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I smiled, looking down at him. “All right, just this once,” I said, and closed my eyes briefly before opening them again. “When your father was about seventeen, he took me out on a boat.”
Matteo’s green eyes widened. “My father had a boat?”
I snorted. “Not exactly. He ‘borrowed’ it from his boss,” I said with a chuckle. “It was late at night, almost midnight, and he came to throw rocks at my window.”
“Why didn’t he come in from the front door?”
I put a finger across my lips. “Because Papa didn’t know we were seeing each other.”
Matteo smiled, liking that we had a secret. “Because Papa didn’t like him?”
I nodded, although that wasn’t exactly true. At that point, my father and Enzo Gallo were on the outs, so he wouldn’t have liked me spending time with Rocco, his right hand. Over the years, though, he and Enzo had almost become friends. It was funny the way things worked out.
“Then what happened?”
“Your dad didn’t know how to drive the boat and we ended up crashing into a pier,” I said, laughing at the memory. "We thought we might get caught, so we ditched the boat and went on a picnic instead.”
There were parts of this story I couldn’t tell Matteo, like how we had to run from the cops out at the marina, how we’d made love on the picnic blanket before I’d snuck back home. Enzo had assumed it was one of his rowdy cousins who took the boat, and he was never any the wiser.
Matteo laughed. “Did he get in trouble?”
I shook my head. “Nope. His boss never knew it was him.”
“So my dad, he was fun?” Matteo asked.
“Very fun,” I admitted. “But it just didn’t work out between us. When we made you, though, we loved each other very much.”
“You don’t love each other anymore?”
I paused and then leaned down to ruffle his hair, kissing the crown of his head. “Time for bed now.”
“Will you tell me more stories about my father?” Matteo asked, and I just smiled and nodded my head. I had a dozen stories to tell about Rocco, at least, and if it made Matteo happy and ask less questions…
My heart ached, thinking about that night on the boat, how Rocco had kissed me so hungrily just before we crashed right into the pier. It should be a happy memory, a memory from my teenage years I could look back on when we were old and married. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Rocco had gone ghost just two weeks later, the same night he was supposed to meet me and run away.
I sighed, going into my father’s office. He was probably upset with me about last night, and I hadn’t seen him all day. When I walked into the open door of his office, he looked up at me with a half-smile. Had Alberto ratted me out? “How did the meet go?” he asked, and I held back a sigh of relief, noting that I needed to thank Alberto for watching out for me and for not revealing to my father that I’d skipped most of the meet.
“It was fine,” I said vaguely. “No one was talking much, though, so I didn’t get any leads.”
My father nodded. “I suspected as much.” He narrowed his eyes. “Especially since I got a report that you were out at a strip club last night.”
Alberto. That traitor.I swallowed hard. “Are you mad at me?”
He shook his head. “Absolutely not, Allegra. You deserve to get out and have a little fun. I’m just a little surprised, because you usually take work very seriously, but I’m happy you had some time to relax.”
“I went out with Martina Russo,” I said flatly.
My father laughed out loud. “If she’s anything like her father, she’s a hard partier. You hung over?”
“Extremely,” I groaned, putting my head down on his desk.
My father chuckled and reached over to pat my head. “That’s the downside of having a good time, yeah?”
I lifted my head. “You’re really not upset? I should have stayed at the meet…”
I trailed off as my father waved his hand dismissively. “You work so hard, Allegra. You do all my books and keep up with my appointments. Just because you skipped one meet doesn’t mean that you won’t do well at the next one.”
I smiled. My father had such faith in me, maybe more faith than I had in myself. “I’ll do better next time,” I assured him.
