Once Burned (Morelli Family, #3)

by Sam Mariano

  “Nope, I’m making you read those lines,” she states, as my ears register the sound of fabric falling around her. “You can turn around now.”

  I do, and she’s grabbing her literature book and climbing across the bed. The nightshirt she’s wearing doesn’t adequately cover her ass as she climbs across the bed, but I’ve already seen a split second of much more, so I don’t even feel as bad as I might’ve.

  My head is swimming with all the new information, but as Elise cracks open her book, searching toward the back for the story she wants to read me, the crushing weight begins to dissipate. I don’t have to deal with all of it now. All I have to do right now is strip off this damn suit, climb into bed, and listen to Elise read me some Brontë.

  Chapter Eight

  I can’t sleep.

  I toss and turn all night long. At one point I do fall asleep, but only long enough for my eyes to burn like hell when they open again and it’s still dark.

  Something is lodged in my brain, gnawing away at me. I can’t stop thinking about it, and I don’t want to think about it. Thinking about it makes it real, and it can’t be real. I can’t accept the ramifications if it is.

  It’s just before four when I give up on sleeping. I climb out of bed, dead tired, and drag my ass to the shower. I go back to the bedroom to get dressed and watch Elise for a minute, so peacefully curled up in bed. Our bed.

  I shouldn’t have set us up in Chicago. I could’ve found work somewhere else. As much as Mia grates on me sometimes, I’m no better; I can’t handle being in such close proximity to Mateo without getting sucked into the path of his destruction, either.

  I let myself into his house and put in the alarm code. I’m partially glad he gave me my key back, but I hate it nearly as much, because sometimes I don’t want his trust. It’s too heavy.

  Much the same as years earlier, I make the trek in the middle of the night to his bedroom. He’ll probably be getting up soon to hit the gym anyway, but when I ease open his bedroom door and slip inside, he’s still asleep. Meg is snuggled up against him with her back to me, an arm thrown over his chest. Not like last time, not like Beth.

  She wants him. She loves him. She’s devoted to him.

  And he’s goddamned Mateo.

  I walk to his side of the bed noiselessly, but he must sense a disturbance, because his eyes open.

  “It’s me,” I say, so he doesn’t pull a gun on me.

  Sighing heavily, he turns and looks at me. “You’ve gotta stop watching me sleep, Adrian. It’s fucking creepy.”

  “Are you fucking Mia?”

  His features turn to stone and he spares a quick glance over at Meg, still asleep. With a decidedly less easygoing glare, he tells me, “No.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “I have no reason to,” he states.

  I glance at Meg. “I can think of a couple.”

  “Those are reasons not to do it, not reasons to lie about it,” he states, passing a hand over his face. “What the fuck is this, Adrian?”

  “You can’t keep doing this to Vince.”

  “For the last time, I am not doing anything to Vince. I gave him a house. I gave them space, freedom away from me. I didn’t have to—if I wanted to keep Mia for myself, I wouldn’t have.”

  “She’s coming around a lot more lately.”

  Eyes widening, he says, “Because of Meg. That’s Meg’s doing, not mine.”

  “Meg trusts you, you know.”

  He looks at me the way I usually look at him. It would amuse me, his lack of humor, if not for all the thoughts brewing in my mind right now.

  Since I’m not going to get anything else out of him, I turn to head out of his bedroom.

  “You came here just for that?” he asks.

  “No, I’m going to the surveillance room. Couldn’t sleep. Work to do.”

  ---

  I don’t expect to see Mateo until much later, but he comes to the surveillance room with wet hair an hour later. He comes with two cups of coffee, passing one to me.

  “Thanks,” I murmur, lifting the mug to take a drink.

  “What’s going on?” he asks, flicking a glance at the screen I’m viewing. It’s everybody having drinks in his study, the night before Meg was shot.

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Just couldn’t sleep, figured I might as well do something.”

  “Trouble in paradise?”

  I glance up at him warily, but don’t answer.

  “You treat her like she’s your sister, you know,” he remarks.

  I don’t respond, turning my attention to the screen so he’ll see that I’m ignoring him and leave.

  “She’s never going to fuck you if you’re treating her like a sister,” he continues.

  “I don’t need advice on how to get laid, thank you very much.”

  He takes a sip of his coffee, but seems to reject my assertion. “You need to start touching her. The whole night you never touched her once. Light, easy touches—her shoulder, her wrist, her arm, her leg, her hip, her back, whatever you can touch, innocent as can be, but you need to make contact.”

  “I don’t need your advice, Mateo,” I inform him, still watching the screen.

  “Just trying to help,” he says, shrugging.

  “Don’t need your help,” I reply evenly.

  “You’re being stubborn.”

  I give him a sideways glare.

  His eyebrows rise and he shakes his head. “Fine, fine. Not like I have experience here or anything.”

  “I don’t want to appeal to her on the same level you do. I’m not you. I don’t want to be. I will foster something healthy with her, or I’ll foster nothing and kick her out of the nest once she’s recovered. I’m not taking advantage of her. I’m not you.”

  He shakes his head, sighing as he turns to leave. “Always doing things the hard way.”

  I roll my eyes and rewind the damn tape. I’ve been staring at it, trying to ignore him, but he’s aggravated me and I don’t want to risk missing anything.

  ---

  I’m supposed to go to Saturday night dinner this week to welcome Colin into the fold as Meg’s new bodyguard, but it only takes five minutes with him and Cherie to make me regret that recommendation. I want to stay and talk to Mateo about it after, but I finally get some good information about Castellanos. More specifically, where he’s supposed to be this coming week.

  That’s a little more pressing than dealing with McGregor.

  The rest of the night is gone before I know it, calling around to set up meetings, making plans to move against Castellanos.

  Problem is, I haven’t had a chance to verify my suspicions after reviewing the security tapes and looking into who might’ve been behind Meg’s shooting. Bigger problem is, I just don’t want to. So instead I make plans without them, and don’t even tell Mateo, that way he won’t accidentally share the information with the wrong people.

  If I can take out Castellanos on a small scale op like this, I may be able to navigate around outright war. No one can find Salvatore at this point, but if we strike down his old man and cease fire, maybe he’ll resurface. Mateo and I have talked a little bit about this, but now he’s more reluctant to make any kind of peace, after Salvatore set him up to think he was banging Meg. I’d like to remind Mateo he doesn’t hold grudges, but with Meg still wounded and everything so fresh, he’s not listening.

  My to-do list somehow grows longer with each thing I check off.

  Normally I join Mateo in his study for pre-dinner drinks, but tonight I follow Elise to the kitchen with the ladies. Mia and Meg are shoulder to shoulder, chatting as they prep food, but Elise heads where I want to go—to Cherie.

  After the customary greetings, Elise asks what she can help with and gets to work setting the table. Me, I linger by the stove, leaning against the counter by Cherie.

  Flashing me a smile once Elise is gone, she says, “So, how are you doing? I never get to talk to you anymore.”

  “I’
m good.”

  “How’s freedom?” she asks lightly.

  “Small,” I tell her.

  She grabs a salt shaker and dumps some in her pot. “Well, it would probably be bigger if you wouldn’t have run right back to Mateo’s rescue,” she points out.

  “Meg got shot.”

  “Not your problem,” she reminds me, putting the salt shaker down and stirring.

  “Someone’s going to kill him,” I state.

  “Without a doubt,” she replies, raising her eyebrows.

  “I couldn’t let that happen.”

  She shrugs, as if to say without words we’ll have to agree to disagree. I know she’s not Mateo’s biggest fan, but I’m still surprised she’s so ambivalent about his potential demise. Mateo’s never been bad to Cherie, but he’s never been good to her, either. She’s the only person in his life who doesn’t seem to find him charming—even as a kid, she always liked me more.

  “It wouldn’t make a difference anyway,” I tell her, though I’m not sure if I’m trying to convince her, or myself. “The world wouldn’t really be better off without him.”

  “You sure?” she asks.

  “Dante wouldn’t be a better head of the family, believe me.”

  “Vince would,” she says quietly, almost under her breath.

  Dread rolls over me that she would even think that, let alone say it. I ease back, glancing around the room, trying not to look at the cameras. “We shouldn’t talk about this,” I decide, not wanting her to get in trouble.

  “You like Vince.”

  “Cherie.” I stare at her, lowering my voice. “That’s never gonna happen. And he’s way too young, anyway.”

  “Mateo was young when he pushed Matt out.”

  I rub the back of my neck, moving away from the counter, pacing a couple feet away. “This isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  She merely raises her eyebrows noncommittally and places the spoon down on a dish, turning to face me. “Then what did you want to talk to me about?”

  Now I kind of do want to talk to her about this, but not where Mateo could listen in on the conversation if he felt like it. Definitely not mere feet from Meg and Mia, both of whom would report straight back to Mateo if they overheard us. I lean in close, so I can speak lowly. “You can’t say shit like that, Cherie.”

  “He’s a jerk,” she whispers back.

  “Has Vince mentioned this to you?”

  “Of course not,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Vince doesn’t even want to be in the family business, let alone run it.”

  That eases a little of the weight on my shoulders, so I ease back, sighing. I’m already running out of juice, but I should say what I came to say. “You need to stay away from McGregor.”

  Nodding knowingly, she turns back to the stove. “I knew that’s why you came in here.”

  “He’s not a good guy, Cherie.”

  “I’m not convinced good guys exist,” she states. “I’ve sure never met one.”

  “Even so, he falls too far on the bad end of the spectrum. You don’t want a guy like that. Wait until you start college, you can meet someone normal.”

  “Mateo’s sending me to school in Chicago. With Mia. It’s going to be just like high school. As soon as people find out who I’m related to, no one’s going to want to have a relationship with me unless they’re total a weirdo. If he would’ve let me go away, maybe, but Mom didn’t want him to, and he doesn’t care what I want.”

  I’m rethinking my newfound desire to have a daughter. Sure, they might have cute pigtails and make muffins with their mom for a time, but then they’ll grow up and want to date assholes. Is it really worth it?

  “I could try talking to him, if you really want to go away to school.”

  She shakes her head, aggravated. “It won’t matter. Mom has that smug look when we talk about it, so I know she’s already talked to him. He’s not gonna piss Mom off—she might start putting his decorative pillows out of order or something.”

  I bite back a smile. She’s not wrong.

  Meg drifts over toward me, just seeming to realize I’m in the kitchen. “Are you lost? Drinks are that way,” she says, indicating the door.

  I shake my head, glancing down at her abdomen. “Just trying to talk some sense into this one. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m much better,” she assures me.

  “Where’s your bodyguard?”

  Meg smirks, her gaze drifting to Cherie, then back to me. “Having drinks with the boys.”

  “Is that what he’s paid for?”

  “I’m pretty safe inside these walls,” she points out.

  “I wouldn’t say the same for him,” I mutter, glancing back at Cherie before heading for the door. I’ll have to warn him off, since Cherie won’t listen to me.

  “No murdering,” Meg calls after me. “Mateo’s orders!”

  When I get to the study, that smug, Irish son of a bitch is sitting in my chair. Joey and Vince are across from each other, talking, and Alec is in the other one.

  Even though I normally don’t, I decide to go stand by Mateo at his desk.

  “All well with the ladies?” he asks.

  “I don’t trust McGregor around Cherie,” I state.

  “He’s just a harmless flirt,” Mateo says, dismissively.

  “I don’t know if he is or not, but Cherie’s gonna feed into it and make it all worse.”

  “I already talked to him about it,” he assures me.

  “You did?” I ask, relaxing a little. He’s not always as protective of Cherie as the girls he has a vested interest in, but I know Colin won’t cross Mateo, regardless of what he boasts to Cherie.

  Mateo nods, taking a drink from his glass. “He’s assured me that he’ll keep his hands to himself until she’s of age.”

  I stare at him, my stomach twisting up in knots. “Of age? You mean in a month? You talked to him and got his word that he wouldn’t try anything for a month?”

  Mateo nods, glancing at me. “She’s going to grow up sometime.”

  “Not with him! Are you insane? He’s a murderer.”

  “We’re all murderers,” Mateo points out, as if amused. “Literally everyone in this room.”

  “And I wouldn’t want any of us with Cherie,” I point out. “Come on. You’re not going to tell me you’re okay with that? He’s too old for her.”

  “Okay, again… you’re saying all these things that could be said about any one of us and our respective female counterparts. Do Meg and Mia deserve less than Cherie? Does Elise?”

  I shake my head, irritated with him for not looking at Cherie and seeing a little girl who needs protecting from a lecherous ass like Colin McGregor. It feels almost identical to how I felt all those years ago when he wouldn’t protect Elise against that Rick asshole, except I actually care more about Cherie than I cared about Elise then.

  “Why don’t you let Cherie go away to school? If you’re going to pay her tuition, you can pay it just as easily in another state. Somewhere warm and calm without us around to keep her in a box. If she wants to grow up, let it be with some douchebag in college who wears polo shirts and plays beer pong.”

  Mateo is already shaking his head. “Maria wants to keep her close.”

  “He’ll hurt her, you know he will,” I state. “He’s not you, he’s not looking for a nice girl to settle down with him and keep his bed warm; he’s just looking for another conquest.”

  “I think Cherie is smart enough to make her own decisions regarding who she sleeps with,” Mateo states, pushing away from the desk to go refill his glass.

  “How?” I ask, following. “She has no experience with guys, let alone dogs like him.”

  “Hey now,” Colin puts in, from my chair. “I have two ears, y’know.”

  “I haven’t said anything you don’t already know, McGregor,” I inform him.

  He nods in acknowledgement and goes back to bullshitting with Alec.

  I roll my eyes
, liking him even less.

  “You worry too much, Adrian,” Mateo tells me, replacing his decanter on the cart and retrieving his glass. “It’ll be okay.”

  I narrow my eyes, settling back against his desk, and look at Colin. Maybe I’ll just kill the bastard. He’s a mercenary, so it’s not like I’d be robbing the world of some precious jewel.

  As if reading my mind, or perhaps just recalling history, Mateo says, “And don’t you dare kill him. I’m in the middle of a gang war; I can’t be worried about this stupid shit right now.”

  “If he puts a single finger on her, I make no promises.”

  “Well, you should tell him that, not me,” Mateo reasons. Then, patting me on the shoulder, he says, “Better yet, get to solving my Castellanos problem so you can move on with your life—then you won’t have to think about any of this anymore.”

  As soon as he says it, he tips his hand. I can see him realize that he took it a little too far, but now that he’s caught, he just smiles. “Unless of course you want to stick around, make sure everything remains… pure.”

  “You son of a bitch,” I mutter.

  “Colin’s not going anywhere anytime soon, so if you’re that worried about it…”

  “Yeah, I get it,” I say, rolling my eyes. “You’d really sacrifice Cherie’s well-being to trap me into working for you again.”

  “You say that like it’s unimaginable,” he says dryly. “Come on, Adrian. It’s straight from my playbook. I’ll move her ass in with him, if I have to.”

  I shake my head, surprised it’s even possible to be disappointed in him at this point. “Wow.”

  “I’ll make sure Cherie makes it past 18 without being defiled by the Irishman—all you have to do is stay.”

  “I could make sure of the same thing for a lot cheaper,” I inform him.

  “Except I just said you couldn’t,” he points out.

  “Didn’t stop me last time,” I mutter.

  A faint hint of steel creeps into his tone, though his smile remains. “And look what happened then.”

  My gaze snaps to his, narrowing. “You don’t have anything to trade me this time, Mateo. If I wanted to play by your rules, I could win this in a minute.”