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“Oh,” Penny breathed, her eyes wide. Clearly, she understood what her husband did not.
“Not Conor,” Liza clarified. “Matt.”
Gage burst out with a loud laugh—one that died quickly when no one else joined in. Gage looked over at his wife.
“Is it April Fools?” he asked, though his previous joking attitude was gone. He looked confused, while Penny just looked concerned.
Penny shook her head, and Gage turned his attention back to Liza. “Matt’s in love with you?”
Liza wanted to nod, wanted to believe that was true. Luca and Tony were convinced, but her heart—still shattered from what just went down—couldn’t give him a definitive answer.
Luca, bless him, answered for her. “He is.”
“Damn,” Gage whispered. “That’s…” He studied Liza’s face, and she knew she was doing a shit job hiding her outright devastation. “Maybe you should start at the beginning.”
Liza repeated what she’d told Tony and Luca in the elevator. How she and Matt had engaged in an affair before the holidays and that it had picked up steam when they were in Hawaii together. She tried to tell him about the debt, but there was no way she could speak the words without falling apart.
Mercifully, Luca and Tony covered that part, explaining about the debt and Matt’s condition for forgiving it.
Gage rubbed his forehead wearily. “My brother is such an idiot.”
“Why is he so against relationships? Against marriage?” she asked.
Gage shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t know why. Matt and I were close as kids, but once Dad got his claws into him…”
Liza knew about that. “He told me about your father, how he raised Matt in his image, to be his heir.”
Gage’s eyebrows lifted. “He told you?” It was clear he hadn’t expected Matt to have confided something so personal.
She nodded.
“To be honest, I pulled away from Matt back then. Because he’d taken Dad’s lessons to heart. For quite a few years, he and our old man were carbon copies of each other, which wasn’t a good thing because Dad was…well, not to speak ill of the dead…but he was a grade-A asshole. And by the time Matt graduated from college and joined Russo Enterprises, he was the same. Cold, callous, distant. Not to mention misogynistic, arrogant, and cruel.”
Matt had used a few of those same words to describe himself back when he was trying to warn Liza away. It didn’t matter how many times they were bandied about because Liza still couldn’t see any of that in the man she’d fallen in love with.
“Misogynistic?” That one was new, though, and it sparked Liza’s curiosity.
“Matt was sort of a womanizer.”
“He’s not like that now,” Liza insisted.
“I know he’s not,” Gage agreed. “He changed after our mom died. Went from being Dad’s mini-me to the angriest man I’ve ever met. He cut everyone out of his life—including Dad—who, up until then, he’d been working overtime to impress. He did everything with our dad—work, golf on weekends, drinks at the club.”
“It makes sense he would be angry over losing his mom.” Liza was trying to pick up a couple of these scattered pieces Gage was tossing her way in hopes of putting them together, but she wasn’t having any luck.
Gage didn’t seem convinced that was the reason for Matt’s change. “I’ve never seen anger run that deep, burn that hot. It was scary. And then Dad died, and it was like…all Matt’s rage evaporated. Just disappeared like it had never been there. After that, he became the guy he is today. Workaholic with those impenetrable walls around him.”
Liza sighed, and Gage gave her a sad smile.
“I don’t know why Matt is fighting this thing between you, Liza. And even if I did, I couldn’t tell you. There are some stories a guy’s just gotta tell himself.”
Gage and Penny exchanged a look, one filled with sadness and understanding. Liza didn’t know what it meant, but it told her that Matt didn’t appear to be the only Russo who’d struggled with love.
Penny reached out and grasped Gage’s hand, giving it a squeeze.
“Liza,” he began. “I want you with my brother. You’re perfect for him, and there would be zero Mean Girl vibes at the Christmas Eve dinner.”
Penny grinned. “We could be sisters,” she whispered.
