A Hunger for the Forbidden(30)

Except fate had had other ideas.

She’d spent a lot of her life believing in fate, believing that the right thing would happen in the end. She questioned that now. Now she just wondered if she’d let her body lead her into an impossible situation all for the sake of assuaging rioting hormones.

“This will make a nice headline, don’t you think?”

he asked, swirling her around before drawing her back in tight against him.

“I imagine it will. You’re a great dancer, by the way. I don’t know if I mentioned that … last time.”

“You didn’t, but your mouth was otherwise occupied.”

Her cheeks heated. “Yes, I suppose it was.”

“My mother made sure I had dance lessons starting at an early age. All a part of grooming me to take my place at the helm of Benito’s empire.”

“But you haven’t really. Taken the helm of your father’s empire, I mean.”

“Not as such. We’ve all taken a piece of it, but in the meantime we’ve been working to root out the shadier elements of the business. It’s one thing my brothers and I do not suffer. We’re not criminals.”

“A fact I appreciate. And for the record, neither is Alessandro. I would never have agreed to marry him otherwise.”

“Is that so?”

“I’ve had enough shady dealings to last me a lifetime. My father, for all that he puts on the front of being an honorable citizen, is not. At least your fathers and your grandfather had the decency to be somewhat open about the fact that they weren’t playing by the rules.”

“Gentleman thugs,” he said, his voice hard. “But I’ll let you in on a little secret—no matter how good you are at dancing, no matter how nicely tailored your suit is, it doesn’t change the fact that when you hit a man in the legs with a metal cane, his knees shatter. And he doesn’t care what you’re wearing. Neither do the widows of the men you kill.”

Alessia was stunned by his words, not by the content of them, not as shocked as she wished she were. People often assumed that she was some naive, cosseted flower. Her smile had that effect. They assumed she must not know how organized crime worked. But she did. She knew the reality of it. She knew her father was bound up so tightly in all of it he could hardly escape it even if he wanted to.

He was addicted to the power, and being friendly with the mob bosses was what kept him in power. He couldn’t walk away easily. Not with his power, possibly not even with his life.

And yet, the Correttis had disentangled themselves from it. The Corretti men and women had walked away from it.

No, it wasn’t the content of his words that had surprised her. It was the fact that he’d said them at all. Because Matteo played his cards close to his chest. Because Matteo preferred not to address the subject of his family, of that part of his past.

“You aren’t like that, though.”

“No?” he asked. “I’m in a suit.”

“And you wouldn’t do that to someone.”

“Darling Alessia, you are an eternal optimist,” he said, and there was something in his words she didn’t like. A hard edge that made her stomach tighten. “I don’t know how you manage it.”

“Survival. I have to protect myself.”

“I thought that was where cynics came from?”

“Perhaps a good number of them. But no matter how I feel about a situation, I’ve never had any control over the outcome. My mother died in childbirth, and no amount of feeling good or bad about it would have changed that. My father is a criminal, no matter the public mask he wears, who has no qualms about slapping my face to keep me in line.” They swirled in a fast circle, Matteo’s hold tightening on her, something dangerous flickering in his eyes. “No matter how I feel about the situation, that is the situation. If I didn’t choose to be happy no matter what, I’m not sure I would have ever stopped crying, and I didn’t want to live like that, either.”

“And why didn’t you leave?” he asked.

“Without Marco, Giana, Eva and Pietro? Never. I couldn’t do it.”

“With them, then.”

“With no money? With my father and his men bearing down on us? If it were only myself, then I would have left. But it was never only me. I think we were why my mother stayed, too.” She swallowed hard. “And if she could do it for us, how could I do any less?”