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I needed to get Matteo out of here before my father riled him up even more. “I’ll speak with you this time tomorrow. I hope for your sake that everything is arranged by then.”
A soon as we exited my father’s office, we heard the sound of him slamming his hand down on his desk.
“You’re not going to let him get away with everything are you?” Matteo asked. “Tell me you’re going to kill him in the end or let me do it.”
“Once we’ve taken care of my brother, we’re going to reveal what happened to my mother, and he’ll go to trial as an accessory to murder. The conviction will strip him of his belief that he’ll never face consequences. That is worse than death to him.”
Matteo huffed. “We’ll discuss that when the time comes.”
“Fine, but right now I’m not in control of his businesses. If we kill him, then take out my brother, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know who’s next in line to inherit, but I doubt it’s me or anyone else we would want in that position. I need control because I need to make sure I can stop every fucking evil thing he’s got going on right now, and we’ve got to cut off the cartel’s money so we can destroy them.”
“You know someone else will just step into their place. If we picked up where your father left off, we’d be in a position to?—”
“No, that’s CIA bullshit you’re spouting now. We’re not playing games with them. We won’t dirty our hands anymore, no matter how much we could learn. Sure, someone else will step in, and they’ll need to be put down too, but that’s not our job. This is.”
“I know it’s personal for you.”
“And it’s not for you? After what they did to you?”
He shrugged. “I think I’ve put up so many walls I don’t feel anything about my time there unless I let the walls down. I don’t have to end the cartel for myself, but they made me shoot you, and for that, I will take out every single one of them.”
“Then why are you challenging me on this?”
“Because I don’t want you looking over your shoulder all the time. What you’re planning will create a lot of enemies for you. I don’t want you to have to deal with that.”
“Jesus, Matteo. I’m hardly an innocent pawn.”
“No, you’re a fucking hero.”
I snorted. “Don’t tell me you bought all that bullshit from me.”
Matteo grabbed my shoulders and slammed me into the side of the SUV. “It’s not bullshit. You believed that.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I did. Back then. But I couldn’t even stop the evil in my own family.”
“You’re not fucking responsible for what they’ve done.”
“Maybe not, but I’m going to be responsible for ending it.”
Matteo smiled. “Good.”
27
MATTEO
This time Carter barely protested when I insisted on driving. He stripped off his suit jacket and yanked off his tie before dropping his head back against the seat. I could see the weight of what he’d learned pressing down on him. He was still as pale as he’d been when he learned what really happened to his mother. He twisted his hands together again and again as his knee bounced rapidly.
I laid a hand on his thigh. “You need to take some time to breathe.”
“It’s not so easy to do that when you find out your brother killed your mom, and your father didn’t care, and both of them would prefer I was dead too.”
“Baby—”
“How could he do it? How could he kill our mother? She wasn’t like dad. She was so kind and good, and she never belonged with him.”
I squeezed Carter’s leg. “I’m so sorry about all of this. Tell me what you need.”
“I don’t know. Right now, I just need to call X and find out if they’ve made any progress finding Landon.”
