man.”

He gives me that conniving smirk again. “I’ll be running the place by the time you get there.”

Chapter Sixteen

It’s a little harder to sit at the dinner table, opposite Mateo at the head of the table, and not think about Matt’s words.

He’s full of shit, and there’s no way he could be telling the truth… But what if he is?

Not that it would matter, in the great scheme of things. It wouldn’t change anything. That’s what I tell myself. But my mind keeps circling back to it. It sure would be a hell of a thing, wouldn’t it? It would also go a long way in explaining the one thing I never could figure out.

Why did Matt take me in after he killed my parents? I knew Mateo had begged him to, in the way that kids do, but why say yes? It had always plagued me, if I really gave it enough thought.

Not like I’d even want what Mateo has. That’s not the part that bothers me.

It’s more the prospect of what would change if Mateo knew. Depending on how long Matt’s had this up his sleeve, it’s possible Mateo will find out. It’d be just like Matt to leave behind a bombshell like that, a final farewell, one last ‘fuck you’ to all of us.

Should I tell him and get ahead of it? There aren’t usually secrets between us, on account of my position in his life, but if Matt does leave something for Mateo with this information, will he tell me? I don’t like to think Mateo would turn on me, but… well, I’m a realist.

Not like he has a reason to. I couldn’t care less about their bloodline bullshit. I don’t want anything to change.

It’s mulling that over that I make a decision: I’m going to give Mateo the commitment he wants. I’m going to work for him. If I start to notice him behaving strangely toward me, then maybe we can talk about Matt’s last words, but until or unless that happens, I have to shrug this off as his last attempt at a mind game. He’s pissed off at Mateo for rejecting him, for locking him up, taking away his freedom, and taking his place at the head of the family. He absolutely deserved it, but now he’s had years to nurse that grudge, to turn on his own son.