She Mistakenly Called the Mafia Boss Hot—Then He Walked to Her Desk and Said, “Say It Again”

Two men wearing hoods emerged.

I did not hear Matteo speak.

I felt his arm attempting to push me backward at the same instant an unfamiliar hand seized my elbow and pulled me toward the vehicle.

I screamed.

I believed I screamed.

The 2nd man covered my mouth with a cloth that tasted of dry fabric and dust.

The final image I saw before the van door closed was Matteo on 1 knee against the asphalt, reaching beneath his jacket.

I did not lose consciousness.

They did not strike me.

The operation was fast, professional, and cold.

One man placed me on a rear bench and secured my wrists with a plastic tie. The other drove without speaking.

The trip lasted approximately 12 minutes.

From the movement of the van and the smell of oil, I knew we had left the Loop and entered the port district.

When the vehicle stopped, they pulled me outside.

The warehouse was large, with stained concrete floors, a yellow bulb swinging overhead, and the smell of stagnant water and rusting metal.

They placed me on a metal chair in the farthest corner.

They did not tie me to it.

They did not need to. My wrists were already bound, and my legs shook beyond my control.

One man approached and removed his hood.

I did not recognize his face, but I recognized his accent. It was Sicilian and rougher than Matteo’s.

“It’s nothing personal, signorina,” he said. “It’s a message.”

“Carmine,” another man warned from across the warehouse. “Moretti didn’t send you here to talk.”

Carmine Moretti.

I memorized the name without intending to.

I had heard the surname during conversations in the hallways of DeLuca Holdings. It belonged to one of the families no one on the executive floor mentioned aloud.

“You remain there,” Carmine told me. “Thirty minutes. No more. Then your employer comes to collect you.”

I wanted to say something humorous.

I usually wanted to say something humorous.

The only words that emerged were, “He’s going to kill you.”

Carmine regarded me without anger.

His calm was worse.

He looked like someone who knew I was correct and understood that his death was part of the message.

“I know, signorina,” he said. “That is the point.”

Those 30 minutes were the longest of my life.

I counted tiles in the floor and beams in the ceiling.

I tried to remember the lyrics to the embarrassing song I had mentioned at dinner.

I could not.

Everything in my mind was white with red edges.

At 23 minutes, the metal warehouse door opened without ceremony.

I saw the movement from the corner of my eye.

I could not stand.

Matteo entered first.

Lorenzo Ricci, his right hand and head of family security, followed 3 steps behind.

Two other men entered with them, but I did not register their faces.

I registered Matteo’s walk.

He did not rush.

His jacket was buttoned, and his shoulders were lower than I had ever seen them.

His eyes contained something I had never witnessed on a human face.

Carmine turned and tried to speak.

“Don DeLuca, it was only a message. There’s no—”

Matteo answered with 3 short, evenly paced sentences in Italian.

I understood none of the words.

I understood the temperature.

Lorenzo moved first.

Carmine moved afterward.

I closed my eyes before seeing everything.

I did not close them quickly enough to avoid hearing it.

There was a short impact, a scream that began and did not finish, and the distinctive sound of metal striking bone.

I had never heard that sound before.

It would remain with me for the rest of my life.

Silence followed.

Then another impact.

Silence again.

My breathing stopped somewhere between my ribs and refused to return.

My hands were cold. My fingers tingled. A fine tremor rose from my knees to my chin.

I tasted metal and became certain I would vomit while sitting in that chair with my wrists aching beneath the plastic restraint.

When I opened my eyes, 2 bodies lay on the floor.

The other 2 men knelt with their backs against a beam and their hands on their heads.

Matteo was in front of me on 1 knee, reaching toward my wrists.

He cut the plastic tie with a small knife, moving slowly as though afraid of injuring me.

“You’re in 1 piece,” he said.

It was not a question.

He was attempting to convince himself.

“I am.”

“Look at me.”

I did.

“You’re in 1 piece,” he repeated.

“I am, Matteo. I am.”

He nodded once and helped me stand.

Lorenzo appeared beside me and rested a hand lightly against my back to steady me. He guided me toward the exit while Matteo followed.

I looked behind us once.

The 2 surviving men remained on their knees.

Lorenzo would return to them.

I understood that without requiring an explanation.

I sat in the center of the car’s back seat.

Matteo entered from the other side.

The driver pulled away without announcing a destination.

I did not ask.

Then I felt Matteo’s hand at the back of my neck.

He touched me carefully, as though I were made of wet paper.

His long fingers spread across my skin.

They were cold on the surface and warm beneath.

They were trembling.

Only slightly, but enough.

I did not turn or comment.

I placed my hand over his and held it there.

The trembling gradually stopped.

I kept holding him because I knew that if I released his hand too quickly, he would hate me for having noticed.

“We aren’t going to your apartment,” he said quietly. “Not tonight.”

“Okay.”

“I’m taking you to mine.”

“Okay.”

His penthouse was in Streeterville, inside a building with a private garage and an elevator that opened directly into the apartment.

Floor-to-ceiling glass overlooked Chicago, which glittered in yellow and white beyond the windows.

A vinyl record had stopped on the turntable in one corner.

The rooms smelled of cedar and old paper.

Matteo removed his jacket, placed it over an armchair, and walked to the balcony.

He opened the glass door.

Cold wind entered, lifting the hem of my skirt.

I followed.

The city below was a field of yellow lights.

Matteo rested his forearms against the metal railing.

I stood beside him with my shoulder lightly touching his.

We remained that way for a period neither of us measured.

“I’ve spent my entire life believing that loving someone is a fatal weakness,” he said without looking at me.

His voice had acquired a new roughness.

“I believed that anyone who came close to me became a target. That the fewer people I allowed near me, the more people survived.”

I did not interrupt.

“Tonight, in that alley, when they pulled you into the van, I understood that I have lived my life incorrectly. Keeping you far away did not protect you. It failed.”

“Matteo—”

“I cannot promise you a safe world. I will never be able to do that with the name I carry.”

“I know.”

He turned toward me.

“I never asked for safety,” I said. “I asked for the truth.”

“I know.”

“The problem was never that you’re dangerous. The problem is that you believe you don’t deserve to be loved. That’s something else entirely.”

He watched me for a long time.

He did not touch or move closer.

He looked at me with the same seriousness with which he had cut the restraint from my wrists, as though deciding something that would cost him.

“Come,” he said eventually. “I’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”

“Alone?”

“Tonight, yes.”

“Why?”

“Because the night you nearly died cannot be the 1st night I take you to bed. I don’t want the 1st time to smell like a warehouse.”

There was a firmness in his voice that moved me more than anything I had previously heard from him.

I could not answer.

I nodded.

He led me down the hallway to a guest room with a wide bed and an east-facing window.

He gave me one of his T-shirts to sleep in.

He did not touch me.

Before closing the door, he paused on the threshold.

“Chloe.”

“Yes?”

“I’ll be on the other side of the apartment if you need me.”

“Okay.”

The door closed quietly.

I lay on my back, pulled his shirt over my dress, and stared at the white ceiling.

The fabric smelled like his skin, cedar, and something cleaner beneath it.

I closed my eyes and fell asleep without realizing it had happened.

Morning light woke me.

I rose slowly, opened the door, and walked barefoot through the silent penthouse.

It possessed the kind of absolute quiet Matteo hated.

I heard voices in the living room and approached the edge of the hallway without making a sound.

Vanessa DeLuca stood in the center of the room with her dark hair loose, a gray dress against her body, and a leather folder beneath her arm.

She had entered without knocking, with the familiarity of someone who retained a key to the private elevator because of an old family arrangement.

Matteo stood with his back toward me near the turntable, his shoulders tense.

“Cousin,” Vanessa said in the same sweet voice. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

She saw me over his shoulder and smiled broadly, perfectly, as though we were old friends.

“Chloe, darling. Good morning.”

Matteo turned slowly.

For 2 seconds too long, he said nothing.

He looked first at me and then at the folder beneath Vanessa’s arm.

His silence told me before either of them spoke that someone’s name was written inside it.

The Streeterville penthouse awakened differently that morning.

Although it was the 1st time I had slept there, I could tell from the careful quiet in the hallway that the apartment had learned to breathe deeply during the night.

I had slept for no more than 3 hours.

The unfamiliar bed was not responsible.

Each time I closed my eyes, I remembered Matteo’s trembling hand against the back of my neck inside the car. I remembered the weight of his fingers, the warmth that followed, and the way he attempted to conceal the movement.

When I entered the living room barefoot, Vanessa was seated on the white couch with her legs crossed and the leather folder against her thigh.

She smiled as though I were a hostess who had kept her waiting.

Her perfume had already occupied the entire room. It was heavy and floral, the kind that entered before the person wearing it.

“Good morning, darling,” she said, her voice sweet and her eyes cold. “I hope I didn’t interrupt.”

Matteo appeared at the kitchen entrance 1 second later.

He wore a white shirt with the sleeves pushed over his forearms and carried coffee in 1 hand.

He remained still and expressionless for 2 seconds that felt like an entire trial.

“Vanessa,” he said quietly. “You don’t have permission to enter this house whenever you choose.”

“I have a key, cousin. Family arrangement. You remember.”

“The key expires today. Return it before you leave.”

Vanessa smiled as though she had not heard.

I swallowed my embarrassment at standing there in socks, wearing Matteo’s shirt with no bra underneath, in the center of a conversation that clearly did not include me.

She extended a hand.

“You must be Chloe. I’ve heard so much.”

“That’s unfortunate,” I said without accepting the hand. “I haven’t heard anything about you.”

She laughed softly, a practiced sound that belonged in a mirror.

“I would love to change that.”

Matteo crossed the room, stopped beside an empty armchair, and spoke a single sentence.

“The folder.”

Vanessa raised it, looked at me once more, and placed it on the coffee table with exaggerated care.

“Lisbon reports, dear. Nothing that should frighten the lady.”

She stood with the calm of someone whose next move had been arranged in advance, kissed the air near Matteo’s cheek, and entered the private elevator without hurry.

When its doors closed, I finally breathed.

“Does she always do that?”

“No,” Matteo answered, still watching the doors. “Today was because of you.”

I did not know what to do with the statement.

I did what I did best.

“Coffee?”

I walked toward the kitchen as though the ground belonged to me.

Matteo followed and leaned against the doorway while I opened 3 incorrect cabinets before finding the sugar.

The kitchen was too white and too cold. Its Italian coffee machine looked like an expensive instrument of torture.

When I finally sat on a tall stool with a mug between my hands, Matteo spoke.

“There is a meeting at the company this afternoon. I want you there as an assistant.”

He paused.

“As yourself.”

The distinction reached me.

“All right.”

He turned to leave, stopped halfway through the movement, and looked back.

“Chloe.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for staying yesterday.”

He left the kitchen before I could answer.

The meeting room on the 4th floor was smaller than the conference room on the 47th, but the real decisions occurred there.

It had dark walls, a heavy wooden table, and blinds lowered halfway over the windows.

Matteo sat at the head of the table. Lorenzo Ricci occupied the chair to his right, wearing a black suit with his hands folded and his eyes on me before I sat.

Two captains I had never seen were present.

Vanessa sat at the opposite corner, smiling at everyone as though the morning in the penthouse had not occurred.

Matteo began without ceremony.

“As of this week, 3 operations will no longer run through the holdings. The contracts will transfer to independent structures. Anyone currently reporting through Detroit will report directly to me. There will be no intermediary. Port flows will leave central accounting.”

The captains exchanged glances.

Vanessa did not blink.

“That is quite a reorganization,” she said sweetly. “Or is it a farewell?”

“It is a cleaning.”