Those reports didn’t come right out and say he was personally responsible for killing anyone either, or ordering dozens more killed, but they mentioned him, time after time, as being a person of interest to the police in certain crimes. Usually in connection with those unexplained killings believed to be connected to organized crime, i.e. the Mafia, bratva, or any one of the half dozen or so other smaller criminal organizations in London.
Grace now had the answer to the question she had asked herself earlier: people moved out of Matteo’s way because he exuded that aura of extreme power because of who he was.
He needed armed bodyguards because of who he was.
And Grace had no intention of having dinner, or anything else, with him, because she now knew exactly who he was.
Just thinking of that was enough to make her tremble, inside as well as out, to the degree a part of her wanted to shut down her life in London and just move on to somewhere Matteo Zalotti would never find her.
Except she knew the type of man he was. What he was capable of. If Matteo wanted to find her, then running wouldn’t solve anything, and she would have given up the life she had carved for herself here for nothing.
She gave a nervous glance toward the front of the store, where she knew Matteo was sitting outside right now behind the wheel of a sleek dark gray car that probably cost more than she could earn in several years. The parking restrictions in the street were lifted every evening after six o’clock, and Matteo had taken advantage of that fact to park his vehicle directly in front of the bookstore.
Grace had given him a brief wave of acknowledgment at seven o’clock when she locked the front entrance and switched off all the lights inside the store. Carla, and the rest of the staff, always left by the back door. As Grace now intended doing rather than going to dinner with Matteo.
No doubt, because he knew where she worked, and if he felt so inclined, he would come to the bookstore again tomorrow—she only hoped he didn’t send those two burly bodyguards instead—and demand to know why Grace had stood him up.
But Grace really hoped he would just accept her avoidance of him for the rejection it was and not bother with her again.
She could hope all she liked, but the man she’d met earlier today hadn’t given her the impression he would accept her or anyone else’s dismissal easily.
Grace left the small light on at the back of the store, setting the alarm as she normally did, before letting herself out the back door into the darkened alley behind the store, and locking the door behind her.
“Going somewhere, Grace?”
She gave a startled scream, the store keys falling from her fingers as she turned in the direction of that mocking voice.
Intermittent street lights lit up this alley, and Matteo was standing directly beneath one of them. His hair appeared more blue-black than ever from the soft glow overhead, giving his hard features the appearance of a perfectly rendered alabaster statue.
Except for his eyes.
Dark blue eyes that met Grace’s startled ones with that same glittering intensity which had so disarmed her earlier today.
He continued to hold her gaze as he stepped forward and bent to retrieve the keys from the cobbled ground, those uneven stones an indication of just how old this part of London was. “Here.” He dangled those keys in front of her.
Grace snatched them from him and dropped them into her bag, before then holding that cavernous shoulder bag in front of her as if for protection.
Which was pretty stupid of her, because this man was almost a foot taller than she was and outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds. And if he didn’t feel like throwing his own weight around to admonish her for her obvious attempt to avoid seeing him again, then he could always ask his two henchmen to do his dirty work for him. As he had no doubt done dozens of times in the past.
Matteo didn’t like the apprehension he could see in the shadowed darkness of Grace’s green eyes. Or the defensive way in which she now held her bag against her chest.
He’d been looking forward to seeing her again since they parted earlier today. So much so, he had been unable to concentrate on anything else. Luca and Antonio hadn’t spoken after he left the bookstore earlier, but they hadn’t been so reticent when he informed them he would be going out alone again this evening. They considered it too much after he had met alone with Markovic and Volkov this afternoon.
As don of the Zalotti family, Matteo had many enemies, but he had considered it would be an insult to the two Russians to conduct their meeting with his two bodyguards also in the room.
Neither did he want the other two men present during his dinner date with Grace.
A dinner date she’d obviously intended to avoid by leaving by the back door when she knew he was sitting in his car at the front of the building.
Matteo had watched her lock the front door of the bookstore, and then the lights being turned off before Grace had moved to the back of the store. Something, some instinct, had warned him not to let her out of his sight. Once he realized there was a back entrance to the building, and knew she could leave that way, he understood his suspicion. A suspicion which had now proved correct.
His mouth twisted. “You know who I am.” It was a statement, not a question.
She eyed him warily. “You told me who you were earlier.”
“I told you my name, not who I am.”
She looked flustered. “I— Yes, I looked your name up online.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for the two of us to go out to dinner.”
“Scared?”
Her eyes widened and her mouth thinned at his mockery. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for the two of us to go out to dinner because I’m not what you want.”
Matteo tensed. “How do you know what I want?” Having only recently put an end to the problems in his organization, he had allowed Antonio to instigate a background check on Grace Morrissey. Nothing in the single-page report he’d received back had rung any alarm bells. As far as he could tell, Grace was exactly who she said she was.
She shrugged. “I’m the manager of a bookstore. I spend my evenings at home. I live alone with my cat, for goodness’ sake,” she added exasperatedly when Matteo didn’t look concerned. “I saw photographs online of you with dozens of beautiful women, most of them models or actresses.” She glanced down at herself in the overlarge coat and the flat shoes she’d changed into since he last saw her, probably for comfort when traveling home. “I’m thin enough to be one of them, but I don’t have any of their beauty or—or other attributes.”
Matteo raised dark brows. “Finished?”
“I… Yes.” She glared at him.
“One.” He raised one finger. “You aren’t thin, you’re willowy and fine-boned, like a ballet dancer. Two.” He held up two fingers. “You are stunningly beautiful. Three—” He paused as Grace attempted to speak, a single glare from him silencing her before she began. “Three,” he held up that third finger. “I’m almost ten years older than when most of those photographs you’re talking about were taken, and my taste is now far more discerning.”
She eyed him curiously. “You’re expecting me to believe you didn’t date for almost ten years?”
Matteo drew in a harsh breath. They had inadvertently stumbled into territory he would rather not talk about. Not at this stage of getting to know Grace, at least. “I never dated any of those women either,” he rasped. “We fucked, but that’s all we did.”
Grace winced. “Nice.”
He breathed out his frustration. “I’m trying to be honest.”
“Maybe try being less so,” she advised.
“Grace, most of those photographs you saw would have been taken during my early to mid-twenties.”
“So you’re thirty-five.”
“Thirty-six. You?”
“Twenty-six. And I doubt I’ve read as many books as you seem to have had women—and I’ve read a lot of books!”
Matteo sm
iled without humor. “What can I say, I was young and foolish.” Those were the exact same, indulgent words his father had used to describe Matteo’s behavior shortly before he died.
“And now you’re older and…more discerning?” she derided.
“Yes.” He sobered. “Grace, I want to take you out dinner this evening.”
“On a date?” she mocked.
His mouth thinned. “Yes. Please,” he added when she made no reply.
Grace grimaced. “I’m sure that pleading and innocent look might have worked when you were a little boy, but you’re now thirty years too old to be considered cute.”
“You don’t think I’m cute?” he teased.
She eyed him exasperatedly. “I think you’re many, many things, but cute certainly isn’t one of them.”
Matteo was sure he didn’t want to hear some of the things Grace thought he was after reading his online profile. Once a player and now head of the Zalotti organization, both those things made him dangerous and powerful.
But he also knew from the way her cheeks were flushed and her pupils blown that Grace was still aware of that same strong attraction that had been so intense between them earlier today.
He stepped forward in the darkness to take a firm grasp of her elbow. “We’re going to get in my car, I’m driving us to the restaurant, and we are going to have dinner together.”
“Because you say so?” she challenged.
“Because that was the invitation you accepted earlier.”
“Before I knew who and what you are.”
“Who and what I am has absolutely nothing to do with the two of us.”
“Of course it—”
Matteo halted her protest by stepping closer and taking her lips with his own.
She tasted of sweetness and innocence, of fidelity and forever.
Everything Matteo had once run away from and all that he now ached to have in his life. A woman of his own. A love of his own. A woman and love he chose for himself and not something that was nothing more than an agreed-upon business deal between two powerful men. As his marriage to Natalia Brunelli would be.
Matteo wanted Grace!
He’d met her only hours ago and yet he knew he wanted to make love to her until neither of them knew where one of them ended and the other began.
Grace dropped her bag at their feet so that she could stand on tiptoe and lift her arms up and entangle her fingers in the thickness of hair at Matteo’s nape. Her lips parted to the moist sweep of Matteo’s tongue, her heart leaping as that tongue explored the heat of her mouth, seeking out each curve and hollow, and igniting nerve endings of awareness wherever it roamed.
She gave a noise of protest when Matteo broke the kiss, but groaned her arousal when his teeth gave a playful nip at her earlobe before his lips traveled the length of her throat, his tongue licking and tasting her.
“This is what’s important, Grace.” His breath was hot against the dampness of her flesh. “Holding you, kissing you. For now, it’s all that matters.”
Was it?
Could she do this?
Could she forget, just for one evening, who and what Matteo was? Who she was?
When he was holding her and kissing her like this, Grace knew she couldn’t say no to him.
Chapter Five
Which was how, a short time later, Grace found herself seated in a booth beside Matteo in the small and very busy Italian restaurant where he had apparently booked a table. A booth that was pretty much secluded, no doubt deliberately so on Matteo’s part, from the other diners. Within minutes of their arrival, the two of them had been provided with drinks, water for Grace and red wine for Matteo, and they were waiting for their food to arrive.
Matteo had driven her home so she could see to Mr. Darcy’s needs, but she had decided against changing her clothes after all, not willing for Matteo to grow tired of sitting in his car waiting for her and decide to come up to her apartment instead.
It was only a short drive to the Italian restaurant called Mama and Papa Benito’s, and despite the room being crowded, Mama had taken the time to greet Matteo like a long-lost and much-loved nephew the moment they walked in the door of the warm and deliciously garlic-smelling restaurant. Her husband had emerged from the kitchen to greet them too, seconds later.
Listening to their excited conversation, Grace realized that it had been some years since Matteo had been to the restaurant.
The same “almost ten years” during which there hadn’t been as many photographs of Matteo escorting beautiful actresses and models?
Grace wondered exactly what had happened during those “lost” years.
Matteo had placed his arm about Grace’s waist when he introduced her to the older Italian couple and included her in the warmth of their greeting. They had teased Matteo when he asked Papa Benito if he would prepare his famous lasagna dish for the two of them.
The Italian couple’s unrestrained pleasure in seeing Matteo again and preparing his favorite dish didn’t quite fit in with what Grace had read about the ruthless head of the London Mafia.
Shouldn’t people pale at the sight of him before handing over bundles of money to pay for their “protection”?
“You’ve watched too many old Mafia movies,” Matteo drawled as he watched the confused emotions flicker across her face.
She eyed him dubiously. “I have?”
He nodded “This is the twenty-first century. Everything is done online nowadays. Also, I’m really not what you think I am.”
“You’re not Matteo Zalotti, head of the London Mafia, responsible for—or incriminated in—dozens of unsolved murders throughout the city?” she corrected dryly, making sure to keep her voice low so that the other diners couldn’t hear their conversation. “That isn’t you?” she challenged.
Matteo wished he could deny it, but how could he do that when days ago, he had ordered the death and disposal of the body of the man responsible for having blackmailed him into compliance for nine years?
The same man who had also ordered those “dozens of unsolved murders throughout the city,” all in Matteo’s name.
But Matteo was thirty-six years old, not a child, and he had no intention of behaving like one by claiming “that was all his doing, not mine.”
Not too many people were even aware of the shift there had been in the hierarchy of the Zalotti organization nine years ago, or for how long that change had existed, and Matteo would prefer it remain that way. After all, he had still been visible as the head of the family, if in name only. Also, Matteo, given a choice, would have ordered some of those deaths too.
“It is me,” he finally allowed. “But that isn’t all I am. I’m not a monster, Grace. I was brought up by very loving parents until I was almost twenty-seven. I have a younger sister whom I absolutely adore and would do”—and had done—“ anything for.”
“The sister who is shortly getting married?”
“I have only one sister.” He smiled slightly. “My hope is that soon, Bella and Bryce will present me with nieces and nephews to spoil.”
Grace seemed lost in thought for several seconds. “What happened to change things almost ten years ago?”
Matteo’s nostrils flared. “You didn’t read about that when you looked me up online?”
Color highlighted her cheeks. “I couldn’t get over all the photographs of you and those dozens of women.”
His mouth twisted. “You really need to move past them.”
She eyed him derisively. “Most of them were tall and leggy blondes, and they looked so much alike, I can’t imagine how you even remembered which one was which.”
None of them had been in Matteo’s life long enough for him to need to differentiate. “I called them all babe,” he admitted reluctantly.
Grace winced. “That’s…pretty awful.”
“Yes.” He sighed his regret for the careless player he had been for so many years. Then, he’d been a much younger and reckless man than he was now or ever
would be again. “Yes, it is,” he acknowledged self-disgustedly. “But I’m no longer that man, and there’s been no one in my life for years. I’m also well aware your name is Grace,” he added dryly.
“How reassuring!”
“Grace—”
“You really don’t have to keep repeating it to convince me,” she dismissed. “You were going to tell me what changed almost ten years ago?” she reminded.
He drew in a deep and controlling breath. “My grandfather was originally head of the Zalotti family, then my father took over thirty years ago. Ten years ago, I was forced to take over when my parents were both gunned down and killed in the street after leaving a restaurant— No, not this one,” he answered when Grace gave an alarmed glance at their surroundings. “I had that one razed to the ground and the ashes scattered,” he bit out harshly.
Grace couldn’t imagine having the power to destroy, just obliterate, a whole restaurant off the face of the earth because her parents had been killed as they were leaving it.
Not that she needed to imagine it, because her own parents had died after her father killed her mother before killing himself.
She gave a shake of her head. “Did you find who was responsible for ordering the shooting?”
A nerve pulsed in Matteo’s slightly clenched jaw, his eyes a cold blue. “Eventually, yes.”
“And is he now razed to the ground and his ashes scattered too?”
“Yes.”
Grace shivered at the hardness of his tone. “On your instruction.”
“Yes.” There was no apology in his voice only a statement of fact.
A fact Grace couldn’t accept as easily as he seemed to.
She placed her water glass carefully down on the table before it slipped out of her badly shaking hand. “This was a mistake—”
“Ecco qua!” Mama Benito placed two steaming bowls of delicious-smelling lasagna on the table in front of them. “Buon appetito!” She gave the two of them a beaming smile before turning her attention back to the other diners.
MATTEO (Dance with the Devil 1) Page 3