MATTEO (Dance with the Devil 1)

by Carole Mortimer

  It would be just like Leon to decide he didn’t trust the answer Matteo was going to give him today and so he would eliminate the problem.

  Eliminate Grace.

  Carla dropped into the chair in front of his desk as if her legs would no longer support her. “The powerful Mafia man from New York who’s also going to be your father-in-law?” The same thought had obviously occurred to her.

  Matteo shot Vinnie a frowning glance. The proposed alliance wasn’t particularly a secret, but it was obvious the older man was Carla’s source. He turned back to Carla. “Does Grace know that too?”

  She nodded. “I told her this morning.”

  Matteo released a shaky breath. Not that he could blame Carla for trying to protect her friend from someone like him; he would just rather Grace didn’t know quite what degree of bastard he was. It was going to make persuading her into being a permanent part of his life so much harder.

  Once he had secured her release from Leon Brunelli.

  If Grace was still alive…

  He straightened. “I believe he’s the one who has Grace, yes.”

  Carla stood up. “Then I’m coming with you.”

  “No—”

  “I respect the hell out of you, Mr. Zalotti, but I’m coming with you. I have to see Grace and know that she’s okay.”

  Matteo couldn’t argue against her concern.

  And once Matteo had voiced his displeasure and informed Leon of his choice not to marry Natalia, he doubted there could ever be unity between the Brunelli and Zalotti families.

  A pity, but Matteo had absolutely no doubt that his heart belonged to Grace. That it always would.

  Now he had to stop Leon from disposing of “the problem.”

  “You have become something of a nuisance to both my men and me, Miss Morrissey,” she was told as the gag was removed from over her mouth. The bag it had been secured over, and preventing her from seeing her captor, remained in place. As did the plastic tie securing her arms behind her back.

  In other circumstances, Grace might have been tempted to laugh at the understatement of that comment she recognized was spoken in a New York accent. She wouldn’t be here at all if she hadn’t pissed off this man, and she had screamed for so long and so loudly that the men who had abducted her had been forced to park at the side of the road while one of them got out and put a gag on her over the hood that prevented her from seeing the men or her surroundings.

  The hood and gag and the tie about her wrists had remained in place after the vehicle parked again and she was carried, again kicking, if not screaming. Once inside, and after being unceremoniously dumped onto a hard wooden chair, she quickly realized she was in a cavernous building when even the softness of her captor’s voice echoed around the empty space.

  Considering they had only driven for fifteen minutes or so, this building still had to be in London. Maybe one of the derelict warehouses near the docks?

  Wherever they were, Grace knew she was in great danger. No matter how pleasantly her captor spoke to her, if this was the same man who was to be Matteo’s father-in-law, the powerful don from New York Carla had spoken of, then she was seriously in trouble. If this man knew of her relationship with Matteo, then Grace had not only crossed him, she had, however inadvertently, endangered his daughter’s future happiness.

  But if she were presented with the same circumstances, Grace knew she would do the same thing all over again. Meeting Matteo might have shaken up her ordered and calm life, but she also knew the degree of passion and desire they’d shared was special and rare. Even now, knowing he was going to marry someone else, she ached to be with him again. She doubted that would ever change, whether or not they ever saw each other again.

  “Go to hell,” she told her abductor pleasantly.

  He gave a throaty chuckle. “You have coglioni, I’ll give you that,” he murmured approvingly.

  Grace recognized the Italian word for the compliment it was coming from such a powerful man. “Thank you. Apparently, so do you for having ordered my abduction in the middle of London in broad daylight.”

  “Matteo will get over it.”

  Grace knew he meant Matteo would get over losing her. Because this man intended removing the problem of her from Matteo’s life.

  Well, she wasn’t going down without a fight.

  “Do you think you could you take this hood off now, and the ties about my wrists?” she requested lightly.

  “No.”

  She shrugged. “I think you might regret that decision.”

  “Tell me, Miss Morrissey, how long have you and Matteo Zalotti been lovers?”

  “Long enough for me to know I won’t tolerate you taking her away from me!”

  “Matteo?” Grace turned in the direction she believed that voice was coming from. It was a little difficult to tell with that echo.

  “It’s going to be okay, Grace.” The voice was much closer now.

  “What the hell have you done with my men?” the American demanded.

  “They’ll maybe have a headache when they wake up, but otherwise, they’re fine,” Matteo assured coldly. “What isn’t fine is your treatment of Grace.” Gentle fingers loosened and then removed the tie from about Grace’s wrists.

  She flexed her aching shoulders as she gratefully moved her arms forward from the unnatural position they’d been in for too long before she raised one of her hands toward her head.

  “For your own future safety, I advise you leave the hood exactly where it is,” that New York voice rasped.

  Grace’s hands froze in the act of lifting the hood, having no doubt that this was one of those occasions where, if she could identify the American, he literally believed he would have to kill her.

  “I’ve made my decision, Leon,” Matteo bit out tersely.

  “Oh yes?”

  Matteo was only holding on to his temper by a very thin thread, a thread that would break if Leon continued to challenge him in his own city. “I’m in love with Grace.” He heard Grace gasp but kept his gaze fixed on the other man. “I can’t marry your daughter when I’m in love with someone else.”

  “Even knowing such a choice will break the agreement between our two families?” the other man demanded.

  “Yes.” It was a choice Matteo knew would affect everyone else in his organization, and it weighed heavily on his conscience.

  But there was still the agreement with the Russians, and Matteo had already lived in an emotional straitjacket for the past nine years, afraid to make a misstep in case it cost his sister her life, to be able to agree to a lifetime without Grace. He couldn’t marry a woman he didn’t love and begin that cycle all over again. Whether Grace ever returned his feelings or not, Matteo chose his love for her over everything and everyone else.

  Searching for her for the past few hours had been a living nightmare, especially as he had been unsure if he would find her in time. The men guarding Leon’s hotel suite had proven stubbornly hard to break, but one of them had eventually succumbed to Stefano’s relentless persuasion and revealed the warehouse near the docks as the place where Leon was keeping Grace.

  Immobilizing the guards outside the warehouse without alerting anyone inside the building had taken several more precious minutes. Matteo’s relief had been palpable once he entered the building and knew the hooded figure seated on the chair being questioned by Leon had to be Grace.

  He wanted to rip that hood from her head and kiss and hold her. At the same time, he knew Leon meant his threat—if Grace could identify the older man, Leon would exact retribution.

  “What the hell—!” Leon rasped as there was a kerfuffle over by the doorway.

  Matteo glanced across the warehouse to see an angry-faced Carla pulling out of her uncle’s grasp before she strode forcefully toward them.

  “Who the hell is this?” Leon demanded incredulously.

  Carla glared at she passed him. “My name is Carla Andretti. I suggest you remember it, because if you’ve hurt one hai
r on Grace’s head, I will personally make you very sorry.”

  “What the hell, Matteo?” Leon appeared dumbstruck.

  “She’s Grace’s friend, and the two of them work together.”

  “I’m also Italian, which means I have a hell of a temper when roused,” Carla warned. “Dear God, why hasn’t one of you taken the damned bag off Grace’s head yet?” She glared at the two men before pulling off the hood.

  Grace blinked several times in the brightness of the overhead lights, very aware of the silence of the two men as she allowed Carla to hold her and murmur reassuring words of comfort.

  An expectant silence.

  One she knew only she could fill.

  “I’m fine, Matteo,” she reassured him once Carla had released her. “Mr. Brunelli’s men weren’t too rough, and although it might not seem like it, he hasn’t behaved badly toward me either.”

  Grace didn’t consider a few threats as behaving badly.

  “Grace, how do you—”

  “Know who he is?” she asked Matteo lightly before turning to the gray-haired and wide-eyed American. “Hi, Uncle Leon. Long time no see.” She gave him a wave with her fingers.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I still can’t believe it,” Leon murmured incredulously as he stared at Grace calmly reclining in an armchair in the sitting room of his hotel suite drinking a cup of tea from the pot Leon had ordered be brought up to them.

  Matteo couldn’t believe it either. Grace was Leon’s niece, Gracia Brunelli. A niece who had apparently disappeared five years ago following the death of her parents, Leon’s brother, Giovanni, and his Spanish wife, Constanza. The exact amount of time Grace had been living in England under the assumed name of Grace Morrissey.

  Matteo had been too dazed to protest when Leon had decided the three of them were going to his hotel so he could order refreshment for Grace and they could all be more comfortable while they talked.

  Carla had looked ready to argue that decision too until Grace assured the other woman she would be fine and that her Uncle Leon would never hurt her.

  Leonardo Brunelli was Grace’s Uncle-fucking-Leon.

  Matteo felt incredulous every time he thought about it.

  And Grace hadn’t so much as looked at Matteo since greeting the older man by his familial title.

  Matteo wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was Grace still angry with him for what had happened over the weekend? Or was she angry with him because Carla had told her Matteo was expected to marry her cousin, Natalia?

  A marriage, Matteo had already told the older man, was never going to take place.

  Surely Grace had heard him tell Leon that?

  If she had, it didn’t seem to have made it any easier for her to look at him.

  “You’re very quiet, Matteo,” Leon mused.

  He narrowed his eyes at the older man. “I’m still in shock regarding Grace’s identity as your niece.”

  “Me too.” Leon smiled warmly at her. “I thought I had lost you forever, cara, when you disappeared so completely after Gio and Constanza’s death.”

  “You mean after my drunk of a father shot my mother and then himself when she told him she couldn’t stand his possessive bullshit another minute and she was leaving him?” she scorned. “Is it any wonder I took the opportunity to escape that life by coming to England and assuming a new identity?”

  Matteo’s shock had turned to horror. His own parents’ unexpected deaths had been a tragic blow for both himself and Bella, but at least they’d had each other and could also draw comfort from the fact that their mother and father had loved each other unconditionally. Giovanni Brunelli sounded as if he had thought of Grace’s mother only as a way of furthering his standing in the Mafia rather than loved her.

  “My brother was an excitable and very jealous man,” Leon conceded.

  “He was a drunken arsehole, and you know my mother never did anything to cause that jealousy!” Grace defended. “Yet time and time again, he would drink too much and then accuse her of flirting with his men or the ones that visited the castello on business.”

  “Constanza was a very beautiful woman.”

  “She was, and it might have been an arranged marriage organized by her father and yours, but my mother was still faithful to my father!” Grace stood up to pace the room, all semblance of calm now gone.

  Leon nodded. “She was.”

  “She was also warm and kind.”

  “Yes.”

  “He used to beat her for those imagined affairs,” Grace stated flatly.

  “Did he beat you too?” Matteo felt compelled to intervene.

  “No, my mother always protected me from him,” she assured softly. “But he was your brother,” she once again accused Leon. “You knew what he was like when your father arranged the marriage between his son and the daughter of the head of a Spanish Mafia clan. His reckless behavior was the reason he was shipped off to Italy in the first place.” She gave a disgusted shake of her head. “You should have had the drunken bastard put down like the rabid dog he was before he could take my mother from me.”

  Matteo’s heart ached for what Grace had suffered.

  Every semblance of the powerful and merciless don appeared to have been stripped from Leon in that moment. Instead, he looked like a defeated man and every one of his forty plus years. “I have searched for you all these years, cara.”

  “Then by now, it should have become obvious I didn’t want to be found!”

  Leon drew in a sharp breath. “Do you still feel that way now we have met again?”

  Some of the tension eased from Grace’s shoulders. “I don’t know anymore what I feel. I don’t… I need time. Matteo, will you take me home, please?” she requested shakily.

  In a heartbeat! “Of course,” he instantly assured.

  “I want to see you again.” Leon’s demand lacked some of its usual forcefulness. He seemed to realize that too as he added. “You are and always will be a Brunelli,” he reminded her firmly.

  It had been the shock of Grace’s life earlier when she heard this man’s voice for the first time and realized the man who’d had her kidnapped and was also the powerful man from New York was, in fact, her own uncle.

  It should have occurred to her from Carla’s description of him. There was no more powerful Mafia don in New York than Leonardo Brunelli. He owned that city.

  His brother, unfortunately, had been a much weaker man, which was probably why, even though Giovanni was the eldest son, Grace’s grandfather Brunelli had chosen to name his youngest son, Leonardo, his rightful successor, and dispatched Giovanni to Italy.

  Grace would be lying if she didn’t admit she had missed seeing her uncle, and her cousin, Natalia—

  Dear God, her twenty-year-old cousin, Natalia, was the woman Matteo was supposed to marry!

  But he’d said he wouldn’t do it.

  Because he loved Grace.

  So much had happened in the last couple of hours that Grace hadn’t responded at the warehouse when Matteo told Leon he couldn’t go ahead with his arranged marriage to Leon’s daughter because he was in love with Grace.

  Matteo said he loves me, and I didn’t even acknowledge it!

  She turned to him now. “Matteo, I—” She broke off as the door to the suite was flung open and a beautiful young woman entered unannounced.

  “Papa, I want you to tell Killjoy to back the fuck off!” she announced crossly as she stomped into the room on four-inch heeled sandals. “His overprotectiveness is making my life an ever-living hell!”

  “I’m your bodyguard.” A very tall and dark-haired man, his tailored suit doing nothing to hide his wide shoulders and muscular chest, entered the suite behind her. “It’s my job to protect you.”

  “Not when it’s from the French count who wanted to make me his countess!”

  “Especially then,” the bodyguard grated.

  “You’re well named Killjoy!”

  “My name is Killian,” he corrected
harshly.

  “To me, you will always be— Dear God, is that you, Grace?” The woman’s dark gray gaze widened incredulously. “My God, Papa found you!” Natalia cried emotionally before launching herself into Grace’s arms.

  Matteo had met Natalia several times in the past, and he couldn’t help noting the differences in the two women as he watched the tearful reunion between the cousins. Grace was about five foot six inches tall and willowy. Natalia was maybe a couple of inches over five feet without those impossible sandals on her feet, and her figure was voluptuous. Their coloring was totally different too, Grace a green-eyed redhead and Natalia had long dark hair and the same gray eyes as her father.

  That the two women were genuinely fond of each other was obvious as they sat on the sofa together, arms about each other as they caught up on what had been happening in both their lives during the last five years.

  Quite what this meant in regard to Grace’s request he take her home now, he had no idea.

  Nor, it seemed, was his supposed fiancée about to acknowledge his presence any time soon, confirming what Matteo had always suspected. Natalia was no more interested in becoming his wife than he was in being her husband. Her flirtation with the French count only added to that conviction.

  “Here.”

  Matteo glanced sideways to see Leon was holding out a glass of whisky toward him.

  Leon grimaced. “There’s five years difference in their ages, but the two of them always did gossip for hours, so we might as well make ourselves comfortable.”

  Matteo accepted the glass and took a healthy swallow.

  “Our arrangement still stands,” Leon murmured at his side.

  His jaw clenched. “I’m not marrying Natalia.”

  “No,” Leon accepted ruefully.

  “Nor will I marry Grace at your command.”

  The older man smirked. “I doubt she would accept you under those circumstances.” He sobered. “No, it’s enough that you’ve given my niece back to me.”

  Matteo shook his head. “I think the two of you did that for yourselves.”

  “I would never have found her on my own. In fact, I’ve failed to find her for all these years,” he bit out grimly. “My brother was… Grace is right, Gio was a drunken asshole. Not so much when he came to New York, but it was noticeable when I visited the family in Italy.” He shook his head. “I had no idea he was so mentally unbalanced until he killed Constanza and then himself. By the time I flew to Italy to sort the mess out, Gracia had disappeared. For a while, I suspected she might have been kidnapped, and I scoured Italy in search of her, but when no ransom was demanded, I began to look outside Italy for her. Obviously, I never found her. Until now.” His expression softened as he looked at the two young women sitting and talking together quietly on the sofa, still wrapped in each other’s arms. “Our arrangement stands, Matteo, with no conditions attached,” he assured.