The Hitman's Secret

Ch. 18: Twisted Loyalties

MATTEO

Fucking hell, Matteo needed to get out of the mansion.

He rubbed furiously at his bearded jaw and forced himself to keep walking forward, even though every fiber in his body itched to march back into the library and carve the smug smirk from Bastian's face. The pocket knife weighing heavily in his back pocket could do the trick well. Could slip beneath his thin lips and flay in painstaking detail...

No. He warded the murderous thoughts from his head.

He had to think rationally– an impossible task when it involved his principessa. She stripped him of his reason. Encouraged him to bend to his base desires. Reduced him to a man driven by one thing: her.

She'd ruined him.

For the first time in his life, he'd been overcome by a strange, debilitating tightness in his chest at the sight of her with Bastian. It had shaken him to his core and rattled his senses. And, when the bastard soldier placed his hand on the outside of Val's elbow and claimed that they had a date, Matteo saw red.

He'd retreated as quickly as possible, his feet carrying him away from the scene before he did something he would regret. Now, he stormed toward his car, and, with every step he took away from Val, his anger subsided and was replaced by something else. Something foreign and unsettling. A sense of emptiness.

An emptiness that stemmed from the startling realization that Val was slipping through his fingers.

He slid into the driver's seat and stepped on the gas, eager to escape the estate that felt entirely too small at the moment. Too suffocating. Matteo didn't know his ultimate destination as he sped away from the mansion's driveway. He only knew that he needed to get the hell away.

As he drove, he tried to place his finger on the moment when he first started to lose Valentina.

Perhaps it happened on the night of Adriano and Elisa's wedding, when he so foolishly suggested that Val bow her head and relinquish the title of heir to her unborn brother. Was that the crack that led to this chasm? Or, perhaps their foundation had been doomed to crumble from the first moment Matteo refused to kiss her beneath the oak tree.

His grip on the steering wheel tightened, regret sinking its talons into his gut.

Of course, it didn't help that he'd spent the last several weeks serving as a glorified errand-boy for Leonardo. Every day it seemed like the don had another task for Matteo to accomplish, pulling him away from Val.

"Fuck," he cursed through clenched teeth. When had his desire to serve Valentina eclipsed his true duties to the famiglia?

For the first time in years, Matteo felt stark resentment toward Leonardo Romano. Toward the man who'd so graciously taken him under his wing. Who'd promoted him despite his lack of pedigree, as a favor to Matteo's widowed mother. He owed Leonardo everything, yet, for the first time, he wanted nothing more than to be free from the chains shackling him to the don.

He only wanted the man's daughter.

Shame crept up Matteo's throat, threatening to obstruct his airways.

He owed everything to the Romano famiglia boss, but Matteo's loyalty had been tainted from the moment he took Valentina in his arms on her eighteenth birthday and vowed to protect her. She owned him– body and soul.

This shame and bitterness and rage consumed him as he drove. He spent hours on the road, stopping only when his desire for liquor outgrew his desire for speed.